#and then meet ezri and fall for her specifically because she WASN'T jadzia??

[tokidokifish]

🤔 i dunno if i agree w this reading, honestly - not necessarily of julian in general, but more specifically his relationship with leeta, bc she's so singular in terms of julian's relationships. you talked about how he was most interested in her when he was trying to seduce her/pursue her, but leeta is like his one on-screen romance where he isn't doing most of the initial legwork - she's quite visibly and immediately into him, approaching him with this incredibly fake cough that she wants him to check out, and i think the "go away" padd was more in response to the fact that he was enjoying hitting it off with this woman.

and julian might not have been upset about the relationship ending, but like... neither was leeta (and of course she would have been the one that would have put forth the fun "weekend fuck fest" breakup option) - which was actually pretty refreshing, since it made it come off like these were two adults, in an adult relationship, that had apparently had some frank and honest conversations and realized it was time to break up. honestly i think, as opposed to having any deep, meaningful implications on what julian was like as a person in a relationship, a more immediate reading - given how we like never see their relationship at all - is they just had a fun, casual thing going on, which ended when leeta wanted to move on to someone she was actually developing feelings for.

ooc, i'm almost positive this is because they never planned to have leeta be a permanent thing for julian - which is fuckin sad, honestly! she had a lot of depth to her character, and it would have been fun to see how they actually interact. maybe their relationship could have lasted if they were actually allowed to be in one. as it is, it was so nothing on both sides that they could have said that her hooking up w him was a one-time thing and i would have believed it just as much as them being in an off-screen relationship for a year.

Julian and Leeta's relationship is weird because they were together for about a year. She is far and away his longest canon girlfriend (aside from offscreen Palis). And… well, it's not that he seems like a "bad" boyfriend; he just never seems much more than generally fond of her. When they break up, he's more or less ambivalent- he's really only upset that she's into ROM of all people.

And I feel like this does a couple of things for me.

I feel like I better understand him and his ex-fiance now. Like I think if Leeta hadn't broken up with him, he would have just stayed with her and been reasonably happy. Maybe even proposed one day, because why not? She's the one to end the relationship, but at no point while they're together do I get the feeling that he's... particularly into her at all.

In fact, the periods he was the most into her is when he was trying to seduce her (see: the PADD with the "go away" on it)

It really clarified for me that I think it's just that he's fundamentally a chaser. He likes the hunt. Not just with women (although that's what we're talking about). He's just a striver; he wants to win awards, he wants to learn and do hard things, he wants to cure impossible diseases. In fact, my whole theory is that Sarina is a literal manifestation of this- she is not only a challenging medical puzzle but also slightly distant from him.

I think Julian really prefers people when he's chasing them. Once he has them, I think they bore him a bit. He doesn't leave them, but he's so generally detached that they eventually leave him (or he fucks off to run away and join the Space Circus).

Even with Ezri- he claims to be "passionately in love with her" (in THE most deadpanned tone I've ever heard. I literally laughed when he said it bc I thought he was kidding), but once they're together, it seems like he's already detached. Their whole conversation at the very end when they're discussing what Holosuit program to use, it was just very... Not engaged.

Idk- it's interesting because I was thinking the other day about whether or not Julian is "good" with women- and offscreen, he seems like he's doing great. We get tons of throw-away lines about him dating and banging tons of women. But he's a disaster on screen because he's generally pursuing women he actually wants to date on screen, and these are women who typically reject him.

Just an interesting character trait, and incidentally (not to make this about Garak), I think that is another reason why their relationship might be the only one Julian could ever find long-term happiness in. No matter how much of Garak he ever has (and it might one day be a lot), it will never be the whole thing. There will always be something to hunt for. Some mystery that has been left unsaid. It would be enough to keep him actually interested.

Anyway! Just a theory- what does The Internet think?