would you like a dissertation on the prosthetic makeup appearance of Cardassian neck ridges as shown by the evolving and changing of Dukat, Damar, and Garak’s ridges? I promise it’s much more interesting than it sounds, and I’ve pretty much devoted my life to the study, so you know it’s a passion project. let’s get started :)
PART ONE
let’s start with the earliest ridges we have for the each of them:
Garak shows up first in Past Prologue and it’s like they don’t even know what ridges are in the first season, there’s nothing here, what is going on. That’s basically a trim glued onto a regular neck with some hints of scales only on the edges.
Dukat shows up in The Homecoming, The season 2 opener, and yet again, where are they? What happened? All in on the face but the neck is anything but impressive.
These are the earliest photos I’ll be showing, and they are both outliers, and they are not ever shown again. There might have been more “no ridge” appearances, but I’m jumping forward in time.
Now I’d like to show you what I consider to be the epitome of each characters’ ridges. These are the ones that I see and go “yep that’s Dukat’s and this is why,” and the lovely fun fact of “Garak has someone else’s ridges in season 7 and this is how I know why”.
These are Garak’s ridges. I see these and go yeah that’s my man, they’re softer, not too many rows of scales, at most three, and they’re really beautifully blended with Andy’s existing neckline. The rows connect in lines instead of a fish scale pattern, and they get weaker towards the throat.
These are Dukat’s ridges, they are known and recognizable for having the characteristic darker circle in the middle of each scale.
These are Damar’s ridges, they are layered the most and are sharper than Marc’s or Andy’s, likely for how sharp Casey is in general.
Now we move onto Outliers- meaning ridges that aren’t really “anyone’s” but are used once and never again as far as I know, they’re confusing, I don’t know why this would ever happen in makeup? Other than working for Star Trek with all those pieces constantly changing, logistics nightmares, etc.
Outlier Number One: This combines Garak’s original ridge pattern with the dotted scales you’ll see him with more later. This is in the final episode as well, I appreciate this a lot for him actually, it doesn’t look bad at all.
Outlier Number Two: Dukat looks like this at random points through the series, usually earlier seasons, namely the first image being from Cardassians. The scales reach his Adam’s apple.
i would argue that the last pic of dukat is peak dukat scale/ridge look. the eyeridges are defined pebbles, not smooth, too.
the makeup people messed up the consistency of both these guys’ ridges throughout the show. keep an eye on dukat’s forehead spoon, as well. it changes sometimes mid episode!
I’m not convinced that Sisko is right at the end of s6 e11 waltz, he says he saw pure evil in Dukat but I’m not so sure, in episode 11 and the end of episode 6 Dukat is showing symptoms of catatonic schizophrenia (although this is based off my knowledge of history and not medicine)
The first example of this is immediately following Ziyal’s death and the Dominion/Cardassian retreat from Terrak Nor (undoubtedly the cause of his condition), he becomes altogether unresponsive to outside stimuli
The second is the most prominent, namely the schizophrenia he experiences throughout waltz, Weyoun representing his failure, Demar (best girl) representing his desire to re take his position at the head of the cardassian union (ironic considering Demar would probably kill him upon his return) and Nerys representing his self hatred and guilt for his actions on bajor
The third is how persuasasable he is, just as Henry VI was convinced by Suffolk and Somerset to go back to war with France, Sisko puts the words right into Dukat’s mouth during his grand villain monologue talking about how he will make the bajorans pay
Sisko fully encouraging Dukat to villain monologue at him combined with telling him to act like Nerys, his conscience, isn’t there are likley what are responsible for spiral into evil past e11
I’m not saying Dukat isn’t pure evil, Sisko saw that he most certainly was, but Sisko is wrong to talk about seeing pure evil when he was the one to encourage and cajole it in Dukat in the first place
i still don’t think dukat was ever ‘pure’ evil.
ira steven behr tried to make him that, which i have ranted about at great length many times on many platforms.
dukat was MENTALLY ILL and there’s a reason we have the insanity defense. a person cannot be both mentally unsound AND responsible for their actions.
there is also a strong theory that the pah-wraiths were the ones giving dukat the hallucinations, driving him to them. how else would he have known where to find that clay doll thing on cardassia? how would he have known about the ancient texts and all that lore without -something- leading him to it?
just a theory, but my point on insane =/= evil stands. and this post makes a great point about sisko badgering dukat into going over the edge.
especially considering that episode starts with sisko saying: Helostanempire,helosthisdaughter,andhenearlylosthismind. Whatever his crimes isn’tthat enough punishment for one lifetime?
hate to say it but the key to having things solved by big company customer service is you just gotta stretch the truth with them. or straight up lie. actually. was on the phone for 3 hours because they sent something to the wrong address and spoke to 10 different departments trying to figure out if anyone could go fucking get it and they’re like “uhhh but can you go get it” bitch I’m 8 hours away by car, I don’t live in the house where you sent it.
took a moment to think, called back and was just like. Hi. My package was stolen off the porch!!! Saw the cunt steal it myself!! Anyway can you please send new things to this other address for free since that’s your policy for stolen goods thank you~☆ ! and it was immediately solved.
actually my tags are too good not to include
follow me for more customer service tips and tricks
KOKOBOT - The Airbnb-Owned Tech Startup - Data Mining Tumblr Users’ Mental Health Crises for “Content”
I got this message from a bot, and honestly? If I was a bit younger and not such a jaded bitch with a career in tech, I might have given it an honest try. I spent plenty of time in a tough situation without access to any mental health resources as a teen, and would have been sucked right in.
