#if this was a star trek episode that computer would be dead already

[tismandrelativedimensionsinspace]

just watched The Keys of Marinus: The Sea of Death and all i could think was. this is exactly the kind of machine captain kirk would convince to kill itself.

its using mind control to force peace?? by taking away free will?? jim boy would not have hesitated to blow that fucker up. the doctor and gang were way too chill about it. this monk guy is clearly the real villain here

[canmom]

That bit about how realistically, Star Trek would be fought with drone warfare reminded me of the TOS episode A Taste of Armageddon, where two planets had been fighting for centuries, using battle computers to calculate the result of firing arms at each other in terms of death toll and location, and then sending a random selection of people in that location to be executed quickly and cleanly. This was to avoid the additional damage caused by war (illness, famine, destruction of culture). It's really fucked up.

And like, it's not about drone warfare, because that wasn't a thing in the 60s, but it feels like the themes of it can apply to things like drone warfare and remote warfare in general (like imperialist wars far from the imperial core). How making war "clean" (at least for the aggressors) makes it easier to perpetuate war and crimes against humanity.

see that premise sounds kind of awesome, old star trek was pretty sharp when it needed to be huh. it reminds me of the 'drop coffins' in @xrafstar 's old twine howling dogs. we are already applying factory-like efficency to the production of dead bodies, why not just cut out the middle man here!

can easily imagine why they'd be moved to make such an episode in the 60s, with wwii fresh in mind and the cold war warming up.

[twig-tea]

SHIPPER TAG GAME

Tagged by @lurkingshan and @stuffnonsenseandotherthings to dig into the vault. Friends, I have been Perpetually Online since 1995, when that meant I had to haunt my school library computer at lunchtime, so this is going to be for the fellow Olds. Sorry in advance for the HP mentions.

1. What ship were you completely obsessed with when you were a teenager, but now you don't care anymore?

Have I let any ships go? Hmm. I'll go with Mulder/Scully from X-Files. Watching now, they should definitely not end up together lol

2. Which ship would you consider your first one?

Sailor Mercury/Sailor Jupiter from Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon. I. Was. Obsessed. This ship hit me like a ton of bricks in I want to say 6th or 7th grade.

I watched the show as it aired with English dubs, found out the episodes we got were censored, immediately fell into my completionist ways, went to the Asian mall (it was literally pan-Asian with stuff from Japan, China, Taiwain, Korea, etc.) and got definitely not official VCDs with Mandarin subtitles, and would sit with friends who spoke Mandarin and had them translate the subs to English for me (I say this like I forced them, but they offered because they were my friends and they also felt passionately about people seeing the uncensored show). I then learned how to Internet and would trawl for fanpages of the manga (it would take 20 minutes to load an image at the time, so rather than full scanlations I'd get walls of text describing what happened with maybe a single panel illustration). Uranus and Neptune were fantastic, but I already had Ami and Makoto aka Mercury and Jupiter long before I got to the Uranus/Neptune episodes (or the Sailor Stars manga arc).

3. Your first fanfic belonged to which couple?

Definitely Sailor Moon fanfic was the first fic I read. It was an easy step from finding fan summaries of the chapters not yet out in English > finding fan sites with fanfic on them, back before we had archives or even decent search engines and you had to just find the sites you needed through links from other sites. It was like a whole new world of possibilities opening up. The first real fanfic community I was in was Harry Potter.

In terms of first fic I wrote, I am not a writer; I've only ever written a small handful of not worth mentioning ficlets featuring the Kirk/Spock ship (Star Trek TOS).

4. Do you remember the first couple you saw a fanart over?

Oh it was likely Serena/Tuxedo Mask from Sailor Moon and it was in person, because I had friends who got me into anime and manga early and they were artists who drew a lot of fanart.

5. Did you ever get into ship discourse?

Friends, I had a Livejournal. It was impossible not to get into ship discourse.

6. Did you used to have any no-otp or have it currently?

I am going to echo @stuffnonsenseandotherthings and @lurkingshan and say I was dead-set against Hermione as a ship with any of the men in Harry Potter (Hermione/Luna or Hermione/Ginny, though, we could talk), and I also really disliked Draco/Ron. I also am not here for Spock/McCoy (Star Trek), and I don't really enjoy Stucky (as in Captain America/Winter Soldier or Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes from Marvel).

OH and can I be a hater on main for a second? The first couple that I remember hating as a thing was probably Jo and Professor Bhaer from Little Women; I was SO MAD they married in the end. I felt very validated years later when I read that the author Lousia May Alcott was forced by her publisher to marry Jo off and made up the couple out of spite.

7. Who were the couple in the last fanfic you read?

The last fic I read was a Word of Honour modern AU pairing Wen Ke Xing/Zhou Zishu in which they rescued stray kittens.

SInce I started this, I've also read a One Piece Luffy/Zoro fic (and that's not even my favourite ship--I've been a Zoro/Sanji girlie since the early 2000s! I'm weak for banter.)

8. Currently, do you have any OTPs?

I have so many. SO many. Truly. I don't even know where to start with this question! I follow several AO3 tags and fanfic writers that I get regular fic updates from. Most of my OTPs are either canon (from queer/BL/GL media) or the most popular ship (I feel very lucky that my taste is so basic). There is no one couple I love the most. Just going to throw a dart at the board: From BL, the one I come back to a lot is Hira/Kiyoi in Utsukushii Kare, because their dynamic is so intense.

9. Is there any couple that, to this day, you are extremely mad about not getting together?

Hmm. That's what fandom is for, so not really? I usually get more annoyed when people do get together that I wish had stayed platonic (never forgiving Pacific Rim for that kiss, it was so unnecessary). And I'm extremely mad about censorship, i.e. couples that DID get together but we didn't get to see it for whatever reason (see e.g. Uranus and Neptune from Sailor Moon Sailor Stars; Chinese danmei novel live-action adaptations). Otherwise there are lots of these but I just read the fanfic and recover. I'll say I'm still annoyed Buffy didn't get to have with Faith what she had with Spike though. Their chemistry was off the charts.

10. Is there any ship you used to dislike but now you think they are kind of interesting?

This is such a hard question. I came around a little on Lan Xichen/Jiang Cheng from MDZS/the Untamed, though it's still not my fave (it's a soft no not a hard no). I'll also give you an oldie: Andie McPhee and Pacey from Dawson's Creek. I hated Andie's character back in the day but now I like her character but really dislike how she was used in the show, which isn't the same thing. And I actually really liked how she and Pacey worked together.

I'll also give you a BL one: Kurosawa and Haruta in Ossan's Love. Ossan's Love s1 & 3 it was clear they were not OTP so that's a bit irrelevant anyway, but it's much less clear in s2 (the AU season) and the first time I watched it I wasn't sure how I felt about the way that season ended as much as I loved the season as a whole. I like it more every time I rewatch.

11. Do you have any ship that, in the past, was considered normal but now you would be cancelled over?

LOL I am with everyone else on the Brian/Justin train but since that's been said twice I'll go with something else. I was a big Harry/Draco shipper back in the day, which would now probably get me cancelled for shipping someone with his bully (though a significant part of the fun of that ship was about how Draco was such an ineffectual bully...but I digress), in addition to of course how the author's transphobia ruined the whole thing for all of us (fanfic doesn't make her any money, so I don't have a problem continuing to read it in theory, but it's left a sour note over my experience and makes any engagement in that fandom less fun).

12. What was your favorite crack ship?

I was one of those foolish people obsessed with Hawkeye/Coulson before we'd even seen them face-to-face or knew almost anything about MCU Clint Barton. I still read fanfic of that ship even though it's been fully jossed and makes no sense at all anymore. Ok one more, I really love the very small Breakfast Club fandom shipping Brian/John and Claire/Allison. I've read the few fics on AO3 for the queer pair ghost ships in that show multiple times.

13. Who is the couple you read more fanfics of?

Of all time, I've probably read the most Kirk/Spock fanfic. But that's due to the length of time I've been into the ship, the amount of time it's existed, and its popularity. I still read Kirk/Spock regularly.

14. What most of your ships usually have in common?

Honestly most can be boiled down to grumpy/sunshine pairs in which both are very competent in specific ways and both are hiding crippling self esteem issues behind their grumpy or sunshine-ness, and have strong but differing moral codes that they each respect in one another (and is usually where the feelings start). Banter is a must. I am admittedly also here for height difference in my ships. Double-plus bonus for terrible communicators who learn to understand one another's particular communication quirks.

Perfect encapsulation of this dynamic is Danny/Steve from Hawaii Five-0 (listen that show was copaganda trash but the fanfic was fun as hell).

15. What do you absolutely hate in a ship?

Power dynamics that remain unaddressed as part of the story. Hate to love that isn't earned over time. When the relationship makes each other worse rather than better. When they never learn to trust one another. When one of them is in it as part of a savior complex and that doesn't get challenged or worked through. When only one of them has a personality. There's very little that I'd say is a hard no in terms of dynamics or setup for me, but it has to be handled well, and sometimes I don't have the energy to give something the benefit of the doubt.

tagging: @respectthepetty @wen-kexing-apologist @so-much-yet-to-learn @ginnymoonbeam @bengiyo with as always no pressure, plus anyone who sees this who wants to fill it out, consider yourself tagged and let me know so I can see it!

