TRILL SYMBIONT [communicating through electric zaps]: symbiont kiss. practical lip movement symbiont enjoyment
GUARDIAN: No, symbiont, you’ll have to wait until you’re joined to have a kiss.
SYMBIONT: symbiont good. electricity worm irrepressible sexual attraction. beautiful worm delicious kiss on lips. tongue
GUARDIAN: It is inappropriate to kiss an unjoined symbiont.
SYMBIONT: jealousy guardian
I’m just— I need to know early Trill history cause how in the hell they just see some thick juicy worms and say, “hey, let’s surgically implant this in our stomach and then pass it on to someone else later.” Like???? Reminder, it looks like THIS
Edit: 11/13/22
I FOUND OUT THE TRILL HISTORY, YA’LL LOOK. This is from the DS9 relaunch series, Trill Unjoined
North! It’s North... he’s my second most boring white man from Freelancer, but he gets extra points over York for me by being overprotective in an interesting way and being a corpse in his first appearance. Let’s go useless king!!
But for real here’s some info about this spotty guy:
- Since North, as mentioned, is dead before the main RvB plotline even begins, I decided to make his “main” drawing of this piece his Pre-Freelancer design. So no scars, or anything, and fancy civilian clothes. Being the 14th host of his symbiont, he’s got at least 600 years of life experience, so just by virtue of being Kalan he’s very well respected. So he’s a fancy little dresser, including me giving him heels. Well, I was tired of drawing boots.
- I expand more on why this version of North joined PFL in my fic, but he really does become an oddity among the other Freelancers. As a joined Trill with a very old symbiont he’s super skilled, smart, and wise in a way. But critically he’s insecure about that, and probably holds back to try and “blend in” more. I like North better if he’s sort of a charming cool-guy who hides a ruthless and kind of condescending inner self.
- North has the least Borg tech of any of the Freelancers. I’m not sure if this draws on anything in canon, but I imagine that joined Trills are particularly sensitive to bodily modifications, with the symbiont being potentially at risk.
- All of the fragments except for Omega are still actual AI in this AU (see Doc for more info), but they’re necessarily a little different than RvB AIs. They’re simpler, small computer programs that help the Freelancers run their Borg mods, and they’re equipped with mini holo-emitters so they can easily communicate with others. They all look oddly similar to the Director... hmmmm, what a mystery.
Next week is Meta and that’s the last of the Freelancers!
So we know the simbiont is called Dax and the person is called whatever it is called. But from what I gather by the look of the larva and how it works, nobody knows its name until they are in a host. So we can assume that the first time they join, it goes something like this the next morning:
Trill: Hello there
Larva: Sup. My name is Pete.
Trill: Pete? That's a weird ass name.
Larva: I don't know, it's my name. What name is your name?
Trill: Madzir
Larva: oh and that is not a weird name. Alright then.
And then I guess you have people around you like "so? What's your name, simbiont?" and a very confused trill goes "Pete". "Welcome among us Madzir Pete".
i know i’m in the minority here but i really don’t love the way disco deals with transness, particularly vis a vis gray. there are these throwaway lines that are supposed to let us know that he’s trans, which, like, fine, but what few of them we see are largely focused on making little jokes about how hard transition was for him. i get the point of this – having him talk the way a trans person might talk about their transition today makes him relatable and maybe inspirational, if you’re early in your transition – but it strikes me as deeply unhopeful? transition SHOULDN’T be hard. it SHOULDN’T be an emotional ordeal. it shouldn’t be stigmatized or seen as unusual. the implication i get from this (and from adira’s awkward coming out, which, sorry, IS awkward in a way that makes no sense for the setting) is that, for the sake of being relatable, a show set a thousand years in the future has decided to treat transness much the same way it’s treated today. i find that deeply depressing, not hopeful.
(and this isn’t even getting into the fact that we KNOW from ds9 that transition is normal in the federation! quark fully transitions via an outpatient procedure solely for the purpose of schemes and no one’s weird about it or gatekeeps the care! and that’s from the most transphobic episode of any star trek show! aaagh! i feel like i am going insane)