#Field of Fire

[thewatcher0nthewall]

Conqueror

[fatalism-and-villainy]

Got to Field of Fire in this rewatch and I am rotating Ezri and Joran around in my head like they’re in a washing machine. And having a LOT of thoughts about how Ezri relates to the other hosts.

So much of what we see in Jadzia and how she carries herself as Dax is serenity. Things like the way she remarks on the novelty of being female again, and her comfort at discussing her past hosts, indicate a sense of curiosity and acceptance between symbiont and host. It’s mentioned in Playing God that a strong sense of identity and force of will are necessary to be joined, as there’s a danger of the symbiont overwhelming the host’s personality, but being open to influence and new experience is also obviously necessary, and what you’d expect from someone who wanted and trained to be joined. There are cracks in that, as I’ve discussed before, mostly involving Curzon and Joran (arguably the events of Rejoined constitute a disruption in that balance as well), but for the most part Jadzia Dax is a fairly harmonious melding of beings.

Ezri is different in that she didn’t want to be joined and wasn’t at all prepared for the cacophony of personalities that were crammed inside her. And one of the most fascinating things about her to me, especially early on, is that she seems to have a tendency towards very rigorous self-analysis and a strong need to differentiate herself from the symbiont and its former hosts (and in fact that very force of will is likely why she was able to survive being joined at all!), but she’s frequently swept away by emotions and impulses that she can’t anticipate or control.

When Jadzia was confronted with anomalies in her sense of self, she generally tried to reconcile them through the kind of open acceptance that guided her joining process. With Curzon in Facets, she’s able to reintegrate him into her by having that moment of tender understanding with him; similarly, the way she deals with Joran making himself known is to embrace him (and then, according to him, bury him deep down and subsume him so thoroughly into herself that she doesn’t have to think about him).

Ezri’s way of coping with having all these memories and voices in her head, on the other hand, is to separate them out from herself as much as she can. She comes to know herself by attributing different traits and tastes and memories to different people. Her impulse is to source her new emotionality to Emony, comment on Audrid’s experiences with hiking, reflect on Tobin’s parenting experiences when talking to Garak, etc. It feels like a very systematized approach to self-discovery - a psychologist’s response, to take all these personalities and emotions and impressions and tag and sort them. But she can’t always separate herself from them, especially in emotionally fraught moments - she shifts to the first person with Worf, when she says “I was your wife!”, and does the same thing with her family when she says “my son” instead of “Audrid’s son.”

And Joran is the source of the new impulses that disturb her the most, and much of Field of Fire is her struggling to separate those impulses out from herself while knowing that they are ultimately a part of her. When she talks to Bashir, he keeps trying to reassure her that she’s nothing like Joran, and she keeps reiterating that she knows firsthand what killing feels like, owning those feelings as hers. (In fact, Bashir is the one who has to make the connection to Joran, as she brings up her violent impulses without reference to him at all.) But when she actually calls on Joran, performs a ritual that does mentally split him off from her, she’s the one reiterating Bashir’s point and insisting she’s nothing like Joran. And meanwhile he keeps reminding her that he is part of her, that she’s really only talking to herself, and that putting him back won’t make him go away, as there’s nowhere for him to go but within her.

And she is able to resist his influence, and peacefully reintegrate him into herself, but her interactions with him are a showcasing of the push and pull in how she tries to reconcile her identity post-joining, and her difficulty in delineating the borders between herself and not-herself. (There’s sometimes discussion of what Ezri’s zhian’tara would be like, and it’s something I find interesting to consider given how ritualistic the zhian’tara is, versus how impulsive and situation-based Ezri’s approach to getting to know the hosts as separate beings is.)

[dominaitheking]

Left: Field of Fire (The Targaryens and their dragons flambèing the Gardner and Lannister forces.)

Right: King Torrhen Stark bending the knee to Aegon Targaryen.

[spiritofdragonfire]

Battle Under the Blood Moon~🩸🌕🔥🐲

Huge thank you to phenomenal IG artist @singink.std for yet another breathtakingly awesome commission! Here, my fearsome HOTD dragon, Thunderbolt🌩, is shown raining fire down upon enemy forces alongside the fierce she-dragon, Mistrya🖤❤️ (belonging to @vittoria_ciaraldi)

This artwork was inspired by the pivotal "Field of Fire" battle from Aegon's Conquest~🔥🏰

I am beyond in love with this new dual-dragon commission! I especially love the two different colors of dragonfire depicted together~

Thank you to @vittoria_ciaraldi for giving me permission to feature your lovely dragon with mine, and thank you again to @singink.std for bringing these two firebreathing beauties to life in this epic new masterpiece! 🤩🥰👏🏻

[lady-lazarus-13]

Ezri getting haunted by Joran and it's just a oopsie is pretty wild to me. Like no additional follow up.