[thegeminisage]

oh IT'S fucking star trek update time. last night we watched "improbable cause" and "the die is cast" and MWAH CHEFS KISS WHAT AN EVENING.

improbable cause:

GOING INTO THIS. i knew odo got tortured by garak. so as you can imagine i was quite beside myself because i like both of them so much. but whatever direction i was expecting that to go this was not it

firstly i love the idea that julian and garak get into these heated literature conversations and julian values it so much he has to have obrien replace garak when he's gone. i don't think obrien did a very good job...considering all the racketball julian has doggedly put in while keiko was away he should have stepped up!!

secondly please don't say caesar. it was a good setup for garak's dramatic irony later though.

delavian chocolate gift and giftback. girl what on earth was that. GAY PEOPLE.

from garak and odo's first scene together i was like damn...they're both so good at picking up on tiny cues and analyzing people...they're both so smart...this is crazy...i had no idea. side bar i love that in that scene odo was like if kira wanted you dead you would fucking be dead. so true. support your woman

cry wolf story. "never tell the same lie twice." AAAGHGHGHGH IT'S ALL TRUE ESPECIALLY THE LIES

THE FACT THAT. ODO PUT TOGETHER GARAK BOMBING HIS OWN SHOP. like i NEVER would have figured that out he is SO smart. AND him knowing for sure garak had no idea why the romulans were trying to kill him!! god garak and odo really are unstoppable force immovable object. it's like L and light except better. i can't believe i didn't see the potential of trapping them in a room together until now

the parallel of garak insisting on going with odo and then odo insisting going with garak...except the first time it turned out to be nothing and the second time they both regretted it

odo's shot at the romulan uniforms lol. he didn't like those 80s shoulderpads

odo's SHADY dealings with that cardassian...odo has such a checkered history considering his circumstances. also, the next person who mentions that cardassian neck thing i am going to jump thru my computer and kill them in real life

i cant believe also that tain was gonna kill his fucking housekeeper...justice for housekeepers. also, justice for garak, who looked like he hade that promise at gunpoint but alsmot died trying to keep it

GARAK TELLING JULIAN TO EAT THE ROD. really really really funny. i kind of wish there HAD been a rod back there specifically so we COULD see julian eat it.

ODO AND GARAK PSYCHOANALYZING EACH OTHER NO HOLDS BARRED TOTAL BEATDOWN

hi good morning hello hi. hello. they were playing verbal chess. defensive and offensive moves. odo is at a slight disadvantage here because he's incredibly frank and garak has 100 layers minimum to everything he's ever said but their skills at reading one another are perfectly parallel and their hesitation to rip each other apart is 0. there was bloodshed. it was delicious

AND YOU KNOW WHAT. MAYBE THIS EPISODE WAS A LITTLE BIT ABOUT KIRA

"is there one person just one in this whole universe that you care for" and if a telepath had been in the room the name KIRA would have been shouted in flashing lights and all capital letters at 100db. it was on his face. you could SEE IT

and i MAINTAIN that if garak saw them speak even two words to each other about something besides work he would figure it out instantly. he's just not around kira that much because of how forcefully she projects her incredibly intimidating disapproval.

the bit about the racial slur for the romulans. firstly, it WAS smart, secondly, it was also funny, because right before tain pointed it out i was like damn that's a slur

garak already smiling when odo is trying to talk him out of rejoining the order. most terrifying way ever to end an episode when i know he's getting tortured later

the die is cast:

and in literally the FIRST SCENE after the switch what is garak doing? panicking. tain is like, yeah i'm gonna kill that housekeeper you love and garak immediately wants to protest and then he immediately freaks out about wanting to protest. i can't believe you can see it all on his face under all that makeup...

sisko LITERALLY choosing to disobey orders to go get One Guy. picard would have let his ass die. and it means so much to me because 1. he got a message and wryly told kira to disregard it 2. if he AHDN'T been there odo and garak would have died. like, he got there in JUST the nick of time 3. him stopping obrien from knocking out the traitor but warning that guy "i'd stay away from o'brien if i was you" lmaooo 4. "we're gonna get singed at that range" "not as singed as they're gonna get, ENGAGE" nobody has ever served like sisko serves. he's so FUCKING cool, dude, i can't get over how great he is

the torture scenes were just like the psychoanalyzing scenes except this time there was actual violence involved, even though they never touched each other. "the only common enemy we share is tain the difference is you don't know it" caesarcore unfortunately. garak trying to wiggle out of it and then realizing this is the price of admission if he wants back in. knowing odo is hiding something because it's what HE would do and they are BASICALLY THE SAME GUY. odo's sarcasm ("oh nooo mister garak pleeease don't torture me have mercy 🙄") turning to annoyance to fear to RAGE. AUGHGHGHG

like, it's exactly like that one scene in atla where zuko is talking to iroh in prison but the bars are only visible around zuko's face. odo is spitting such venom at garak that HE IS ALSO BEING TORTURED. garak didn't realize until tain talked about killing his housekeeper that he didn't have the stomach for it anymore but odo knew from the very beginning. odo never asked garak to make it stop GARAK BEGGED ODO TO MAKE IT STOP. LIKE ARE YOU KIDDING ME

"tell me something anything lie if you have to but say it PLEASE" like ARE. YOU. KIDDING ME

only odo could walk into a torture chamber and have the torturer begging for it to stop and only garak could start torturing someone and then beg them to break. SAME GUY. it was PERFECT. whatever way i imagined this was bad and wrong and less stellar than what they actually did, which was FUCKING insane

and then after all that the secret just being a personal one. not useful at all. "i hope it was worth it" and odo slides into the bucket and garak puts his head in his fucking hands. MWAH

AND THEN LATER. SAYING ODO NEVER BROKE. and it's kind of a lie but it's also kind of true because odo didn't break FIRST. garak did. you could imagine odo broke because garak begged him or because he couldn't take anymore but in every sense that matters he outlasted his torturer.

garak almost dying to save the world's worst guy <3 like he really promised that housekeeper. he definitely deserved the black eye odo gave him in the sense that he deserved some pain back but in another way didn't deserve the compassion behind it because anyone else in odo's position would be tempted to let him die. so much for "odo doesn't have feelings" ie garak's earlier hypothesis. like the way in the shuttle he says later you know i get it i too want to go home (and unsaid: but i can't stomach the people who live there and what they do and what they stand for even though i miss them horribly). THEY ARE THE SAME GUY. i loved their little last-minute goodbye int he shuttle and then sisko's unexpected rescue. WOW what a sequence!

the changelings would take odo in a heartbeat and STILL he says no because he loves the people he's surrounded himself with :( <3 ESPECIALLY KIRAAA

loved the plot twist of the romulan changeling btw. "no changeling has ever harmed another" i really really really hope odo is the first. ik it would make him sad but it would make ME so happy

and then. of course. the final scene. tng would never do this. tng would have them rescued, they'd nod at one another, the credits would roll. but the mirror scene...

like, i expected garak to look at himself, you know? like damn who am i what have i become i was miserable when i went back and i'm miserable here

BUT IN THE REFLECTION WAS ODO. SAME GUY

the sheer amount of nerve it took not to show odo's face for this...to have odo a blurred silhouetted refection and to keep the camera on garak...nobody's pussy pops like ds9's does.

AND ODO JUST. 1. INVITES HIM TO REBUILD 2. INVITES HIM TO BREAKFAST???

CONSTABLE I THOUGHT YOU DIDN'T EAT I DON'T

HE DOESN'T EAT. BUT HE WANTS TO GET BREAKFAST.

these two men literally saw each other break and realized they're the same guy and now they're gonna get BREAKFAST. i'm gonna kerm

i was forseeing odo hating garak for the rest of the series. lifelong enemies. etcetc. i was NOT predicting garak breaking first and odo forgiving him because he understands and then they start a fucking BRUNCH CLUB??? where they don't talk about kira

10/10 episodes and experiences. like, hit me with that holodeck shit next time, who cares. i am fucking invincible.

TONIGHT: voy's "faces" and ds9's "explorers," though i sadly realized just a little while ago that the source i used for my airdates for this spreadsheet was not good...possibly we have been watching them ever so slightly out of order for some time...i'll have to check the true extent of the damage later tonight.

[sodiumlamp]

Picard

Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck this show.

I already knew it would be the damn Borg again. That's part of why I wanted to watch this show all the way through, because everytime I looked something up on Memory Alpha, the Star Trek Wiki, there would be all these references to Picard continuity, and I was getting tired of trying to dodge spoilers. You'd look up something like "tribble poop" and there'd be a whole section about how Booter Soong ate some while he reprogrammed the Emergency Dork Hologram on La Sirena.

Another reason I wanted to watch this show was because I had heard about all of this nonsense where the Borg put secret DNA in Picard's body, which was then added to the transporter system in order to covertly add it to every Starfleet officer in the service. But the whole thing sounded so nonsensical that I had to see it for myself. And I guess I went through episodes 1-8 hoping against hope that maybe I'd misunderstood somehow, and it would turn out to be something else. After all, this show already used the damn Borg in Seasons 1 and 2.

But here we are! The big twist this season is: more Borg. Again.

The only difference this time is that it's the "classic" Borg. Season 1 featured a derelict cube full of offline Borg who were either in stasis or being de-assimilated by Hugh's "Reclamation Project". Season 2 featured a Borg Queen who merged with Jurati and went back in time to start a kinder, gentler collective. This version of the Borg returned in Season 2 to assist Starfleet in sealing up a space anomaly and as far as I know, they're still monitoring it. I'm curious to see if the Jurati-Borg are mentioned at all in the Season 3 finale.

So this time it's the main version of the Borg, who I suppose are still reeling from the events of the Voyager finale, and their big idea is to activate all this "stealth assimilation DNA" that's been passed through everybody via the transporters. I think Jack Crusher's role in all of this is to function as the "transmitter" that activates the affected victims and links them all together in a new collective. That's why the Borg's allies, the rogue Changelings, we're so determined to capture him alive.

What I don't understand is why Vadic and her group were so cooperative with the Borg. In several scenes, Vadic would cut off her left hand and it would morph into this weird face and speak with its own voice. Clearly this was how Vadic received communications from the Borg Queen, but how did they even set that up? Was Vadic assimilated? Was she even remotely worried about the Borg turning against the Dominion after they finished taking over the Federation?

I also don't understand how the Borg altered Picard's DNA and no one noticed all this secret stuff until now. Did they not have records of Picard's genome before his assimilation? Could they not compare the two and eliminate any differences? Did the altered DNA have a cloaking device? That's stupid. That's really stupid.

This whole show is stupid. Picard's a damn robot. Androids can be made out of flesh and blood, but also have super powers. The Romulan Empire is either dead or stronger than ever. The Federation is a dystopia except when it's not, and Rios is just going to stay in 2024 because it's only slightly worse than 2410 and it's easier to find cigars. Picard's father locked her mother in her room to keep her from killing herself, but he didn't use a computer lock, it's just a 500 year old skeleton key behind a loose stone in the wall where a child could get at it. The Borg Queen exists in multiple timelines simultaneously unless Jurati combines with her in which case there are just two versions of the Borg Queen now. I guess.

