Not quite a shipping post.

[cosmictuesdays]

It’s not that I particularly like Ezri/Bashir. I might have been able to, under the right circumstances, but with the rapid pace of the show’s seventh season there wasn’t much room for them to develop a romantic relationship in any way that didn’t seem forced.

That said, I can easily see how it would have developed.

Because last night I realized: these are two people who went to sleep on an operating table and both woke up very different. From procedures they didn’t consent to or fully realize the implications of when they lay down. Who woke up with the insides of their heads far bigger than before. Ezri Tegan was gone, and so was Jules Bashir, and both of them were expected to make the change swiftly and permanently without any time to adjust while still being remembered and mourned only by Dax and Julian.

Maybe if the seventh season ended with kissing instead of sleeping together, I’d be more enthusiastic. As it is, I can see at least one path it might have been coming from.

[flatandsassy]

This is a really interesting observation; I’d never made that connection. But my knee-jerk reaction is “oh god I hope Julian also never made that connection” because he would fuck that up. It would be Chrysalis all over again, with him thinking they just understand each other so well
and projecting his own experiences onto her and most of all just seeing it as a way to “help” her cope with becoming a host. He would try to fix her, because bless him, I love him to death, but he tries to fix his love interests and it’s awful.

The only way I could start to get behind that ship is (in addition to it not being rushed to the point of incomprehensibility) if Ezri made it clear to him in no uncertain terms that she does not need to be saved by him - and not because she doesn’t have problems or flaws, but because it’s not his job and it’s condescending as fuck. And maybe also if there was a way to make him understand that that relateable experience they both have can be something they can support each other in dealing with it, in a very mutual and egalitarian way.