Julian feeling bad that this kid, Hector, is probably dead because he didn't let him come play pretend with him and Miles is pretty sad too.

Odo and Sisko trying to solve a murder. We so deserved them in a fun Sherlock Holmes mystery episode.

[stopthatbluecat]

Mutual Pining: Kira x Ezri

[walkingstackofbooks]

I just have so many feelings about this bit from Field of Fire... how long do you think Julian sat there for? (totally blaming himself, right?) A few minutes? An hour? Until his shift began? Until he fell asleep?

[retrocgads]

UK 1987

[usstrekart]

"Field of Fire" (S07E13, Stardate UNKNOWN) is a decent outing for Ezri, and bringing Joran back out to breathe is a sinister edge we have not had in a little while. The story has its logistical issues at times with what Joran can and can't do, but overall is an engaging whodunit.

Look through the sight with Ezri in my episode poster...

[fangtalksdragons]

Field of Fire. FanAnimation

Check out this phenomenal fanmade animation by Unity 5 Games, remaking the famous battle of Aegons Concquest. The Field Of Fire!

[sshbpodcast]

Character Spotlight: Dax (all of ‘em!)

By Ames

We give Deep Space Nine a lot of credit for fleshing out Trill culture after the confusion that was TNG’s “The Host.” Trill characters become so much more interesting when the joining gets retconned to be more of a personality melding than an overwrite, and we’ve got Dax to thank for that. All the Daxes! Sure, we’ve also been frustrated that every Dax-centered episode seems to rewrite how being a Trill works, but we’ll get into that in a second.

Your hosts at A Star to Steer Her By decided to clump all the Daxes together for this spotlight, so we’ve got your gorgeous Jadzia, your cute-as-a-button Ezri, and even some mentions for Curzon and other bonus Daxes to round out our Best and Worst Moments lists! Check them out below, listen to our discussion in this week’s podcast episode (jump over to 1:09:24), and find out if the spots do go all the way down.

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best moments

A different kind of worm pouch, er, hole! Deep down, Jadzia is just a science nerd who wants to science, so it’s only fitting that she’s the one who does all the heavy lifting when it comes to discovering the wormhole in “Emissary” (not to be confused with “The Emissary” from TNG). Her study of the orbs leads her down the rabbit… er, worm hole until she and Ben go investigate and accidentally start this whole series!

We were just… wrestling One thing the show makes clear about Jadzia early on: she fucks. This girl is unapologetic about how she seeks consensual sex, and good for her. In “Playing God,” she has clearly just struck the mat with her wrestling coach in a scene meant to raise eyebrows, but she’s so forthright about it that viewers go right past feeling titillated and straight to accepting that she knows what she wants.

You are the only one who can give yourself another chance The rest of “Playing God” is spent appraising her Trill initiate, Arjin. And while she’s more polite and forgiving than Curzon would ever be, she’s also upfront with the little dweeb. She tells him that if he’s only looking to become a joined Trill for other people’s sake and not his own, then he’s bound to fail both himself and a symbiont. He should do what he wants to do.

A Klingon blood oath can never be broken It’s in “Blood Oath” halfway through season two that Jadzia truly emerges as a powerhouse character. Not only does she fight like a true warrior, but she stands up for herself when her old Klingon friends are wary of honoring the blood oath they made with Curzon. It’s the first time Jadzia does something for her after a couple seasons of us questioning her character’s agency, and she slays!

I don’t want to lose you, not again The next really epic, character-defining moment for Jadzia comes in “Rejoined” when again she is fighting for something she desires, even if it will mean the end of the Dax symbiont’s legacy. But screw it, Jadzia lives for love, and her relationship with her old partner Lenara Khan is so deeply felt that we really root for them, and feel all the more crushed at the end.

The only adult in the room Jadzia’s character is so frequently marked by the experience of several lifetimes that she just has this maturity and wisdom about her sometimes. Especially when everyone around her is acting like children, like in “The Sword of Kahless” when Worf and Kor were being selfish brats about finding the legendary bat’leth and Jadzia has to shut them both up. With a phaser.