So the only way to stop the Borg now is to take all the old people on the show who haven't been affected by the Borg-Changeling plot, and put them on an older ship that pre-dates all of the tech that connects all the modern ships together. And that's why the TNG seven are on a rebuilt Enterprise-D. Geordi recovered the saucer section, repaired it, then connected it to the drive section of the Syracuse, another Galaxy Class ship.

This is probably supposed to be a feel-good moment. They finally got the whole gang back on the original ship, or a reasonable facsimile, and they're going to go on one last ride to save everyone from their signature enemy. It sucks. That's all I can say about it.

I don't like how we got here. Years ago, I was excited to see the TNG movies, because the show was a success and they could just jump straight to the movies instead of how it went for the original series, where it took ten years for Star Trek to get that kind of support. I was expecting the Enterprise-D to get destroyed, because that would pave the way for a new movie ship, which was one of the things I looked forward to in First Contact.

The problem was that it never quite measured up to my own imagination. The Enterprise-E never got to do anything cool, at least not cool enough to justify introducing a new ship. I always liked the design, but it never had a big hero moment, where it did something that only a Sovereign-class could do. And Insurection and Nemesis sucked, so maybe it never had a chance. This episode of Picard treats E with some contempt. Worf apparently liked it, but everyone else thought it sucked, and apparently they all blame him for whatever happened to it.

This whole series has been about looking backwards. There's an Enterprise-F now, and I'm not sure how long it's been in service, but it's part of the Borg now so it's up to the old guys in the old ship to take care of things. This feels wrong. I think I understand why fans are so excited about that "Star Trek Legacy" show, because it promises to do what TNG did decades ago, which is to carry the concept forward. TNG was never about this navel-gazing callback festival. Picard is all about that, but it's a hollow pursuit. I guess I was hoping for a look at what happens next, with an elderly Picard there to experience it with me, but instead it's just Soong, Romulans, Q, 21st Century, Changelings, Borg, Borg, Borg.

Oh, Shaw dies and he finally addresses Seven of Nine by "Seven of Nine" and bequeaths her the Titan. It took nine episodes to get here, and most of that was spent with Shaw just reminding us that he doesn't respect her. No real change was made until the very end, because this is his last chance to wrap up that subplot. It's dumb. They went out of their way to crowbar this guy into the show, and this is all he does. It's a shame there were no other Chicagoans around when he died. They would have howled into the sky as a warning to the dead: Beware, there is a dipshit among you.

I keep saying it, but I want to be as clear as possible. So there's no misunderstanding: This show is terrible. Watching it is a miserable experience. It's Sunday and I'm actually looking forward to going back to work tomorrow. That's how un-entertaining this has been.

[sshbpodcast]

Tales from the Holodeck: VOY Fanfic: Caitlin’s Story

It's that time again. It's A Star to Steer Her By's 7th anniversary, and [not so] coincidentally Star Trek's 57th! Slightly more coincidentally, we also just wrapped our watch-through of Star Trek: Voyager! Not only can you check out our favorite and least favorite episodes, but you can also peruse our latest celebratory fanfic!

Scroll on below to read the latest installments from our annual "Tales from the Holodeck" writing challenge, and follow along with our cold reads on this week's podcast episode (this one starts at 28:03). We present to you Caitlin's zany Voyager–Deep Space Nine crossover in which there's always a bigger con artist.

[images © Paramount/CBS]

“Untitled”

By Caitlin

Random picks: Dala, Quark

"Kathryn, I have to say, I never expected to find you in such a broken down dump as this ship. Why, I –" It was then that the figure stopped and looked at her – really looked at her. "You're not Kathryn. Who are you? And why are you dressed as my dear Katie?"

"You're the one who popped onto my ship out of nowhere – who the hell are you?" Her hackles were up, no reason to pretend otherwise.

"You may call me Q. Though you won't need to remember that for long – this conversation is already over," said the strange man, his tone affable but with an undercurrent of danger. "You have to get up pretty early in the morning to get the best of a Q. I'll punish you for your insolence – and for that terrible hairdo. Really, Kathryn would be insulted if she could see you."

"I've already had to deal with Janeway," she spat, "and if I never had to hear her name again it would still be too soon."

A smile crossed the man's face. "Then perhaps it's time I paid a visit to my dear Katie. And as a gift, I'll deliver her the news that you have been flung far from the Delta quadrant and won't be bothering or impersonating her again."

"Wha – who do you think you are?" Dala demanded angrily.

"I, madam, am a Q, and your worst nightmare." The man raised his right hand slowly, and seemingly in slow motion, snapped the most consequential snap that Dala had ever experienced.

Her stomach lurched as her ship was hurled through space, beyond any warp speed she had ever experienced. They moved so fast that the entire bridge filled with blinding light, created by each and every star and other celestial body they passed.

They came to a stop almost as suddenly as they had begun hurdling through space. "Computer, where the hell are we?" she demanded, her voice shaky to her own ears.

"Currently located in the Gamma quadrant, exact location unknown." the Computer intoned.

"The Gamma quadrant?!" she gasped, exasperated.

"Captain, we're being targeted by an unknown ship!" the Comms officer shouted. "I've tried hailing but they aren't answering."

"Get us the hell out of here!" cried Dala, eyes wild. "We haven't come this far to be destroyed in the damned Gamma quadrant."

The tiny ship jumped immediately to life, flying away from the closing ship. The bridge crew were thrown by a sudden blast that struck them.

"Captain, shields have taken heavy damage, down to 22%!" creid the helmsman, fingers flying across the panel in front of him. "If they hit us one, maybe two more times, we'll be goners. What do we do?!"

"Evasive maneuvers, try not to take another hit. Prepare to go warp."

"Warp drive is offline, Captain, I don't think – ahh!" Another shot slammed into the small vessel, and the helmsman's panel exploded, rendering him unconscious at least. Hopefully not dead, thought Dala. I don't want to believe the worst.

We need a miracle, she thought wildly. And what she got was the next best thing.

Just in front of the ship, an anomaly opened, and she nearly leapt with joy. "A wormhole! Quick, get us through there. They'd have to be crazy to follow us!"

Dala didn't know how right she was. With the Dominion War in full swing, and Deep Space Nine right on the other side of that wormhole, the Jem'Hadar who had targeted her ship knew better than to try to pass into enemy space.

As long as the ship survives the journey through, we should finally be safe, she thought.

As they rocketed through the corridor of the wormhole, Dala felt the hair on the back of her neck rise. There was something unusual about this wormhole, but she couldn't put her finger on it. She had never felt anything like that before.

The ship exited the wormhole and floated serenely for a moment, and Dala was shocked to find that there, within view of their miraculous exit point, was a space station.

"Crew, I'm sure I don't have to tell you, but that's our destination –and if we're lucky we can find a deal or two to be made while we repair our ship.

Dala could never have expected to be welcomed aboard by the captain of the station himself. And, if this was a fan fiction about Sisko, we would get into those details. Instead, suffice it to say, there was some confusion about her identity that led to her freedom to walk around the station, but not without being watched carefully and unknowingly by the Deep Space Nine's constable, Odo.

Dala had always enjoyed a strong drink and exotic delicacies, so the jingle she heard about visiting Quark's piqued her interest. And, if what she knew about Ferengi from Voyager's logs was true, the proprietor might be able to help her to find a deal to be made.

As she approached the bar, she gave her best imitation of Janeway's confident swagger. "Barkeep, a Samarian sunset please, and perhaps some of those Bajoran delicacies I've heard so much about."

"Our specialty is the Hasperat, Captain, I'll have some brought out for you right away." The Ferengi who stood behind the bar was oozing charisma and charm, and from the rakish grin he offered her, she felt certain she had found Quark. "And to whom do I have the pleasure of serving these refreshments, Captain –?"

"Kathryn Janeway, of the starship Voyager," said Dala. "My crew and I ran into some trouble in the Gamma quadrant and we're here to make repairs and hopefully enjoy ourselves in the meantime."

This response puzzled Quark, and his calculating Ferengi mind raced. He made it his business to know every ship docked at Deep Space Nine, the cargo on board, and anything else he could get from guests in the know. He knew for a fact that Voyager was not at the station. And if she's lying, he thought, there may be an opportunity here...

"Captain Janeway, a pleasure," he said, extending an arm to pull her hand to his lips for a quick kiss and a roguish wink. "I am Quark, the owner of this establishment. You will let me know if there is anything myself or my staff can do for you, won't you?"

Dala turned her head, feigning her delight at his attention but grimacing inside. Feeling his sharp, snaggly teeth brush against her skin gave her the heebie jeebies, but knowing that she had to get on his good side, she allowed it. "Thank you Quark, I can think of no one I would trust more."

Quark smiled and served her drink, before excusing himself and walking to a table nearby, and one that was unusually full with 5 chairs rather than the usual 4. He leaned down to clean the table, and whispered, "Odo, I know you're... well, one of these chairs. I normally wouldn't do this, but I'm hoping something can be done for me if my hunch is right. That woman at the bar, she claims to be Kathryn Janeway. But I've met Janeway, and that is not her. So if we leave together later, follow me and be ready to take her down."

He straightened up and walked back to the bar, and waited.

He didn't have to wait long. After a few extra strong sunrises, Dala was ready to talk business. Loudly.

"Listen, Quark. I've heard things about you," she slurred. "And I know that you are a man who can get things. I couldn't tell Captain Sisko..." Here she whispered conspiratorially. "I'm here on a secret mission from Starfleet. It is imperative that I get weapons for myself and my crew, and that we are given access to a warp capable ship as soon as possible. Can you help me, and the Federation?"

Quark polished a glass as he looked her up and down. "How do I know you're telling me the truth?"

"You doubt the word of a Starfleet officer?" she asked, indignant. "Please, Quark, there's no one else I can trust."

"All right, Captain," said Quark, a reluctant sigh whistling through his craggy teeth. "Come with me – I can get you access to the Defiant, warp capable and even cloak-enabled. Bet you never dreamed you'd get something that good, huh?"

"That... sounds perfect," she said, shocked by her luck. "When can we go?"

