Rose Espinosa (Australian,b.1995)

Deadly decoration II, 2024

Oil on board

Proserpine, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

REST IN PEACE BERNARD HILL (1944–2024)

A Flower Shaped Rock on Mars

Credits: NASA, JPL-Caltech, MSSS

Frank Weston Benson

okay apparently even after thinking about it all day I'm still maudlin about this topic, so I suppose I will have to deal with it one way or another.

I don't have an episode A plot for Jadzia going back to Trill, like for Ezri in "Prodigal Daughter", at best it's a B plot. My most bespoke scenario is that it happens during the Dominion occupation of DS9, in between runs as the Defiant's CO Jadzia gets assigned to help upgrade the Trill orbital defense system and once she's there she really has no excuse not to transport to the planet and see her family (also because she's at the front lines of a bloody war, and who knows if she's even going to see them again).

I always imagined Jadzia's family living on the seaside* and someone in the family working on boats (do fishermen still exist in a post-scarcity society where you can replicate all the food?), and that's how Jadzia learned to sail. I envision Jadzia as being the odd one out by being so driven even as a kid, and by wanting to join to a symbiont by way of enlisting in Starfleet, of all things; not a lot of joined people, much less astronauts, in her family. She's for sure the odd one out now that she's actually joined and never really visits from her faraway Starfleet post.

(*I have a specific image for this coast in mind and it looks a lot like Normandy, with all the cliffs and sandy river estuaries and dramatic tides, but I recognize that it might look boring to anyone else)

So when Jadzia's home this time, while everyone is happy to see her and vice-versa what actually happens is mostly awkward conversation and when Jadzia announces she will probably marry Worf once they manage to retake Deep Space 9 both her parents and her sister are very surprised and even if they eventually congratulate her Jadzia feels like she's being humored and gets very quiet, deciding that coming back was a mistake.

Now here who gets Jadzia to talk again one-on-one (bonus points if it includes sailing out on an afternoon) depends on how you see her relations to the individual members of her family; it could be either her sister or her mother. I've met people with very close relationships with their siblings and people who really don't speak to their siblings more than twice a year, and I think with Jadzia it could go either way (the only thing we know for sure is that Jadzia and her sister have different taste in glassware). Regardless, it would be nice if there was an acknowledgment of how Jadzia has drifted away for various reasons both from her family and the place she's from, but it doesn't mean that their affection and approval means nothing to Jadzia. As well as the fact that maybe she has let her mixed feelings for Trill and the joining process and the emergent personality of Jadzia Dax get in the way of keeping her family up to date with her life.

OR, as an ending less concerned with my own personal idea of emotional fulfillment, it could be Jadzia sailing out alone for an afternoon, saying a final goodbye to a planet she hasn't thought as home in many many years, and that she'll never see again one way or the other.

I’ve seen quite a few people say that Biden not sending the military aid to Israel shows weakness and encourages Hamas and Hezbollah and I don’t necessarily disagree with the latter (but it’s a weak non-disagreement at best) but I also think that the way that the campaign in Gaza has been conducted has done way more than to show weakness and inadequacy and encourage those hostile powers.

It’s been clear for a while that Netanyahu and his government have had no plan or thought for how this is being conducted beyond trying to show force and maintain their hold on power in spite of their massive failures. That there’s absolutely no plan for “what happens after” and that the current “goals” are not only not being properly achieved but are disproportionately causing great harm to the civilian population, and the ostensible initiating factor (the attack and hostages) isn’t being given the focus it deserves. They aren’t even pretending that they’re listening to Israeli civilians for the most part.

Why the fuck should the US continue to encourage that?

Alexander Rothaug (1870-1946), 'Die Wunderblume' (The Wonder Flower), ''Die Kunst Unserer Zeit", Vol. 18, 1907 Source

I went with "Wonder Flower" rather than "Miracle Flower" in the above translation because the former feels more poetic than the latter.

Gabriele Grones - Moray Eel (oil on canvas), 2016

Gabriele Grones (Italian, 1983)

ITS GREAT LAKES AWARENESS DAY!!!!!

On this excellent day, be aware that this is the largest group of freshwater lakes in the world, covering over 95,000 square miles and reaching depths of over a thousand feet. They are beautiful freshwater seas.

Also when you die in these lakes, the very cold, oxygen-poor conditions at the bottom preserves you perfectly for all eternity. You will not rot and nothing will eat you. You will exist for as long as the Great Lakes do. Many shipwrecks still have the crew on board. Be Aware.

the midwestern seas of my heart ♥️♥️ !!!!

I am once again thinking about digging holes

It's so fucked up that digging a bunch of holes works so well at reversing desertification

I hate that so much discourse into fighting climate change is talking about bioenginerring a special kind of seaweed that removes microplastics or whatever other venture-capital-viable startup idea when we have known for forever about shit like digging crescent shaped holes to catch rainwater and turning barren land hospitable

Isaac Abrams (American, b. 1939)

Autumnal Fire, 1979

Lithograph

we can definitely extrapolate from jadzia's character about her family and life and so on but i'm always gonna be slightly upset that ds9 never names jadzia's sister. like who is she. what are her interests. is she elinor or marianne. i'm guessing she was probably marianne and jadzia was elinor and then jadzia was joined and now the dynamic is probably changed and i want to know about it.

if ever i was prevailed upon (or granted a wish from the powers that be) to write a dax star trek novel i'd be starting the things off with jadzia's original rejection from joining and she goes back home and her sister tries to comfort her but oh what's that! a mysterious threat to her sister's spouse and kids on their way back from visiting a moon or something and jadzia has to save them using her starfleet wits and skills and along the way we learn her sister's name, that she's an accomplished dancer of some sort and travels all over, that she loves jadzia but thinks she should get out more, and that she trusts almost nobody as much as jadzia to keep her and her family safe--and when jadzia and her save the day exhibiting all the ways in which jadzia in particular is a good choice for the burden/privilege of joining, she drops jadzia off at the symbiosis headquarters, ruffled and tired and covered in the goo of space creatures from their little adventure, to plead her case. and she gets to say to curzon "open your mind, man" while jadzia tries to pull her away. and then epilogue: jadzia dax awakens and accepts a commission to ds9.

René Magritte (Belgian, 1898-1967), La voix du sang [The Voice of Blood], 1947. Gouache on paper laid down on card, 23 x 18 cm.

I sometimes feel that an episode structured like "Prodigal Daughter" is sort of missing from Jadzia's backstory but I do also understand, and I've argued this before, that her motivations can be totally extrapolated anyway and we didn't necessarily need to actually meet her family to understand who Jadzia is. Jadzia isn't given a lot of time to express her thoughts on her family just as she isn't given any opportunity to express thought on her homeworld, and on one hand that's definitely a shame (especially on a show that's so concerned with complicated tangles of families and culture and politics for pretty much every other character) but on the other... that silence is so telling.