Kahless hearts Lukara Jadzia’s sort of a hopeless romantic sometimes, so it’s only fitting that she try to earnestly help her friend Quark woo his lady love, the glorious Grilka in “Looking for Par’mach in All the Wrong Places.” When it’s not enough to teach Quark some Klingon languages and how to fight with a bat’leth, she even brilliantly concocts an optronic relay to allow Worf to fight for him remotely.

If this story had an unhappy ending, I would have never forgiven you Sure, it’s mostly a Jake Sisko episode and Jadzia has pretty much just one actual scene in it, but there’s just something about her talk with Benjamin in “...Nor the Battle to the Strong” that’s so sweet. Sisko is stressing out about Jake being in a warzone, and Jadzia tells him one of her past host’s parenting stories to put him a little more at ease, like a good parent would.

Retreat, acquire, confront, evade As we saw in “Looking for Par’mach in All the Wrong Places,” Jadzia’s friendship with Quark has always been well depicted. In a show in which we’ve complained (multiple times) about racism against Ferengis, Jadzia is the only one to give Quark the time of day, and also the one closest to him to tell him to stop weapons dealing in “Business as Usual” because she cares.

Oh baby, I hear the blues a’calling Sadly for us, we lose Jadzia after season six, but happily, there are a couple good moments for the next Dax, Ezri! The first counseling gig she picks up is a bit of a doozy, as she tries to help Garak work through his claustrophobia and his feelings of identity crisis in “Afterimage.” And like all mental health battles, it’s an ongoing one, but she at least gets things started.

The killer in Dax We don’t get enough of the character to see the consequences of summoning that psycho Joran in “Field of Fire” but we can tell it’s noteworthy. Ezri is the only Dax who gets tested by that murderer who briefly had the Dax symbiont, and watching her stand up to him, refuse to give in to the lure of wanton homicide, and solve a case is impressive indeed. If only the episode weren’t otherwise drek.

The Klingon Empire is dying. And I think it deserves to die. Insert any Dax here and they probably have a better understanding of Klingon culture than Worf, but it’s Ezri who really schools him. In “Tacking into the Wind,” she throws in his ridged face just how crappy Klingon politics are and how Gowron is sending the whole empire down the shitter, giving Worf the peptalk he needs to go murder the hell out of that bulgy-eyed fascist.

—

Worst moments

The prosecution rests Early-seasons Jadzia hadn’t yet found her agency, which was the biggest character facet she was lacking. A good representation of this in the episode “Dax,” in which she ostensibly should be the focus character, but spends her entire courtroom hearing refusing to speak for herself and allowing a room full of men to dictate her fate. I rest my case.

Don’t call me Benjamin For some of these Worst Moments, we’ve dipped into other hosts of the Dax symbiont to round things out a bit. And that includes that prick Verad Dax, even if he only has the symbiont for a little while in “Invasive Procedures.” But what an asshole! This guy hires goons to help him kidnap the symbiont, forces Julian to perform surgery, and would have left Jadzia to die.

Talk about an earworm! Here’s another alternate host who does some nasty deeds. We learn in “Equilibrium” that Dax had a secret host, Joran, who happened to do some murdering in order to get/keep the symbiont. It’s still unclear to me what his deal was because later episodes “Facets” and “Field of Fire” retcon his character all over the place until we have no idea how many people this guy even murdered!

And then we can count each other’s spots I’m vomiting in my mouth a little over the cloyingly sweet romance in “Meridian.” While we can commend Jadzia for being sex positive in our Best Moments list above, it’s also incredibly tiring how boy crazy she seems sometimes. It’s like the writing staff can’t help but define Jadzia by the men in her life, and falling so hard for a milquetoast guy like Deral in like a day is proof.

The way to a man’s heart is through his ears Yes, I will include on my Worst Moments list every time women give a Ferengi oomox. Bev did it. Lwaxana did it. T’Pol did it (and I’m sure I’ll mention that when we get to her spotlight). And when Jadzia sensually rubs Quark’s ears in “Facets” to convince him to take on a role in her zhiantara, I find it disgusting because it’s a woman engaging in sexual acts only to titillate the audience. Gross.

You were so young, so lovely We’ve got another guest host to give a piece of our mind to, and that’s Curzon Dax. In “Facets,” he reveals that he washed Jadzia out of the Initiate Program because he was in love with her, and that’s just awful. This guy should have recused himself if he couldn’t remain unbiased in his assessment. Poor Jadzia, always being seen through a sexual lens by men, on and off camera.