"Right now," said Quark, grabbing a phaser from behind the bar and handing it toher. "Here is the only weapon I have on me – but the Defiant has a loaded armory on board. Everything you could need would be there."

Quark whispered something to the bartender next to him, and led Dala out of the room. She began to get suspicious as they walked towards the turbolifts. "Why are you being so eager to please?"

"I'm always eager to please – when the people who hold my lease need a favor," said Quark. "Rule of Acquisition 149: it always pays to have your lender be your debtor."

They boarded the turbolift and Quark commanded it to the docking ring. As they approached, Dala felt a twinge of fear as she saw two brown-clothes security officers ahead. She stopped and tried to back away, but a strong hand wrapped itself around her arm. "Going somewhere?" a deep, and deeply sarcastic, voice came from behind her.

Dala was spun around to face Odo, the shapeshifter who served as Deep Space Nine's constable. "What is the meaning of this?" she demanded. "I am Kathryn Janeway of the starship Voyager, and you are interfering with official starfleet business –"

"Oh, no, I'm afraid not," said Odo with a wry smile. "I don't know who you actually are – but I did confirm with Starfleet that Captain Janeway is still lost in the Delta quadrant, and no communication has been made to her about any secret missions. And..." he reached forward and pulled the phaser from her belt, "you are carrying an illegal firearm." He turned to the other security guards and said, "Take her to the brig. We'll talk to Starfleet to see what the punishment is for impersonating a Starfleet officer."

As the Bajoran officers pulled a struggling and arguing (undeniably drunk) Dala away, Odo looked at Quark. "I'm surprised at you Quark – no good deed goes unpunished, after all, and I thought all humons looked alike?"

"I make it my business to know everything that happens on this station, Odo," said Quark. "Besides, as I just said to... not-Janeway, it never hurts to be owed a favor by Starfleet."

Odo barked a sharp, ugly laugh. "It's almost completely unbelievable that you think this minor matter would put the Federation in your debt. But, I will admit, you've given me some food for thought."

"What more could I want, Odo? Always keep 'em guessing." Quark removed the phaser from Odo's hand and started, whistling, back to the bar.

—

Don't forget to also check out Jake, Ames, and Chris's stories from this year's Star Trek Day festivities. And next week, you definitely don't want to miss when we finally start in on Star Trek: Enterprise over on SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcasts, keep your eyes here for a new series of posts on the blog, hang out with us on Facebook and Twitter, and always have a Rule of Acquisition to quote at the ready.

[spockfan]

Hi - how long have you been into Star Trek? (You said recently but that could have been written years ago?) However long it's been, WOW do you have great ST content! I already reblogged a lot and there's so much more I didn't have time to get to yet.

Hi! First of all, thank you so much! I honestly didn't expect that I'd be posting stuff other than reblogs of things I find neat (which is why there is no tagging system yet) but I really enjoyed watching TOS that I just needed to air some of my thoughts in some way.

This little side blog is pretty new, created right at the end of August. Made because I got curious about Spock's character whose concept I really liked when I finally got curious enough to look up his general background (watched him from the new movies before but didn't really pay attention much). I was surprised that the blog name was available and I regret making it as a sideblog as I can't readily reply to posts because it confuses me when I see my main account name (which I don't really use.)

The answer to your question is since September 5, 2021, the day I watched the first episode of TOS. Currently, I'm halfway through season 2.

The date is exact because, prior to watching, to make things more fun, I made Bingo cards with what I thought would be common Star Trek tropes and that first Bingo card is saved in my tablet.

Before TOS, I've watched the reboot movies when they came out and although I enjoyed them, to myself who had no other background and appreciation for the world and the characters, they were ultimately no different from any other blockbuster movie–enjoyable momentarily but not something I would dwell on. I was also a bit familiar with ST:Discovery because I was told a bit about its plot. Also Galaxy Quest but I didn't relate it to Star Trek before.

Given the limited knowledge, I had a lot of misconceptions about the series so my first few Bingo cards barely got any marks. It wasn't really a show that I expected to take seriously so I put stuff like:

- Kirk flirts with pretty women

- Scotty beams people up

- Spock says something insensitve

- Enterprise goes 'pew pew'

- He's dead, Jim or Someone dies.

Naturally, I didn't get Bingo much during the first few episodes but I realized that I was really enjoying the show. The characters are memorable, the themes are simple but thoughtful, while it does tend to be obvious when the writing is confined by its era, one gets the sense that the ideas must have been innovative at the time. Most importantly, it's very fun.

I've stopped doing the Bingo cards since I've already won and I've gotten better at knowing what recurring elements are in the show. Some of my favorite updated Bingo items though:

- The Pringle-Mailbox gun is used

- A Utopia is destroyed or There is no such thing as paradise when the Enterprise visits your planet

- Not enough budget for the captain's shirt or Kirk fanservice

- Kirk illogics a computer/AI/robot to death

- Formless alien or Alien is just human with weird clothes

- Bad guy has bad guy makeup and Females (and Kirk) get better glowing lighting

- Kirk x Enterprise as the One True Ship gets mentioned

- Omnipotent aliens give someone time-out

I try to watch at least an episode a day right after work when I have the time. Sometimes I push it to two episodes because ♡.

[discotreque]

LwD 2.03: We’ll Always Have Tom Paris

I’ve lived in the same apartment for eight years now, and yesterday was the fifth catastrophic mechanical failure of the same bathroom toilet���all unrelated issues, too; this time it was the fill valve. At this point I don’t know whether to call a plumber or an exorcist… but anyway, it’s been kind of hard to focus on Star Trek! Ugh.

This week’s episode is credited to M. Willis, who I last encountered on She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, a show about which I wrote literally 100,000 words of fanfic last year, in between Picard and Lower Decks when I had no Star Trek to obsess over. Willis’s She-Ra episodes tended to be slightly off-format in execution, with big action set pieces, lots of characters in unexpected combinations, and usually an emotional game-changer of a climax—and her last credit on this show was “Much Ado About Boimler,” which obviously had all those elements too. She writes to her strengths!

Spoilers within:

If you need me, I’m going to be ugly-laughing about “Voy” for the rest of the day. (Wow, that does actually save a ton of time!)

SHAXS IS BACKXS!!!! The lower-deckers never knowing how or why a senior officer came back from the dead is a perfect microcosm of this show. I love that he still calls Rutherford “Baby Bear,” and I love the weird cosmic horror that LwD keeps sprinkling into the Star Trek universe. (What does that koala know?) I hope this doesn’t mean we’ve seen the last of Kayshon! His appearance on the bridge gives me hope we’ll get to keep both characters around.

Star Trek has always had fairly fuzzy world-building for the world outside Starfleet—understandable, since 99% of Star Trek takes place within Starfleet—but it’s been such a thrill to see LwD (and Picard) finally establish some in-universe pop culture that isn’t conveniently familiar to 20th- or 21st-century audiences. Like the Zebulon Sisters last season—a band that apparently does USO-style tours of Starfleet ships? Delightful. Kestra Troi-Riker having a t-shirt from a Sex Pistols cover band in Klingon? Fucking brilliant. Tendi bonding with the guy at the storage place over the “Klingon acid punk” playing from his little Bluetooth speaker? PUT IT IN MY VEINS.

They really put the character development in gear this week! I liked how we locked in a couple of things already established in extra-canonical material: Mariner’s bisexuality, which Mike McMahan mentioned in an interview last year, and Tendi’s given name, D’vana (which I was sure we’d heard on the show before, but I guess not?).

Speaking of Mariner’s love life, is human–Bynar dating just… by definition a threesome situation?

We learned a lot of new things about Tendi, though, and every single one makes her 10 times more interesting to me. Remember last season, when she said “many” Orions hadn’t been pirates or slavers “for over five years”? Is the implication that something happened in Orion culture—around the end of the Dominion War?—that led to Tendi (and presumably others) rejecting a life of crime and joining Starfleet? How long was she “the Mistress of Winter Constellations” before that—or is it more of an inherited title? I want more Tendi lore!!!!

(Speaking of Tendi’s life, another quick and confounding piece of information for my red-yarn “what the hell is up with Tendiford” theory board: Mariner asks if they’re dating and Tendi’s response is “Not really!” Not really? That’s not no, D’vana!)

This show continues to be a surprisingly conventional workplace sitcom underneath all the excellent Star Trek (and that’s not a bad thing, just a genre overlap that keeps falling out of the front of my mind). Boimler’s inability to use the computer hit way too close to home for me this week: a couple years ago, I returned to a job after a long-term leave of absence, during which time I’d been assigned to a new manager—who’d never had an employee return from long-term leave before, so he didn’t know what to do beforehand—so I spent my first day back just chilling at my desk, fucking around on my phone, because there was literally nothing else I could do without logging into the system first. Too real!

Something we’ve seen in this show that I’m not sure we’ve seen before w/r/t the food replicators is somebody putting a tray of food into the replicator to add more food on top of it—in this case Shaxs getting spicy kiwi ketchup (?!) on a hot dog he seems to have already replicated. (He couldn’t have asked for “hot dog, with spicy kiwi ketchup” in the first place? This is haunting me worse than him coming back from the dead.)

As a certified cat lady, the T’Ana plotline—and its resolution—made me laugh until I couldn’t breathe (unless that was the toxoplasmosis). I should have seen it coming, but I was too distracted by the second-hand embarrassment of them breaking “Jeremy” (and the completely unprecedented Star Trek plot of a doctor getting off on her grandmother’s family heirloom…).

Miscellany:

Jet offering to carry Boimler across the threshold of the door like a bride… am I going to ship THIS now?

Mariner interpreting Tendi’s “talk like a pirate!” in the same way a modern millennial would—“Arr, how ya be doin’ today, me fellow Orion?”—might have been my favourite dumb joke in the entire episode. (“I’m allergic to, uh, pheromones?”)

Tawny Newsome read the line about “only one name, like Odo!” in the script and apparently literally called Mike McMahan out of the blue to remind him that Odo’s name is short for “Odo’ital” and she didn’t want nitpicking nerds on her case. He told her the line was so funny he would accept the nitpicking, so don’t blame Tawny—she tried to warn him!

“There’s like, only a couple people in the quadrant who can say they got beat up by Tom Paris.” Is that a burn? I think that’s a burn.

