#trillblogging

[mylittleredgirl]

i wonder who names the trill symbionts.

their natural form of communication when unjoined is electrical, not a syllabic language or a sound-based language at all. at first i thought they might be given names by the trill who tend the symbiont pools once they're ready for joining... but wouldn't it be lovely if it were the first host?

i think a lot about how the first joining must be an incredible experience, unique from the others because the symbiont has no humanoid memories, nothing that would be familiar to the first host—and unlike with subsequent hosts, the symbiont also doesn't know how to be joined yet. they're learning the whole thing together, two sentient beings who are not like each other but are now inseparably part of each other.

and what else would the host's first question be except who are you?

and the answer is unmistakable, but also untranslatable. i assume the symbiont has a sense of identity pre-joining, but they've never identified themselves aloud before. they only learn about spoken language after they're joined.

maybe the naming is a rite of passage for the first host, proof that the joining is complete—that the host understands the true essence of the symbiont enough to give them a name, that the symbiont understands what that means enough to agree, and all together it's a gift that will stay with the symbiont for centuries.

[mylittleredgirl]

and the tng/ds9 symbionts looking different could be explained similarly too!! they're all from an isolated continent that drifted apart from the mainland eons ago and everybody evolved a little bit differently, but still in symbiosis because that's something that started sooooo early in the evolutionary development on trill that it's replicated all over the planet (and, probably, all over their animal kingdom with other symbiotically paired creatures!).

i also like imagining that the reason sisko knows so much about the trill during supposedly secretive times it that curzon famously gives no fucks and went "well, that sure seems like a stupid and outdated rule" and just told everyone he met.

Forever thinking about how Terry Farrell literally offered a canon explanation for why the DS9 Trills look so different to the TNG ones, and the writers just... didn't take it? (Basically it was that they were two different races; the spotty Trills are from a northern continent and the bumpy forehead Trills are from a southern continent. That's so fascinating!)

It also raises SO many questions about the other inconsistencies between the two shows, such as why the spotty Trills seem common-knowledge throughout the galaxy (for decades, if Ben and Curzon's friendship is any indication, plus Dax's nostalgia for the Kirk era), yet the TNG crew acts like they've never seen anybody like Odan before. I mean the Trill were supposedly in Starfleet for centuries!

So I have this headcanon that the bumpy forehead Trills are actually a minority? And they're barely adequately represented on the Trill home planet, let alone outside. Maybe they're less capable of hosting symbionts. (Maybe they're just as capable, but it's a widely spread myth that they aren't, so that they'd get fewer symbionts! The Trill Symbiosis Commission has been known to lie to the population lol.) I also like to think at least one of Dax's previous hosts was a bumpy forehead Trill, just because it makes things interesting

[mylittleredgirl]

unpopular opinion but i really enjoy "field of fire," the ezri dax "to catch a serial killer" episode. for all the scenery chewing and deep space nine's continued vulcan smear campaign, i'm not going to pretend it's objectively the best of the ezri a-plot episodes, but it's my favorite for what it reveals about her.

jadzia was emotional, headstrong, and sometimes impulsive (as was curzon), but ezri is reckless.

of course she is! she's young! she's unqualified for everything that has happened to her, and honestly, so are all her peers. she ran away from a fucked-up home to starfleet at a time when, as we saw with nog, they're field-promoting cadets at top speed to fill the ranks as starfleet suffers massive war casualties. she's more or less the same generation as the red squad cadets on the valiant who decided to fight the dominion war by themselves behind enemy lines.

and she wouldn't be ezri dax otherwise. the reveal in "equilibrium" is a secret known only the symbiosis commission and the starfleet offiers who were physically in the room. to the medical staff on the destiny and ezri tigan herself, the odds of rejection from an improper trill joining are overwhelmingly likely and fatal. but ezri still volunteers to join with dax! she's probably going to die in this uniform anyway, right?

jadzia was a focused, rule-following, straight-a student before she met the party worm, and it took dax a season or two to loosen her up, but ezri was probably already unhinged.

so of course she's the one who decides to take her inner murderer off the leash at the slightest provocation. sisko asks her to help odo out, and ezri somehow interprets this as feeling like she's solely responsible for finding the killer when she only took one class at the academy in forensic psychology and didn't even like it. odo and o'brien are continuing their own investigation off-screen the whole time! meanwhile, she probably had to look up the trill emergence ritual in a book. she has not read the fine print on ANY of this.