What if there was a way for you to kill your brother without killing him? Dax’s heart is in the right place when she tries to find a better place for Kurn when all he wants is to die with honor in “Sons of Mogh.” But the option that she offers to wipe his memory to give him a fresh start is SO MESSED UP. Kurn has no consent in the action that Jadzia and Worf (and Julian, whom we’ll point the finger at next week) impose on him. Dishonor on their houses.

There are some things in life you can’t control, and one of them is me We gave Worf a lot of stick for how badly he treats Jadzia, especially in an episode like the notorious “Let He Who Is Without Sin,” which last we checked had the lowest IMDB rating of all of DS9. And for good reason! It really makes us judge Jadzia quite a bit for staying with Worf when he treats her like his property, which is no good foundation for a relationship.

How do those boots taste? Jadzia struggling through Lady Sirella’s rituals in “You Are Cordially Invited” is demeaning, even in Klingon culture. It shocks me that Jadzia going to grovel to the lady of the House of Martok wins her favor. Instead of rewarding bootlicking, there should have been a more Klingon twist: it should have been a test of how long a prospective house member can put up with shit before they snap and do battle! That’s how you honor a house!

I’m sorry, the baby… Jadzia gets killed off in “Tears of the Prophets,” and it feels like a damn waste! It’s always sad for a beloved character to die, but for Kosst Amojen to take her out like a mere bystander brings up memories of Tasha Yar all over again. And then for her death to get undermined by her and Worf’s plan to procreate just feels like we’re back to Jadzia being defined by her relationships after all that progress.

Anyone can steal a shuttlecraft We’re fairly critical of Ezri Dax on this podcast, and some of that is unwarranted. But when Ezri does stupid shit like stealing a runabout to go save Worf in “Penumbra,” we raise an eyebrow. And when she and Worf bicker like old lovers, we roll our eyes. And when she and Worf have sex instead of dealing with trauma in a healthy and mature manner because it’s all a story trope, we lose some respect for these characters. Dammit.

If Worf hadn’t come along, it would have been you Ezri is barely here for a whole season and already she’s paired up with two of the male crewmembers. In “Afterimage,” Ezri tells Julian that Jadzia was into all the constant flirting, but she isn’t. But by “What You Leave Behind,” they’ve hooked up anyway, and it just feels like smashing the two dollies together to make them kiss. Can she be a character first before she hops into bed with the male character, please?

— Time to put this symbiont back in its pouch and call it day. As alluded to, we’ve got more DS9 characters to spotlight, following with Julian Bashir next week! So stay tuned here for that, follow along on SoundCloud (or wherever you get your podcasts) for more Enterprise watchalongs, hail us on subspace over on Facebook and Twitter, and stop retconning how joined Trills work already!

[asoiafreadthru]

A Game of Thrones, Tyrion II

His own remote ancestor, King Loren of the Rock, had tried to stand against the fire when he joined with King Mern of the Reach to oppose the Targaryen conquest.

That was close on three hundred years ago, when the Seven Kingdoms were kingdoms, and not mere provinces of a greater realm.

Between them, the Two Kings had six hundred banners flying, five thousand mounted knights, and ten times as many freeriders and men-at-arms.

Aegon Dragonlord had perhaps a fifth that number, the chroniclers said, and most of those were conscripts from the ranks of the last king he had slain, their loyalties uncertain.

The hosts met on the broad plains of the Reach, amidst golden fields of wheat ripe for harvest.

When the Two Kings charged, the Targaryen army shivered and shattered and began to run.

For a few moments, the chroniclers wrote, the conquest was at an end…

…But only for those few moments, before Aegon Targaryen and his sisters joined the battle.

It was the only time that Vhagar, Meraxes, and Balerion were all unleashed at once.

The singers called it the Field of Fire.

Near four thousand men had burned that day, among them King Mern of the Reach.

King Loren had escaped, and lived long enough to surrender, pledge his fealty to the Targaryens, and beget a son, for which Tyrion was duly grateful.

[sarahwatchesthings]

Just zoned out and then checked back into a DS9 episode just as O'Brien was saying, "Maybe I should start calling my tricorder Sally."

A minute later, checked back into Odo saying, "Nice melon."

I think this episode is best watched by absorbing random lines out of context.

[horsechestnut]

Why is Ezri in charge of solving this murder?

[muffinlance]

Consider: Post-canon Zuko wakes up in the body of his childhood self, the morning of That War Meeting. Would he still speak against the plans, knowing his fate? What do you think he would do differently the second time around?

"Turned away at the doors, Zuzu?"

"Shut up, Azula," her brother sulked. But sulked weirdly, after staring at her too long and too wide-eyed, not like she'd surprised him but--

But like he hadn't expected her to be there. At all.