Another banger of an episode. This show is more confident this season, and I’m loving it—and based on what I’ve heard from people who’ve seen the next two episodes, it only gets better from here. HYYYYYYYPE!!!!!!

See you next week—I’ve got to go fashion a toilet plunger into a crucifix, apparently.

[lilydalexf]

Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with RivkaT

RivkaT has 28 stories at Gossamer and 270 stories at AO3, so she knows her way around fanfic and fandom. She's also a co-author of one of the most well-known X-Files fics of all time, Iolokus. I've recced that here before, along with some of my other favorites of her stories, including And Dance by the Light of the Moon and Into the Woods. Big thanks to RivkaT for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

I think it's amazing! Writing styles have changed so much, along with everything else, that it's really nice to know they're still being visited. I tried to show my son the pilot episode, and it didn't move him at all, but it's good to know it's not forgotten.

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?

I made a number of good friends, and had my first taste of bitter fandom battles. I made dumb mistakes and, I hope, learned a bit about navigating fandom spaces. My long-time writing partner MustangSally taught me that it was always worth blowing the budget in writing--go over the top if you want. I put that to good use in my next big fandom (Smallville).

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

I started on Usenet! Then mailing lists, and webrings, but mainly the Gossamer list.

What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

(1) Serials are different than works posted all at once, and have different strengths and weaknesses. (2) There are many ways to write a good fic, and somewhat fewer (but still a large number of) ways to write a bad one. (3) Most good fics are bad to some readers, and many bad fics are good to some readers, and that's okay. (4) Summaries can often instruct many readers how a work is meant to be perceived, especially if they already know you as a writer--the importance of authorial intent is clearly not dead and may be unkillable! (5) Fandom has awfulness and greatness in it because fans are people.

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

Dana Scully. Enough said! (Ok, it was Jose Chung's From Outer Space specifically, but Scully generally.)

What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

I mentioned to a friend that I was really into the show and she said that if I went online there were people writing stories about the characters. I knew about fanfic from childhood fannishness (Star Trek etc.) and so I went looking on this vaguely-understood thing, the internet. At the time I didn't have a computer that ran Windows so I logged onto Usenet at home and used Pine and Mosaic (an early search engine). When I wanted to see pictures I had to go to the computer lab at school.

What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom?

An ex where I don't have too much memory of the bitter and drawn-out breakup and just have vague nostalgia for the good times. Of course all that was about the show, not the fandom!

Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

A bunch, including BTVS, Smallville, and Supernatural. I loved them all--my relationships with those fandoms were equally intense, but associated with different times in my life and therefore different availability of time and other resources. I wish I had that new-fandom love again, but right now it's just not happening for me, even though I've experimented.

Who are some of your favorite fictional characters? Why?

Dana Scully, because she is Dana Scully: smart, driven, and good at her job, with occasional daddy issues. Subsequently, Lex Luthor, Olivia Dunham, Dean Winchester. I like characters who are driven by a sense of mission and who are really good at their jobs: competence porn!

Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully?

Not very often; I last did a rewatch about thirteen years ago.

Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom?

I rarely revisit the XF, but I could definitely be persuaded. I read a fair amount across various fandoms now, but mostly it's dabbling.

Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors?

Waaaay too many to mention. But if I had to choose: Jane Mortimer's The Sin Eater. Totally blew my mind about what fic could do. [Lilydale note: it really is a great fic!]

What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

I go through patches of love and hate for my own work. Right now I might pick my SPN/Smallville crossover Under Darkening Skies because I had fun with the character voices and I got at least one great set piece out of it (mannequins in a hell dimension).

Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online?

It seems unlikely but I have learned never to say never.

Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work?

For the past few years it's mostly been Yuletide, but I'd love to get back into it more if I can be inspired.

Where do you get ideas for stories?

I have no idea! Usually it was something that bugged me about an episode, or a chance to play with a classic trope, or a random news story that would spark an idea.

What's the story behind your pen name?

Not much of one--it's a variant of my nickname that was available on AOL and I managed to snag it on most platforms fans use, which has been lucky!

Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions?

Most of my friends are fannish and know everything; my family knows generally but basically doesn't want to know specifics, which is fine with me.

Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now?

Archive of Our Own.

Is there anything else you'd like to share with fans of X-Files fic?

Dana Scully Forever!

(Posted by Lilydale on August 18, 2020)

[keep-it-i-resign]

Fic Writer Asks

tagged by the lovely @vampcoffeegyrl23 I am soooo sorry this has taken over a week! I promise I was just busy away from my computer and using mobile is not the way to go about answering these! 😅

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

6 on AO3 and 6 on ffn.net. I haven't used the ffn.net account in years, i.e 2013 (and therefore my user name isn't even the same) so those 6 stories are different from my AO3 ones. I don't post most of what I write and now that I'm in my mid-20s with a few published papers behind me - I'm much more confident in my ability to write a cohesive and interesting story so expect more posted!

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

17,425 words which isn't bad for only 6 fics with two of those stories having additional chapters coming soon.

3. How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

On AO3? Just 1, which is The Flash and by extension Stargate SG-1 for the crossover I did for Snowells Week this year. Counting ffn.net that's 3 more with Castle, Doctor Who, and Firefly. Over my lifetime of writing fic for myself? I think only 7 more. Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Sanctuary, Harry Potter, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: TNG, and Left 4 Dead. Left 4 Dead isn't much of a fanfic but I did use the zombie types as place holders in an original story until I developed my own.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

I'll Be Waiting (The Flash - Caitlin/Harry)

Well... This is Awkward (The Flash - Caitlin/Harry, Frost/Nash, Caitlin/Nash, and Frost/Harry)

Rewind Time (The Flash - Caitlin/Harry)

Through the Gate (The Flash/Stargate SG-1 - Caitlin/Eowells)

Harvest Season (The Flash - Caitlin/Harry)

5. What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

I don't write angst much and I haven't posted many stories yet but of the ones posted I guess "I'll Be Waiting" is the angstiest.

6. What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

"Well...This is Awkward" has a pretty happy ending with everyone alive and together. Or maybe "Twilight of the Gods" because ReverseSnow/ReverseFrost happens and there is hope of bringing everything lost back and balance the universe again. I guess it depends on your definition of what constitutes as a happy ending. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

7. Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you've written?

I've only written one - The Flash/Stargate SG-1 crossover. I don't normally think about crossovers just because the shows I watch are so vastly different they can't really work or they are already in the same universe with the canon crossovers. I'm also not always a fan of reading them because they can get chaotic quick and characterization takes a dive in order to fit characters into other universes/situations. I admire anyone who can write it well though!

As a side note: I did have a thought about a Snowells into the Arkham universe fic just because I have been replaying the Batman Arkham video games which I might give a shot at.

8. Do you write smut? If so what kind?

👀I wrote one smutty story years ago and it's terrible because I was young and naïve. I haven't tried recently but I'm not opposed to giving it a shot now. I have a few ideas on a prompt list I have for Snowells already so it's really a matter of when will I get to it!

9. Do you respond to comments. why or why not?

I do when I can! I like to get feedback from my readers and having an open dialogue of what they liked or disliked is important for me! I want to know what my audience enjoyed and what to improve on! Responding to them also shows them I saw that they said and appreciate what they had to say! 🥰

10. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Surprisingly - no, even on my old and terribly written stuff. I'm perfectly open to criticism but hate? If you don't like it, you don't like it but others might. Why spend the time spreading negativity when the world has enough of it?

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

As far as I know - no.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No but given enough time I could probably translate mine. It would be grammatically atrocious because I rarely translate from English into any of the languages I know. It's normally the other way around! I'd definitely need a Beta who is fluent to correct my mistakes.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No but it's definitely something I'd try! I co-wrote an original story with a few friends of mine years ago in high school and enjoyed it. I like the idea of getting to talk and bounce ideas off of someone who enjoys the same fandoms and character as me! I haven't really done that since I grew apart from one of my friends from high school who I did that with.

14. What's your all time favorite ship?

What kind of question is this? Do people actually have an ultimate ship? Is that even possible? I have ships from several fandoms and sometimes multiple ships within a fandom. Most of the time I have a main ship from a fandom but that doesn't mean I discount any of the other ones that I or others enjoy as well. I'll throw out a few that I still got out and read for in order of what I read most often (either new stuff or re-reads) to what I read occasionally, at least according to my AO3 favorite tags.

Snowells (all variations) - The Flash

Jack O'Neill/Sam Carter - Stargate SG-1

Helen Magnus/Nikola Tesla - Sanctuary

Harry/Hermione - Harry Potter

William Murdoch/Julia Ogden - Murdoch Mysteries

Phil/ Melinda - Agents of SHIELD

Kathryn Janeway/Tom Paris - Star Trek: Voyager

Kate Fleming/Steve Arnott - Line of Duty

I will occasionally go check what kind of fics the fandom writes when I start a show just out of curiosity. Sometimes you can tell if there is fandom hate between ships by doing so and I know to steer clear, especially if I ship a lesser ship/non-canon ship. Also - the number of canon-divergence or rewrites will tell you if the shows writers start being ridiculous *cough* The Flash *cough* and whether it's worth getting attached at all.

15. What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

Hoo boy. I have a drive full of them. Most of which aren't even close to being posted. My biggest one right now is a complete re-write of The Flash dealing with a what if scenario of Earth-1 Tess Morgan being pregnant the night that Thawne kills them both and he chooses to birth the kid rather than let it die with her. It's set a few years earlier (so 18/19 years stuck in the past rather than the original 15 that the show has it) so the kid isn't Jesse but it changes how season 1 plays out and definitely how season 2 plays out when Harry finds out about the kid while dealing with the Jesse/Zoom issue. Plus it's Snowells too and I want to deal with Barry's mistakes and the consequences of them better than the show did since the show just kind of brushes them off? For some reason? I wanted things to have a little more consequence because some of the mistakes made are egregious and then they acted like it never happened which bothers me. It's a beast of a project and I'm - unfortunately- a perfectionist and a completionist. I'm thinking an episode per chapter rewrite but right now it's in bits and pieces and a lot of notes on how episodes would play out differently with an added character and dynamic.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue and scene positioning. I can write out the dialogue for a story quickly with the bare bones of the scene and movements playing out. After that, it takes me ages to expand the scene and fill in the bits between speaking lines because I can see the piece play out in my head and putting that to paper accurately and engagingly without being overwhelming is a multi-layered process.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Some of this is normal, you know, like grammar and spelling. My brain moves faster than I type so words or bit of phrases end up missing and I later have to fix it. I'm also a Southerner who grew up watching a ton of British shows so a lot of the way I phrase things isn't commonly used anywhere. I have to spend a lot of time double checking things like that. I think my biggest one is not knowing how to end stories satisfactorily. I haven't posted many fics because it's hard to post them when you don't know how to wrap everything up.

18. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

It depends on whether it's an established part of a character or story and whether or not I'm comfortable with the language. Like with Sherloque - it's established he'll say something in French and then repeat it in English. I took 3 years of French so I'm comfortable writing it and it fits the character and situation. But take Cisco, we know he speaks Spanish, but it's never really shown in the show. So fics that I've read where he breaks into Spanish can be distracting as we've never seen him do it - even in dire circumstances. I also never took Spanish in school and I only know rudimentary pieces (I took Mandarin and Latin instead), so I'm unlikely to use it in any fic I write unless the circumstances warrant it (say - Cisco is talking to a grandparent or a meta struggling with English).

But again, it depends on the situation, what we know of the character, and how comfortable I am with the language enough to get it correct and in character. Any fic writer who can get the situation and character down while using a secondary language, and not make it distracting deserves applause!

19. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Hit me with a hard one why don't you? 🤣 I think it was Stargate SG-1 or maybe it was Stargate Atlantis. You're asking me to think back over a decade and a half ago to when I started reading and writing fic at the tender age of 7 or 8. I'm fairly certain it was one of those two fandoms and it might've been a crossover. I do remember writing part of it on an old Gateway computer running Windows '98 with a glass monitor that was mine and my sisters. The other half was written on an electric type-writer that I owned because this was before laptops were widely available and affordable.

20. What's your favorite fic you've written?

It's a tie between "Twilight of the Gods" and "I'll Be Waiting". "Twilight of the Gods" because I got to show off a few of my degrees (History and Classics, I couldn't shoehorn in my others but they are science related and that doesn't quite fit that story). "I'll Be Waiting" is a favorite because it's a big middle finger to whoever / collective group wrote The Flash season 7. I'm still pissed off at how the Wells plotline was dealt with and let's not get started on the whole Chillblaine/Kramer/Forces as kids of WA plots (ewwwwwww 🤢). I'd need a whole new post to talk about how tired I am of the WA kids showing up (because screw how that'll effect the timeline, right?) and the reliance on the future to drive what decisions are made (because, again, screw how bad that would be for the timeline - it's not like we have seen how much that effects things before right?) 😒

Phew.....That was longer than I expected, honestly, but a lot of fun!

Tagging whoever wants to talk about their works because you are all wonderful people who should get a chance to share!

[halfblood-fiend]

On Humans and Nightmares - Star Trek TOS (with ST: Discovery lore), pre-relationship Kirk x Spock

Taking place shortly after the episode, The Conscience of the King, Kirk grapples with his dredged up trauma and Mr. Spock offers a solution taken from his own past personal experience with his adopted sister.

Words: 4,792

Rating: General Audiences

Warning(s): some hinting to the murder fate of Burnham’s parents, maybe some PTSD if you had annoying/irresponsible older siblings 

Read it on AO3

Jim Kirk sat at the desk in his dimly lit quarters and tried to focus on the words swimming in his vision as best as he could. No matter how stubbornly he stared, the words refused to stay put, to stay sharp. In fact, they seemed rather hellbent in proving this to be an exercise in futility. The reports on the PADDs blurred together in his mind until he couldn’t remember which he had read and approved and which he hadn’t. His itchy eyes and heavy lids were all but begging him to go to sleep. Just get some damn sleep, you miserable fool!

Funny. His inner voice of reason sounded an awful lot like Bones. That thought distracted and amused him for a moment and Jim tried to stretch out his neck and shift in his chair to keep himself awake. Because no matter how badly his body or that inner voice of Bones wanted him to sleep, he couldn’t listen to either.

Or wouldn’t listen to it, as was more the case.

For three days now, nightmares had plagued him. It was silly and childish, and very much not befitting of a captain, to be so afraid of the dark—of sleeping—but Jim thought that if he had to relive Tarsus IV again one more time it might just be the death of him.

Maybe he should have gone straight to Bones for help after the first. If he went right now, maybe he could cajole his friend into giving him some sleep-inducing hypo-spray. Jim considered it…and then dismissed it. The risk of Bones pouring him a glass of whiskey and sitting Jim down to make him “talk it out” was just too great. That was the last thing Jim wanted to do, no matter how good a medically induced death-like sleep sounded. No, he couldn’t risk Bones deciding to do his job this time around. Jim already knew, definitively, whiskey or not, that he did not want to talk about this. What else was there to say about Tarsus that hadn’t already been said before?

Kodos had murdered thousands of people, and then Jim just let him get away with it. Twice. He hadn’t listened to his old friend or his gut and then the murderer was allowed to just…die. All those souls who could never rest easy… Jim had let them all down. Four thousand souls sitting heavy on his shoulders. Like ghosts, they haunted him, plagued him with nightmares as penance for not extracting their justice in their name.

There wasn’t enough whiskey in the galaxy to numb that, let alone in Bones’ stash.

So his perfect and flawless plan to avoid the nightmares? Avoid sleeping.

Jim massaged his eyes with his fingers until black dots popped in his vision. He sat back, yawning, and then the door chime rang. For a heartbeat, he stared at the bulkhead and considered pretending to be asleep, until a nasty thought occurred to him:

Jim had already shirked his duty as a survivor, it would be shameful to avoid his responsibility as a Captain too.

He set his mouth. “Enter,” he sighed.

The door slid open, revealing his first officer in the hallway. Mr. Spock glided inside, his eyes glued to his own PADD. He was already speaking before he had made it fully through the threshold.

“Captain, there seems to be minute inconsistencies in the computer’s analysis of the geothermal data we collected on Al’her V. I wonder if—”

The Vulcan glanced up at Jim for the first time and stopped dead. The look in his eyes made Jim wonder what an awful sight he was, to give his first officer such pause. He tried to give Spock a smile, hoped it wasn’t more of a grimace. “You wonder if?” he prompted.

“Sir…” Spock cocked his head to the side. Jim had hardly known Spock to hesitate when he had something to say, and something in the timbre of the other man’s single syllable made him curious. Jim felt it teetered on the edge of something that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He stared at Spock’s mouth for a moment, fascinated by it. Waiting.

No, he was thinking too much into it. He was delirious. Jim rubbed his face again and said a quick prayer to anyone listening that his exhaustion wouldn’t give way to impropriety.

At least, not today.

“Captain,” Spock said seriously, appearing to make up his mind, “are you well?”

To tell the truth or to tell a lie? To tell or to lie? There were merits and downsides to both, and Jim attempted to weigh them all quickly in his sluggish mind.

“No, Spock, I…” Jim began… and then lost his nerve. “I’m just tired is all.”

“Tired,” Spock echoed. His dark eyes flicked to the bright green letters of the chronometer beside Jim’s bed and then to the neatly tucked in sheets. Been that way for days. “If you have not slept since our last full shift on the bridge, I calculate that you will not have slept for nearly thirty-six hours.”

“Oh?” It was thirty-eight, actually. If one counted the two hours before their shift that Jim’s last nightmare had stolen from him. But who was counting?

“That is unsafe for a human, and more so for a starship captain. You should consider seeing to your needs for the greater benefit.”

Jim could only find it in himself to nod. He knew that already. He had given the same sort of lecture to himself, but the consistency of the nightmares made it difficult. Even if he did fall asleep, the snatches of rest he got were fitful at best. So, what did Spock know about it? Jim didn’t have the patience right now to listen to this.

His displeasure may have shown on his face, for Spock’s brows knit. He approached Jim’s desk and sat gracefully on the other side of it, laying his PADD aside. When the man spoke again, his voice was gentler, and made Jim’s heart ache in his chest.

“It is something else, isn’t it? Something, perhaps, to do with the travelling theatre troupe? I do realize how the loss of Govenor Kodos must have affected you.”

“How could you possibly realize that?” Jim spat before he could stop himself.

Spock may have appeared unmoved by the venom in Jim’s voice, but he felt immediately guilty anyway. Spock didn’t have anything to do with it, he didn’t deserve to be snapped at. He was even, quite unexpectedly, trying to help Jim.

His heart shriveled up in his chest. He backtracked. “I’m sorry, Spock. I… yes. Kodos or Karidian or whomever he was… his end was…dissatisfying to say the least. I’ve been unsettled ever since.”

“You are dissatisfied with his death?”

“I am dissatisfied with the lack of justice in it.” Jim considered saying more. He considered telling his first officer that it was unfair and frustrating and made him feel like the useless child once again, watching the horror unfold from behind the stands. Powerless once more. But these were all feelings, just raw emotions and Spock would never, either by his nature or by his own desire, understand any of those.

And Jim refused to unburden himself by burdening this Vulcan with his humanity.

Besides, Jim was sure that Spock was sure there was more to it anyway. It was hard to put anything past him. The other man’s interlaced fingers pressed to his lips; Spock’s lovely, deep-set eyes regarded him.

“One would assume you wouldn’t lose sleep over mere dissatisfaction. “

“They’re just nightmares, Spock,” Jim said quickly, realizing that he had to act fast if he wanted to wriggle out of the same impromptu therapy he had wanted to avoid in Bones. “Old faces. Old nightmares. Nothing to be very worried about, but still. I don’t sleep well.”

“Ah.” Spock nodded, more to himself it seemed. “And you hoped that staying alert for as long as possible would—”

“Make me too tired to dream, yes,” Jim finished for him. “That was the idea, anyway. I wish there was a guarantee it would work…”

Spock was quiet a few moments, his brows knit a little while he thought. Jim found himself sleepily taking advantage of the vulcan’s downturned gaze. He hadn’t been this close to Spock for some time, trying to give him the distance he deserved, even though Jim wanted very badly to be near him. Constantly, inexplicably. Vulcans, he knew, didn’t appreciate that. But maybe if he drank in Spock’s face now, Jim could replace his nightmares with far pleasanter dreams. Filled with long steepled fingers and black bangs and dark eyes, curving pointed ears and high cheekbones—Spock suddenly looked up, brightly, for a Vulcan, and took Jim aback. “If I may…Jim, offer something of a solution?”