Chatting right from your phone, and being connected with people who can help you? Sounds nice. Especially if you believe the testimonials they spam you with (tw suicide / self harm mention in below images)
But I was getting a weird feeling, so I went to read the legalese.
I couldn’t even get through the fine-print it asked me to read and agree to, without it spamming the hell out of me. Almost like they expect people to just hit Yes? But I’m glad I stopped to read, because:
What you say on there won’t be confidential. (And for context, I tried it out and the things people were looking for help with? I didn’t even feel comfortable sharing here as examples, it was all so deeply personal and painful)
Also, what you say on there? Is now…
Koko’s intellectual property - giving them the right to use it in any way they see fit, including
Publicly performing or displaying your “content” (also known as your mental health crisis) in any media format and in any media channel without limitation
Do this indefinitely after you end your account with them
Sell / share this “content” with other businesses
Any harm you come to using Koko? That’s on you.
And Koko won’t take responsibility for anything someone says to you on there (which is bleak when people are using it to spread Christianity to people in crisis)
They also use the data they gather from users to conduct research and publish papers. I didn’t find them too interesting - other than as a good case study of “People tend to find what they are financially incentivized to find”. Predictably, Koko found that Kokobot was beneficial to its users.
So yeah, being a dumbass with too much curiosity, I decided to use the Airbnb-owned Data-Mining Mental Health Chatline anyway. And if you thought it was dangerous sounding from the disclaimers? Somehow it got worse.
(trigger warning / discussions of child abuse / sexual abuse / suicide / violence below the cut - please don’t read if you’re not in a good place to hear about negligence around pretty horrific topics.)
Their company summary reading as “AI Powered Community Moderation” really stood out to me, as at first glance it’s not what they market themselves as.
But after reading through the rest of the post, and seeing their list of ‘customers’ on their website it’s obvious what’s going on. The apparently unmoderated, highly dangerous chat service where they throw extremely vulnerable people (and presumably the people who want to take advantage of them) at each other in the name of 'mental health support’ is not their product. Their product is a bot that crawls social media content to flag posts for moderation. The chat service is just a data harvesting ploy. They need a large body of example text of people experiencing mental health crises to train their bot on. The chat service lets them harvest that.
This company is selling a tool to help social media companies automatically detect at risk users and provide them with links to mental health services. Which sounds perfectly fine until you realise that it’s building that tool in the most breathtakingly irresponsible and immoral way imaginable.
You… do realise that people tag works as containing rape/paedophilia/incest when the stories are explicitly about those things being bad, and not just because they’re writing dark themes for reasons that you personally disapprove of, right? That tags merely state the presence of a thing without explaining how it’s dealt with in the narrative, and that stories do not have to be morally instructional and perfect and pure in order to be allowed to exist?
Like. You might as well walk into a bookshop and stamp BLOCKED FOR BADWRONG CONTENT on every book in the Song of Ice and Fire series, half of Shakespeare, every YA novel about rape recovery, every adult novel about rape recovery, every biography of someone who has suffered from rape, incest or paedophilia and been brave enough to write about it, every book of Greek, Egyptian and Norse myths, the fucking Bible - just a truly massive percentage of the entire global literary canon,because there is literally no way to remove each and every reference to these themes otherwise.
Do you know why schools and libraries are pressured to ban books like I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, To Kill a Mockingbird and Laurie Halse Andersen’s Speak? Because dumbass, scaremongering adults think that letting teens read about rape or racism or sexual violence or queerness or half a dozen other topics they think are Bad Things will lead to them down a path of Vice.
What happens to characters in stories, no matter how graphic or awful, is not the same as that act occurring to a real human person in real life, nor does reading or writing such works indicate endorsement of those acts. This is why a story which features paedophilia, regardless of whether it’s written as overtly sexual content or as a damning condemnation of the act, is not the same as child pornography by any legal definition: because no actual children are harmed. Are you personally still allowed to be angry and disgusted about the public availability of the former type of stories, even in instances where the writers are themselves victims of child abuse trying to process their trauma? Yes! You’re under no moral obligation to like any kind of content! But are you correct in asserting that the creation of such stories is illegal and hurting somebody in exactly the same way that a real abuser hurting a real child would be? No! Because fictional characters are not real people, and whatever our motives for creating or engaging with a particular thing, monkey see = monkey approve is not how it fucking works.
