Julian Bashir walks a very fine, maddening line between “self-loathing imposter syndrome who knows almost everyone who speaks to him for more than a minute finds him insufferable” and “incredibly self assured and annoyingly arrogant to the point of a minor god complex”.
He knows he’s attractive, he thinks he’s charming as all hell, he knows he’s the smartest person in the room (while also being acutely aware he’s going to put his foot in his mouth any second now), and he just swings wildly between “I don’t deserve anything I have, none of this is mine, my life is not my own, I am a monster” and “HELL YEAH LOOK HOW COOL AND SMART I AM GUYS ARE YOU LOOKING ARE YOU LOOKING”.
And then there’s episodes that reveal that underneath that annoying arrogance, at the very core of who he is, he really, really just wants to help people, and if he fucks that up he WILL take it personally and hold himself responsible even if there’s no way he could have known and like. Can you imagine what his first patient death was like for him. Can you imagine what a fucking nightmare his brain must be 24/7.
He is somehow as inherently self assured as he is in need of constant validation for his ego because you can SEE him break a little when that ego fails him, even a little, and it’s just.
He’s very fun to write. I hate him. (I love him so much, but oh my god.)
[Image of tags from @k-ru-h reading: #and what if I said. This plays into his autism coding.]
It absolutely does and you should say it.
I wrote a short essay a while back (years back) on another fictional character who has similar incongruous traits, in her case, the fact that she came across as both being a wide eyed naive child younger than she was and then at other times seemed like a world-weary old lady who had experienced and accepted things no child should have even a comprehension of.
Julian is kind of (very, very) similar. I’m also autistic and I feel like most characters who get given two wildly contradictory traits that then exist simultaneously in some kind of harmony end up reading as autistic by default, because it’s just… a thing for autistic folk, especially when you start mixing in trauma.
(Are there autistic people without trauma? I have yet to meet any. Being autistic in a world that wasn't built for folks like us is traumatic in and of itself even without adding anything extra on top, but I’ve yet to meet anyone who didn’t get something extra on top.)
I’m sure there’s more eloquent people than I who could write coherently about why autism often manifests and displays symptoms as being akin to two completely distinct individuals crammed together into one semi-functional human being who is left in a state of constant turmoil because their brain is constantly telling them completely contradictory things about themselves, but I am certainly not eloquent enough to manage it myself.
I’d guess it might be related to existing in a world where you are constantly told your default state is incorrect and needs to be changed or fixed, that your natural responses are wrong, that you are constantly both overthinking or underthinking, and you just end up internalizing ideas that make no rational sense because you’ve been taught you can never trust your gut on anything ever, so you end up feeling like a shoddily constructed entity who can never be quite right no matter what you do.
Anyway I think Julian should have someone who wakes him up every morning by telling him how wonderful he is and then ends every day by reminding him that it wasn't his fault.
yup!! i think even siddig himself endorsed the reading of julian as autistic. i also think the most heartbreaking part of julians character is that you can see him mask more (his "julianisms" decrease during the war) as the show goes on. sure, his friends indulge his special interests, but hes constantly mocked by everybody he cares for over his other traits. in some cases like garak it makes sense - garaks love language is insults, and i think julians smart enough to realise that, but you can see he's uncomfortable with it. he wants his weird, over-the-top personality to be accepted. and julian was specifically genetically altered because of "autistic" traits (being nonverbal), and then moved across the galaxy to escape judgement. hes weird. hes overconfident. hes also constantly masking and terrified that if the mask slips just a little too much his whole life will fall apart and he'll be outed as autistic augmented.
Oh God, yeah. During the war, Julian is basically going full into survival mode. He's pulling away from people, he's keeping his mouth shut, he's basically letting himself turn into a hollow shell that just looks like him because everything is so exhausting and he doesn't really... have it in him to be himself anymore.