His name! Jim didn’t think Spock had ever used his name before. He was surprised that he had used ‘Jim’ and not ‘James.’ It was more proper, more expected. Overwhelmingly curious, Jim indicated that Spock continue.

“It has been my experience that humans, as social creatures, garner direct benefits from social interactions. I…knew of another human who often had nightmares in the first several years that I knew her. These dreams went away with time and mental discipline, but a temporary solution could be found once she was no longer alone in a room. It is…an imperfect solution, and perhaps it would make you uncomfortable, but as an integral member of this crew with so many lives at risk, I hope you give it proper consideration, Jim. So, it is by this logic that offer my company in your room tonight so that you may get some clearly much needed rest.”

Jim stared. He couldn’t believe his ears. Spock was offering to—what? —stay the night with him? Keep him company? That couldn’t be right. That seemed...so out of character. Not that Jim claimed to know his first officer very well beyond a spotless service record. Did he make a habit of keeping nightmare-having women company in their quarters? That wasn’t something that was on his file.

There is nothing else for it but to ask, Jim supposed.

“And…just what are you intending to propose? I am…afraid it’s unclear. Forgive me.”

Spock nodded as though there was nothing amiss and Jim wasn’t sitting across from him having an audible heart attack while being prodded with jealousy. “Not surprising given your sleepless state. I am offering my presence for whatever comfort you might take from it. It is my estimation that I may just as easily analyze reports in your quarters as in mine. Only here, I hypothesize I would aid in putting your mind to rest.”

Ah. So…just offering to stay over to be another body in the room. Jim tried to ignore the way his heart shrunk in disappointment.

He didn’t know what his imagination had been on about. That, all-of-a-sudden, Spock would crawl right into his bed was ludicrous.

And yet.

Rubbing his face again, banishing impure thoughts mingled with disappointment, Jim agreed. “It’s worth a shot. Better than what I’m doing, anyway, if I’m being honest. Though I will request that you don’t tell Bones. About the nightmares, I mean. He’d have my head if he knew I wasn’t reporting sleeping problems again.”

“It is my experience that our dear doctor has ‘had men’s heads’ for less, but I will comply.”

Jim smiled. “Bones is just a staunch believer in tough love, that’s all. I…appreciate what you’re doing, Spock. You will…wake me if—”

“I will keep an eye out, Captain, and wake you if anything seems amiss.”

Jim hadn’t missed the way Spock had switched back to his formal name-calling. He wasn’t upset about it. He wasn’t.

With a final lingering look, Jim rose and drowsily made his way to his bed. His heaviness hit him all at once. He had really managed to stay up for a long while, hadn’t he? He hadn’t pulled such a stunt since all-nighters in his academy days. But it wasn’t just his finals he was risking anymore. Spock was right about becoming a danger to his ship, of course. Jim was putting all their lives at risk with his fear.

He had half a mind to crawl into bed in his clothes, both for ease and to protect Spock’s eyes, but Jim knew he could never get comfortable like that. So he stripped down to his briefs and dove into bed as quickly as he could manage. He blushed, but made sure not to glance back at Spock, presumably still sitting at the desk.

Don’t think about him watching you undress.

Closing his eyes, Governor Kodos’ face swam into Jim’s vision right on time, but it didn’t bring with it the pangs of anger or regret. This time, the half-shadowed memory hardly bothered Jim at all.

This time, Jim didn’t have to face his demon alone.

Spock resumed his previous manual calculations and noted that Jim was quiet for several hours. It was just as well.

For a moment after he made his offer, Spock experienced a fleeting pang of regret, a sudden nagging at the back of his consciousness that he was being far too forward with the Captain.

Obvious, to put it bluntly. He was being obvious.

Whatever base attraction he had to the captain had to be controlled and ignored. He mustn’t let him know. Not because the Captain would be cruel or make an ordeal out of it—he wouldn’t, Spock was certain—but because Spock would never be able to live with the soft pity he could vividly imagine in Jim’s eyes if he learned of Spock’s infatuation.

Tonight, he had nearly given himself away.

While logical for a human to require the comfort of another person in the room with them to sleep, Spock had promptly assessed that his offer was being taken in a more physical direction than he had originally intended. Jim’s blank and uncertain surprise had all but confirmed it.

Spock caught and corrected his behavior, as he so often did around Jim, but decided not rescind his solution.

The offer, after all, had been genuine, and from genuine experience.

Since her arrival in their home, Michael Burnham had been plagued with nightmares.

At first, her shouts in the dead of night from down the hall were irksome to him, disturbing Spock either during his late meditation or his own slumber on numerous occasions. When it became apparent they would be a regular occurrence, Spock found himself uniquely concerned. Not only for himself, and how being woken through the night might affect his days in the Learning Center, but also for the affect it had on his mother, who was most often the one who would go to Michael and console her. He never spared much thought for the wellbeing of the new intruder, Michael Burnham until some time later.

After Michael had lived with them for a few months and his concern now included her, he got up the nerve to ask about her nightmares. It was a particularly cool afternoon, late in the year, and they worked together on assignments in a sunny spot on their kitchen table.

“Why do you have nightmares every night?”

Michael turned furtive in her seat across from him. She pulled the textbook they were sharing nearer to her PADD and pretended to be engrossed in it.

“What are they of?”

Shrugging, she mumbled, “I dunno. Just...bad dreams, I guess.”

Spock could tell she was lying but could also tell that pressing the issue outright would yield him no new results. He judged a new tack of lending helpfulness would fare better. Humans, generally most people, responded well to being helped by their peers.

“When I have bad dreams, father cautions me to meditate on them. Being afraid of them gives them power. He says it’s better to face it outright—”

“I guarantee you that we don’t have the same bad dreams, Spock.” Her voice was cold and hard, and her eyes did not move over the text in any attempt to appear she was reading anymore. “Can’t you just drop it?”

“I want to help you,” Spock insisted, leaning forward in his chair. “If you don’t do well in the Learning Center—”

“I’m doing fine!”

“No, you’re not. Your productivity is declining by 2.3 percent a week and your response times are most likely inhibited by—”

Michael clapped her hands to her ears and squeezed her eyes shut, crying, “Just STOP IT! Can’t you see I don’t want to talk about it? Just STOP ASKING!”

This was not going as well as he planned. “I only want to help—”

“My parents were murdered by Klingons right in front of me! I have to hear it every night! You can’t help that! NO one can!”

Spock's mouth snapped closed and he stared across at her. For a long time, he couldn't think of a single thing to say. What could be said?

And before he realized an apology should be tumbling from his lips, Michael had scooped up all her study materials and rushed from the table, tears streaming behind her.

Sybok slouched into the room just as Michael pushed past him. He looked up at Spock with bleary but accusing eyes. “What did you do now?”

“Nothing!”

“They might not have as much control over their emotions as our kind, but even humans don’t cry for ‘nothing’.”

“I wasn’t doing anything. I was trying to help!”

His older brother’s lean face was impassive, but Spock swore he saw the glint of mischief in his eyes. “Of course,” Sybok scoffed. “You did a great job.”

Scowling, Spock shoved away from the table and collected his own things.

Don’t be mad. I don’t feel anger. The way his human eyes pricked in the corners were in direct contradiction to his thoughts.

Spock was trying to help. And what did Sybok know about that? All he did was stay shut up in his room, sometimes for days on end, until Amanda lured him out with food. Spock didn’t think he had ever thought about helping Michael.

“Where are you going now?”

Spock ignored him. He kept his head low, intent on pushing past Sybok if he tried to stop him. But he met no resistance.

“How about you try not to make it worse this time,” Sybok called after Spock as he reached the stairwell.

Without glancing back, Spock took them two at a time.

He would speak with Michael again. He would apologize. He would—

But he never did get to that day, or any day after. The next time he saw Michael, she acted as though nothing had transpired at all. Spock had been forced to let it go.

Until one night, when both Sarek and Amanda were out for the evening at a dignitary’s gala.

Spock had nearly fallen asleep when a scream—Michael’s scream—echoed through the house.

Turning over, Spock pressed his pillow around his head and attempted to go back to sleep. Sybok was in charge. He would handle it in his parents’ absence. Likely in the same indifferent way he had handled “dinner”, but he would handle it all the same. Michael’s wellbeing wasn’t Spock’s problem tonight. Their parents had said…

And then a small, timid knock on his door roused him from the edges of a hazy dream.

Rubbing his eyes, swallowing his annoyance, Spock threw himself out of bed and stomped across the floor. He yanked on the handle, and there Michael stood, with tears in her eyes. Sneaking a glance down the hall, Spock saw Sybok’s door firmly closed and Michael’s thrown wide open.

“Is something wrong?” he asked, struggling to keep irritation out of his voice. “Are you hurt? Do you require a healer?”

Michael shook her head, but still the tears ran silently down her cheeks. “M-may I enter?”

Without a valid reason not to, Spock stood aside for her. She wiped her nose and tried to gather herself in the dark room as he waited. He focused on keeping perfectly still to keep his foot from tapping. It helped to busy himself counting the seconds of lost sleep in his head and attempting to calculate the impact they would have on his marks at the Learning Center the next morning. In the end, it was impossible to be accurate because his data was incomplete without a single important variable: how long this interruption would take.

“I can hear them, Spock,” Michael said finally. She was quiet and her voice sounded raw on the edges from crying. “Have you ever heard a Klingon growl before? My dad, he shouted at them, but he couldn’t stop—my mom—” Whatever else she might have said choked off in a sob.

Spock’s eyes grew wide and his body became tense. He was not equipped to deal with…this.

Suddenly, Spock understood. Sarek had informed him and his brother before she arrived of the fate of Michael Burnham’s real parents and warned them against asking Michael about it.

“Humans don’t often wish to discuss such things,” his father had said. “They find these emotions difficult to process and attempt to avoid them. You should respect that desire until she is ready.”