Have you ever watched an episode of CSI? Congratulations! By your own logic, you’re pro rape and murder. Ever watched an episode of Hannibal? Congratulations! By your own logic, you endorse cannibalism, Stockholm Syndrome and serial killing. Ever watched a historical drama where a young girl gets married to a much older man? Congratulations! By your own logic, you endorse child brides. And on, and on, and on.
I say again: you are allowed to be critical of particular works and/or the recurrence of certain themes across a particular medium. But arguing that an entire literary platform needs to end because some stories there contain Bad Things makes as much sense as banning the works of Octavia Butler or Sherman Alexie from school libraries because of their content. Which is - spoiler alert - a really bad idea.
UGH.
Since this post is from 2018 originally, I was curious. So I searched exactly as the OP did. These are tag searches not warning-based, so keep in mind as most people will probably use those for these topics instead.
Total fics as of Feb 11, 2023, 10,584,367
1. Underage
As of Feb 11, 2023, there are 257,436 fics with the tag “underage.” This means only 2% of fics on AO3 use this tag. That’s a very small amount.
2. Incest
This tag represents only 1% of fics on the site, in any language (114,208 total). An even smaller amount.
3. Pedophilia
Only 0.06%, or less than 1% of all fics on AO3 use this tag. (Only 6,326 fics.)
4. Rape
Only 0.4% of all fics in any language on AO3 use this tag. (48,969 total)
That’s hardly the overwhelming majority that antis like to claim. In fact, some of these numbers have actually gone down since 2018.
Again, it’s possible if you searched by warnings there would be more but like… that’s the point of warnings, so you can avoid them.
Yes. Yes. And yes.
To understand why to use tags in the first place, you need to know it’s the absolute best to search for the fiction you want to read. And even better. It works in both ways at the very first try.
Want to read fluff because you need a comfort fic?
But don’t want to have any sex involved?
The result gets down because those will be filtered.
You still unsure by seeing a mature tagged story? No problem at all. You can filter literally everything.
But ohhh… There are so many languages you can’t read. Maybe just filter for your or at least one you can also understand.
And because there are some options you also would like to have filtered …
If your still insecure, you can filter additional characters, pairings,… Everything.
That’s why on ao3 you’re, as a writer, useing the tag mentions of rape or rape because you want your readers warn. And make it possible for people being triggered by those, filter it out. So just the mention of it won’t be inside the story a reader wants to enjoy.
Antis always say ao3 is toxic or dangerous because of how many stories are about those topics alone. But the truth is that most of those stories are tagged to avoid triggers.
To make filtering possible. That’s what ao3 stands for. And seriously people. Tell me one website that cares for such a filter system. Tell me about one library where you go to the person behind the counter and give her a note with all the things you want, but also those you want to avoid to read. And that person search it out for you.
Ao3 does this for you.
I’ve been reading more Real Books lately and while I’ve loved doing so (if anyone else used to read books a lot as a kid and mostly only watches shows and reads fanfic now, I can’t recommend getting back into published work enough, but that’s a whole other post), I have been repeatedly surprised by content I wasn’t expecting to see, because most books don’t describe their content nearly as explicitly as AO3 does. It’s started to become more common for authors to put content warnings at the beginning of novels, but that is a recent thing and it’s far from the industry standard. I picked up House of Leaves for the mind bending unreality of a haunted house and the experimental and unconventional format, not for the seemingly* random sex scenes that are way more explicit than my sex adverse little self usually prefers encountering. I would have still read the book if I’d known about those scenes, but I vastly prefer having the heads up, like I had with the last binding trilogy, which I went into knowing that it was a romance series with explicit scenes. We SO easily take for granted the amazing tag system of AO3!!! It’s honestly incredible!
*I don’t actually think they’re random I think they tell you a lot about the kind of person Johnny is and where his headspace is at I’m just saying they pop up kinda out of nowhere, which so do the rest of his footnotes they’re very stream of consciousness so it’s not unusual for the book it just still blindsided me ok don’t come AT me house of leaves experts!
Another drawing in dip pen and ink of actor Marc Alaimo (Gul Dukat in
Star Trek Deep Space 9). Was just done as a kind of warm up before inking other stuff. Long Live Mr. Alaimo!
If you like it, order your steak well done. Get your bagel toasted with jam and butter. Put ice in your scotch and ketchup on your hotdog. Get red wine with fish and white with steak. Who cares?
If you want to, listen to pop music. Watch blockbuster popcorn flicks. Read dime store novels. Enjoy them.
Dye your hair or cut it off. Paint your fingernails blue. Wear whatever the fuck you want on your own time (ie, when not at a job or school or whatever where you can get penalized for breaking rules) as long as you aren’t like welding or shoveling snow.
Anyone who tries to tell you you’re wrong? Say “okay” and go back to what you were doing. You’re not hurting them by enjoying yourself or having things the way you like them.
There are no caveats or addendums to this. No “but what about x?” Nah. You’re allowed the things you like. You don’t have to justify your taste or apologize for it if it’s not hurting anyone.
And likewise, let other people live their lives. We’re all dead in the long run, so tend your own garden before you become fertilizer in it.