and she sticks with this crazy plan, even when it becomes clear that she's right on the edge of becoming a danger to society. but ezri's whole starfleet career, maybe her whole young life of ignoring and plotting her escape from her emotionally abusive family, certainly her whole joined experience, has been lived right on the edge.

all the scenes she has with joran in and around quark's bar to me are her technique for staying grounded in reality. they often happen after joran pushes her too far, so she uses being public as a distraction from that one-on-one intensity—even though it means she looks insane and everyone's staring at her. even joran is like ".... shouldn't you have told sisko about me?" she is full in dax stubbornness on this deeply dubious plan.

and it works!! and in the final account, i think she liked it a little: the power of playing a killer, the power of being stronger than joran, and the soft ending she has with him during reintegration.

her symbiont, her whole life on the station, her friends, her romantic interests, they were all jadzia's first, but jadzia was afraid of joran and would never have played this game. in this one way, ezri has a closer relationship to her unearned symbiont than jadzia did.

ezri's beta canon trajectory of switching to a command track is okay, but it makes me sad to think she'd ditch her chosen career entirely. i could see her getting into criminal psychology. her brother's a murderer (she hasn't unpacked that AT ALL), one of her past hosts was a murderer... with that backstory, she'd do numbers in a federation law & order procedural series. i'd watch it.

but honestly, in the federation spirit of rehabilitation, she might be uniquely qualified to treat violent criminals as well, rather than hunting them down. she could reach in and heal that part of herself and then use that experience to reach others.

[mylittleredgirl]

glad this little bit is memory alpha editor speculation and not canon. i might be willing to grant war era starfleet a bit of a pass on this, because i can imagine the symbiosis commission requesting as much when they asked for emergency medical transport for the dax symbiont back to trill—and if they said that every trill is down to be joined, why would some random starfleet fleet coordinator disagree? what do they know about trill culture? but also. fucked up if true.

[mylittleredgirl]

The Star Trek Holidays exchange has been revealed! I got to revisit my teenage otp <3

Title: All Together Here

Author: mylittleredgirl Fandom: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Pairing: Julian Bashir/Ezri Dax Rating: M Word Count: 4337 Tags: trill species, consensual somnophilia, they're having a sweet new relationship with only the usual problems, like ezri hoping julian will have sex with her past hosts in bed

Summary: Ezri talks in her sleep—or, at least, her past hosts do.

[mylittleredgirl]

i'm thinking about ezri, and about trills, and specifically about how ezri gets the dax symbiont.

what we know is that she never wanted to be joined. she's not prepared. she's the only trill on the destiny, and en route to trill, the dax symbiont takes a turn for the worse and she becomes a host.

the thing is -- we know that while rejection is a real danger, there's still a better than 50% chance that any given trill is capable of safely being joined. but outside of us (the audience), the only people who know that are the symbiosis commission and the three people in the room in "equilibrium" where this news comes out: sisko, bashir, and dax. everybody else, including ezri and the destiny's medical staff, believes that only one trill in a thousand can be safely joined, and that an improper joining will result in the death of both the symbiont and the host.

starfleet officers routinely take on all kinds of dangers to save lives, even to save a single life, but those are absurdly bad odds. there is no way a starfleet doctor, or a starfleet captain, would order, coerce, or probably even ask a starfleet officer to take on that kind of risk, even if it's the only chance to save another being's life.

which means it was ezri's idea. which means ezri must have insisted, over the warnings and objections of the ship's chief medical officer, that she was willing to take the risk. which means that despite personally having no interest in being joined, ezri looked at a dying symbiont and felt it was her responsibility to try and protect its life at all costs, knowing she would most likely fail and die in the process.

which says something about the trill! no one in ezri's family is joined. for all we know, she didn't even grow up on trill, since her family now lives off-world. but joining must be such a significant factor in trill mythology, trill culture, trill life that she couldn't turn away from that, even in the face of all publicly available information and the fact that she doesn't actually want to be joined.

maybe there were other factors at play that mitigated some of the risk, like universal testing for young trill children that at least point to whether someone might be able to be a host, or the possibility they would make it to trill in time for the symbiont to be removed. but it seems like regardless, ensign ezri tigan made the choice to get on that operating table, knowing that more likely than not, she would die.

in one way, she does. in another, she gets the chance to live forever. in either case, joining isn't just something that happened to her. for all the challenges she faces in that first year, all the regrets and struggles and loss of herself, it was her very brave choice to do it. we know from jadzia that the most sacred obligation of a trill host is to ensure the survival of the symbiont, and ezri did that instinctively, without taking any oaths, without any training at all.