He turned away. ...He turned back. "Hey, Lala? Do you think you could help me practice that one set?"

He didn't meet her eyes.

She narrowed hers. "Which set?"

"The one I'm bad at."

She scoffed. Pushed away from the wall she'd been leaning against. "That's all of them, Dum-Dum."

He didn't shout or stomp or yell about the nickname. His lips twitched.

"It's okay," he said. "If you're afraid you won't be a better teacher that my instructor..."

It was the most obvious manipulation ever.

Perhaps if he proved an adequate firebending student, she'd work on his courtly survival skills next. Honestly, it was good that not even Uncle Gets-Cousins-Killed had been fool enough to take Zuko into that war meeting. She could only imagine how terribly that could have gone.

"Keep up," she said, and turned her steps towards the training grounds.

He did. There, and during the katas she ran him through.

Azula kept her eyes narrowed.

"Hey," he asked, "do you know how to bend lightning yet?"

As if he could have missed it, if she'd been able to get more than sparks. "I will soon," she said.

"You will," he agreed, and flowed through his next set. The one she'd only just mastered.

Father didn't notice how weird Zuzu was being. Uncle never noticed anything. Zuko ate dinner and asked a servant for seconds and didn't stutter or flinch or lose his appetite when father asked, coolly, what he'd done with his day. Azula's shoulders tensed, because one mention of how she'd squandered her own training time teaching him--

"Azula hogged the training grounds. For hours," Zuzu scowled, exactly like a petulant thirteen year old.

Exactly like he hadn't been acting all day.

By the time Father was looking her way, Azula had her usual smirk in place. "I'm sure there would be room for both of us," she said, "you're not afraid of a little friendly fire, are you, brother?"

Zuko sulked. And ate his seconds, like he was enjoying each bite. There was something in his eyes, like a joke no one else was getting.

---

Father died that night. A heart attack. There were the faintest of burns to either side of the treacherous organ; the royal physician hypothesized that he'd grabbed at his chest, fingers burning hot in his final moments; so hot they'd only exacerbated the problem.

The royal physician would never have been brought any victims of lighting strikes. Those that occurred in the capital did not generally require a doctor in the aftermath.

Zuzu ate a hearty breakfast.

He didn't order seconds. Azula gave him points, at least, for not being tacky.

---

The sages named Iroh as regent.

They named Zuko as Fire Lord.

"No," the tiny Fire Lord in his perfectly miniaturized Fire Lord robes said, sitting at the head of his war council. "We're not doing that. And I'll be reviewing all recent battle plans, as well. What's this I hear about a division of new recruits being deployed to the front?"

He did not mention how he'd heard of the 41st Division. No one asked.

"Prince Iroh, surely--" one of the generals tried to appeal.

The young Fire Lord's regent was looking as startled as the rest of them, for a moment. Then he sipped his tea, and smiled.

"Your Fire Lord is correct, of course. A change in our leadership--a change the other nations may mistakenly view as weakness--will necessitate a change in our strategy."

"Now," said their lord, "what, exactly, is our overall objective in this war?"

War, the new Fire Lord decreed, was not an end unto itself.

---

The new Fire Lord continued to have time, to pretend to be trained by her. Azula watched him. Adjusted her footwork. Did not tolerate, and was not offered, any commentary on who was teaching who.

"What did you do with my brother?" she asked, as they flowed from one set to the next. As her hands, poised to throw fire, just so happened to be pointed his way.

He missed a step. It didn't look like an act.

"I'm, uh. Right here?"

She didn't bother to dignify that.

He didn't bother to look worried about her hands, one movement off from a true attack.

He looked around, then grabbed her sleeve, and tugged her further from any walls that may hide ears. The royal family's private training grounds were wonderfully large, and wonderfully open.

"It's me," he said. "It's still me. Just. More of me? Longer of me?"

She narrowed her eyes. A familiar expression, by this point. "Explain."

"...I found the Avatar," he said. "And this is definitely his fault, but--but I guess it started at a war meeting, when I was thirteen."

Azula listened. It was a very Dum-Dum story.

[cicimellie]

severance continues to get wilder. gretchen cheats on her husband with her husband; don't let her husband find out! ham-based throuple gets significantly more ominous. helena convinced mentioning local depressed alcoholic widower's dead wife by the wrong name is a surefire way to get him to need her carnally. somewhere markhelly is wasting company time getting freaky under a table. milchick beefs with child and paperclips.