one of my favorite tropes of all time is when the author tries to replace curse words with a more ‘family friendly’ alternative or invent new words for worldbuilding purposes but they use existing words that make the whole thing unintentionally hilarious out of context
From the Deep Space Nine episode Trials and Tribble-ations; the crew goes back in time to the 23rd century and are surprised by how different the Klingons look.
[I actually love Ezri Dax and found her to be interesting/relatable. But the one thing that bugged me? The lack of emphasis on how gross Bashir and Quark drooling over Ezri was – to the point of making Bashir her endgame love interest. For both Quark and Bashir, their early drooling over *Jadzia* – however limited – had felt smarmy to me (each in his own way), and the way they seemed to see Ezri as a second chance with Cute Dax #2 felt that much creepier. Bashir/Ezri actually hooking up? Yuck! ]
Seriously. Wasn’t there an entire early episode about how immature and self-serving Julian’s crush on Jadzia was, and how they’re so much better as friends? It also seemed like a loophole in the “no dating prior hosts’ partners“ rule, which they did another entire episode about (the first time they did a same-sex relationship in DS9, possibly Trek itself, and it put two women in a forbidden and tragic romance that was an echo of prior feelings from a male-female marriage. I get limitations of the times and all, but I still hated it). I mean the rule seems to be based on either the new host’s consent being suspect or the symbiont moving on to new experiences rather than be stuck in the past, and hooking up with the (retconned) “second choice” seems bad either way. Ezri and Whorf’s attraction to each other was at least revealed to be unhealthy, but somehow Ezri and Julian are perfectly okay and healthy? Right.
It would have been so much better, SO much, if Jadzia would never have considered Julian as a romantic or sexual prospect–which I truly believe was true until the Season 7 retcon–and Julian and Ezri had been a true friends-to-lovers deal based on Ezri’s attraction, not some lingering regret from Jadzia for what might have been. Now that would be the Dax symbiont actually exploring new ground and Ezri becoming her own person outside of Jadzia’s shadow. That would have been actual character growth after the whole mess with Whorf. Instead we are told Ezri and Julian were basically Ezri and Whorf 2.0 which uh… is not a good thing.
If anything Ezri’s “romantic” plotlines seem perfectly designed to mess her up long-term, and I felt so sorry for her because she chose to save the Dax symbiont out of compassion despite having no training or preparation for joining and she paid the price in so many ways.
L.J.'s Obsessions 