[mylittleredgirl]

Your post is very good, I had a similar realization when I was writing DS9 fic last year. I stared at the document like, whoops this fic was supposed to be about fuck the government but it’s accidentally about recovering from trauma even when you can’t escape it. This, from a fic where I named a Trill OC Jorts.

JORTS.

i would like to have a more substantive comment here but i can’t get past that. symbiont or host?

[mylittleredgirl]

and for that matter are symbiont names even unique?? how confusing is it to figure out if you know someone or not?

[mylittleredgirl]

and it’s unexpected on both sides of the experience. i imagine that usually, the death of the host is predictable. even if the actually time/cause of death is a surprise, as a host ages or becomes ill, they would come to terms with it, especially if they have experienced it before. there might even be rituals where the host and the symbiont can celebrate and grieve the life they have just led and anticipate the next one. curzon dax had veto power over his next host and (at least in the pilot) was still alive and conscious at the beginning of what seemed like a peaceful transfer process. the previous host being ready would help the symbiont be ready as well.

you gotta wonder if the jadzia -> ezri transition was just as jarring for the symbiont as it was for ezri. even though it’s been through that so many times it’s always been with a host who has been prepared and knows exactly what to expect, who is doing it because they want to instead of out of obligation. i imagine that must’ve made the experience that much more jarring for both of them

[mylittleredgirl]

[mylittleredgirl]

i really did love the “knowing curzon he probably would have appreciated the irony” of his next host being one he personally rejected so yeah this twist was a such a bummer!!

connecting this to the other post about trill memories, i have always wondered how jadzia could have not known about this. is it because she avoided remembering this generally traumatic (for jadzia) experience? do past hosts have some conscious ability to prevent memories from being shared? my personal fanwank on this one is that the trill mind can’t conceptualize the same event from multiple perspectives and the host’s memory is strongest, but don’t ask me how that would neurologically work.

i loved nearly every second of the episode in which jadzia gets to meet each of her selves/former-dax-hosts in the bodies of her friends for so so many reasons, especially the first one with kira/lela and how absolutely sweet that was, but i genuinely felt so queasy when curzon revealed the reason he recommended jadzia not be joined was because he was in love with her.

a) it felt like it came out of nowhere for me and, from a storytelling perspective, could've been built up a bit or stretched over a few episodes

b) i hate men.

c) it is just a far more interesting story to have jadzia literally be rejected because someone found her wanting. she cannot be adored by everyone she meets. she's a person not just a beautiful woman played by beautiful terry farrell (who did such a good job with this plot twist, playing it as mostly unbothered by the feelings and entirely chivalric while still sturdy in her claim on curzon's memories). i really wanted the reason to simply be that curzon did not think much of jadzia and i wanted her to claim him anyway. they sort of did that with joran but joran was almost cartoonishly cruel to her and curzon was definitely not a cartoon. like, curzon having fallen in love with jadzia is so boring when compared to the tension earlier, before his feelings were revealed. imagine if she had claimed him still, thru even a reasonable disappointment or disdain from him. imagine if it wasn't the motherly/unconditional acceptance from when she confronted joran the first time (which i did adore, for the record), but was a bloody-knuckled and even mean fight, in which they expressed disdain for the other, and her subsumption of curzon once more was a tight-fisted tear and swallow, almost selfish as she plants her flag in curzon once more.

idk. we've seen jadzia physically fight in her serene way. maybe here it would've been worth it to see her dig her nails in and show off a little arrogance--as if to claim curzon's person for herself even when he momentarily does not reside there.

[mylittleredgirl]

i love this!!! if i can add my (much simpler) memory theory — i think that the symbiont doesn’t get a download of a host’s whole previous life, but while they’re joined, any time a host remembers something from their own childhood (e.g. jadzia “i was a champion window-breaker” or lela remembering her initiate mentor) that memory is now shared. the act of remembering it created a new neural link to that memory while host & symbiont minds are joined. we remember most important things in our lives over and over, so the longer a symbiont and host are joined, the more of that host’s early life is likely to be preserved.

wait wait do trill symbiotes carry forward the pre-joined memories of their past hosts? like does ezri remember jadzia's childhood. does it feel like it happened to her, or does it feel like a dream - or is it mostly or completely gone?

[mylittleredgirl]

honestly that’s the best possible argument for the reassociation taboo right there. i think it was always meant to be broader than just a spouse -- a newly joined trill would also do their best to avoid their predecessors’ children and siblings and maybe even their dear friends. based on our one lone example, it seems like the symbiosis commission also does their best to choose hosts in different professions. 

and trills at least would Get It in a way that non-trills can’t, but they’d still get caught in the emotional trap of looking for evidence of their mother or brother or bff in this new host. and for the new host with all these powerful emotional memories, and a grieving family, the temptation would be so strong to reconnect -- especially in a torias or jadzia dax-like case where the host dies unexpectedly and can’t resolve their existing relationships. avoiding reassociation can’t just be, like, a joined trill best practice -- it has to be an unthinkable cultural taboo for it to work. that’s the only way to protect the host from pressure from unjoined friends & relatives who don’t go through years of training.

then you get something like starfleet -- where dax is ordered to report for duty with one of her past-life BFFs (not once, but twice!). and of course, dax could probably request not to -- ezri even does, for a minute -- but it’s unclear how much power starfleet officers have to reject assignments. sisko in the pilot essentially says he’ll become a civilian to avoid the posting at ds9, and starfleet isn’t big into respecting the cultural traditions of its officers (or ro laren wouldn’t have had to get special dispensation to wear the earring). 

so both times dax reassociates it’s kind of a perfect storm situation, because their host died young and unexpectedly, and dax is the party worm who’s been living among non-trill for a long time. in jadzia and lenara’s case, you have two hosts who would be interested in each other anyway, on top of their past history. in worf and ezri’s case, you have a non-trill who doesn’t Get It, and an untrained host who is in the exact situation the symbiosis commission would most hope to avoid: living and working with the same people as her previous host. 

The way that the men on ds9 completely disregard Ezri’s identity and personality because she has Jadzia’s memories and project all their relationships with Jadzia onto her really makes my blood boil

[mylittleredgirl]

I feel like this ties in well with how Jadzia doesn’t remember Curzon’s side of the interactions she had with him when she was an unjoined initiate, until he’s separated out as an individual in the zhian’tara and tells her his side of the story.

I wonder if part of the reason that Gray has a ghost like pressence is that it's really hard for the symbiont-trill system to process two sets of memories that are so entangled. Like Gray and Adira were orphans on a ship together, right? So they were probably together more often than they weren't having two overlapping sets of memories from two different perspectives must be disorienting as hell, not to mention the whole being in love with each other aspect, so instead of Adira having a sense of self that flows through Gray and to the previous hosts, Gray's memories and sense of self branched off and became a distinct pressence.

[mylittleredgirl]

In Season 3 I think they’d be Kira and Dax unless it’s an intensely personal moment where they’re trying to make an intensely personal point -- if that makes sense. It has less to do with how close they are or aren’t as friends, and everything to do with the cultural norms of both Bajor and Trill. I’ve always thought they start using personal names more freely in later seasons because they’ve now spent so much time around humans.

Personal names on Bajor seem to be used very sparingly. There seem to be a lot of cultural nuances to it even in intimate relationships, and it may have to do with status, because Kira never calls Bareil or Shakaar by their personal names, even in intimate situations, but Bareil at least calls her Nerys. And once we get to mirror universe shenanigans, Kira calls that Bareil (who definitely has no status) “Antos.” (And while Cardassians never seem to use personal names with each other unless it���s a child or a family member, Dukat uses the personal names of Bajoran women A Lot, and that makes me think even more that there’s a status element because That Fucker Totally Would, you know?)

And Trill seem to always use the symbiont name for joined Trill except in when they’re differentiating between the host and symbiont -- even Lenara only calls Jadzia “Dax.”

All that said, I have no good explanation for why Jadzia calls her “Lenara,” or how Odo uses “Nerys” a lot, so as usual this doesn’t really mean anything and we should do as the show writers do and just write whatever fits The Moment best ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Kira help!

DS9 friends, help. Would mid Season 3 Kira and Dax ever call each other Jadzia and Nerys? And would Kira ever refer to Bashir as Julian in a non-professional setting? 

I’ve had a look at http://www.chakoteya.net/ but Kira and Dax address each other surprisingly little, and my gut is not telling me anything.