Sybok yawned in a way that felt very purposeful, but Spock had diverted Sarek’s reprimand by asking, “How long should we expect that to take?”

He pressed his mouth in a line as he stared at his eldest son for a moment before answering his youngest, “It is impossible to approximate. Perhaps she will never choose to speak of it, but we must maintain that it is her choice to do so.”

How he wished he had made the connection between this and Michael’s nightmares. It seemed so obvious now.

To his surprise (or maybe relief) she didn’t say any more, though neither did her tears subside. Spock wondered if he should attempt to comfort her somehow, but found he was ill-equipped to do that either. Spock couldn’t even raise his arms to offer a hug. He just stood there motionless, mouth glued shut, tongue like lead.

Helpless. Useless.

Michael finally spoke. “Would.. would it be okay if I slept in here with you? I could get my blanket and stay on the floor? Usually Amanda comes and stays with me until I go back to sleep, but… but…”

But his mother wasn’t here, he finished for her.

Spock licked his lips and tried to speak, but still nothing would come. The request didn’t seem outlandish, through his mind pricked with a strange desire to do more. But what, he didn’t know, so he nodded.

As Michael dashed away to grab her things, Spock tried to reconcile what it must have been like to relieve the loss of your family over and over again in your dreams. Being tortured by the other children was one thing. The vague monstrous shapes of his imagination that haunted his own nightmares was one thing. But a memory that wouldn’t leave you? He tried to imagine his mother screaming, his home burning, his father fighting the hulking shapes of Klingon warriors wielding fierce glinting bat’leths, and Spock understood. His heart ached terribly, and he felt his own hot tears prickle at the corners of his eyes.

Inappropriate, as Vulcans do not cry. Shaking his head, Spock bid the imaginary specters to leave him alone, assuring himself that the only danger threatening his mother and father tonight was an overabundance of champagne.

By the time she had returned clutching her duvet and pillow, he’d regained control of himself.

Michael closed the door behind her and followed him back towards his bed. She stopped short and tossed her pillow on the ground by the thick rug protruding from under the bed’s feet.

Pausing in pulling away his covers, Spock made a quick and logical decision. “That is unnecessary,” he said, finding his voice at last. Maybe he couldn’t describe his empathy to her, or fully realize how awful it must have been to relive your parents’ final moments, as he still had his. Maybe he couldn’t quite give the Terran the exact comfort she might have needed, but Spock was convinced he could still do something. “Your dreams have already deprived you of hours of restful sleep tonight. I see no reason to spend the rest of your time in discomfort when my bed is plenty big enough for the both of us.”

Michael, wide-eyed and disbelieving, looked from her pillow on the floor to Spock’s large bed. “Are…are you sure?”

Admittedly, he swam in it most nights. “Yes. It’s logical.”

She blinked at him a moment more before scooping the pillow up and climbing up onto the bed, dragging her own duvet behind her. She wriggled to the far side as Spock clambered in after her.

“Good night, Spock,” Michael whispered as he gathered his own blanket around himself.

He hoped it would prove to be now. “Good night, Michael.”

They both quickly fell back asleep and did not wake the rest of the night.

It was the first of many such encounters in their youth, and eventually, she stopped asking permission at all. It came to be that whenever Spock heard his door open, rousing him from sleep, he rolled over to the side to make room for his sister.

There was a marked difference, she informed him objectively, in the consistency of her nightmares when she had his presence beside her.

Spock was satisfied he could similarly aid his captain, now.

Just as he decided to settle in for a meditation, Jim’s rest took a turn for the worse. He began to pant and to moan piteously as he shifted in his bed. Then he thrashed, a twist of limbs and blanket. The only intelligible words that could be discerned by Spock’s ears was “No.” The single syllable left his lips in a string and ended in a final, barely audible, “Not them.”

Spock crossed to Jim and deliberated a moment. The Human’s handsome face was scrunched as though he were in pain, lovely mouth open and gasping for breath. Spock reached a hand towards Jim’s forehead, but paused. No, that seemed like a severe breach in manners. Many humanoids did not appreciate their minds being invaded without permission. He didn’t know the Captain quite well enough for that.

Yet.

Spock pressed the thought from his mind with vague irritation and considered alternatives when Jim suddenly rolled over away from him towards the wall. The new position exposed an ample amount of space on the mattress, ample enough to—

With hindsight, Spock realized he could have—and perhaps should have—wakened Jim and let events unfold from there. But in the moment, with Michael’s ordeal still on his mind, and wanting Jim to have a full night’s peace, Spock did what he would continue to argue was “perfectly logical” for days later. Even when he knew, deep down and with burning shame, that it very much was not.

He dispensed himself of his polished black boots and carefully tested his weight on the edge of the mattress. Spock watched Jim closely, searching for any indication he was waking. All he saw was Jim’s broad back heaving, his head twitching minutely on his pillow. It appeared to be safe enough. He was not disturbed.

Spock climbed into bed behind the fitful captain and when that alone did not appear to ease Jim’s heartrate, he snaked his arms around the other man’s waist. Michael had found this comforting in their youth, he reasoned, and most, if not all, Humans gained distinct benefit from touching others. He would ask forgiveness later, he decided, closing his eyes. He listened to the erratic patter of Jim’s heart and labored breathing, counting the beats and noting their rhythm.

Jim’s relief with the pressure of his arm was very nearly instantaneous. Tense muscles in his back and neck relaxed, a long sigh parted his lips, and, slowly, minute by minute, the frantic heartbeat settled. As Jim relaxed into a deep sleep, he pressed himself into Spock’s chest and the Vulcan noted that he fit snuggly. Almost as though it was where he belonged.

Spock roughly shoved the thought from his mind before it could have the chance to plant itself and grow.

This is logical, Spock thought firmly, settling his head onto the Captain’s second pillow. This is necessary to protect the rest of the crew.

His own fluttering heart was the only thing brave enough to call him a liar.

Thank you for reading! <3

[kinetic-elaboration]

October 16: 1x19 Tomorrow Is Yesterday

Today, one of the best, most entertaining, and most fun TOS episodes.

This intro is so strange lol. If I were watching this in 1967, I’d be like “Has Star Trek been preempted by something dumb?” It’s also very short.

That is in fact the definition of a UFO--what’s less identified than the Enterprise?

I can’t wait until a space ship of people from the future shows up. It’s 2020 so anything could happen.

Captain’s Log: This is weird!

I love all the shots of the Enterprise through this ep. How clearly it’s cut and pasted against the sky, the weird and jerky way it moves.

So I was confused by the use of the term “black star”--it is in fact a black hole (Spock’s eternal nemesis lol); that term just wasn’t well known or settled on to describe that particular phenomenon in 1967.

The method of time travel reminds me of The Naked Time (wasn’t that also like snapping a rubber band?) and according to the amazon trivia, this was supposed to be The Naked Time part two--which actually would have been pretty cool.

“If Scotty’s not dead” lol. How dark.

Amazed by how efficient this ship is--they get those reports back to Spock really damn fast.

I love how Kirk is so smart and good at history that he can immediately date when they are based on the news about a moon landing. (Although actually this episode pre-dates the actual moon landing so that was just a guess as to when it would happen, which I find AMAZING tbh.)

The drama of the time travel reveal! Close up on Kirk’s face: WHAT??

Sulu’s eye makeup is great. Bones’s is too, later.

“The craft might have nuclear warheads, which would be rather inconvenient for us.”

Kirk doesn’t know his own lady’s strength. Whoops, we accidentally destroyed your ship.

Why does Christopher beam up standing? Because it would be too funny if he beamed up sitting and then immediately fell on his ass?

Kirk immediately checks him out, and then starts flirting. He is so shameless.

“I’m a Captain too! I’m from Iowa!”

“Woman?” / “Crewman” feminist exchange paired with that horn music that usually accompanies Jessica Rabbit. Well A for effort boys.

The Enterprise is one of only 12 in the fleet. Not that that’s really trustworthy since everything in S1 of TOS is seat of the pants random facts and numbers lol. This episode refers to BOTH Starfleet and UESPA--and possibly the Federation? Already can’t remember. I don’t understand any more than Captain Christopher does.

“We’re a combined service.” Combined from what?

Captain Christopher was one of the best guest characters. Love how he’s on this amazing futuristic ship and the only thing he can say about it is “you guys sure fuck up a lot.”

Spock is having tons of fun with the new Earthman like IMMEDIATELY. “I also don’t believe in little green men--by which I mean don’t call me little.”

Another ep in which Spock is referred to as a Lt. Cmdr. while pretty clearly wearing a Commander’s uniform.

“Don’t touch anything.”

“Anything else on your mind, Mr. Spock? A threesome perhaps?”

“Jim, we cannot not exist.”

“That flight suit must be uncomfortable”--so unsubtle in wanting to get him undressed. “Why don’t you slip into something a little more comfortable, Captain?”

“Signet 14 is a planet dominated by women...with a sense of humor.”

“You can’t go home now that you know what the future looks like--damn fine, I mean take a look at us.”

“We’ve no place to go!” Oh Scotty, always coming in to burst some bubbles. They should have just gone on tours everyone’s home towns for fun.

And now Captain Christopher tries to escape. Exactly what Kirk would do in his situation. And yet Kirk is perplexed: “I sent him to his room--and he’s not in his room!”

Bones is so convinced that they have to leave and get back to their own time because they can’t have 435 people just wandering around 20th century Earth changing the timelines and that’s legit--but I think they could have stuck him in 1960s Georgia and he’d do fine. Except for the racism.

“Now you’re sounding like Spock.” Jim! How dare!!

“Could he be reeducated to forget his family” sounds VERY suspicious out of context. Or, really, in context.

Bones identifying that Spock is joking is hilarious and sweet. He pretends he doesn’t know him, but he does.

Kirk’s face when Spock is talking about Christopher Jr. is so MUCH--he looks like he could try.

I love the colors of this episode. I would buy a color tv for this for sure.

“Our tractor beam caught and crushed an Air Force plane.” Well that’s not good. Hard to explain that one.

Sulu gets to go on a one-on-one away mission with the Captain! And he’s obviously having a grand time.

“Look at this cool bulletin board!”

“Look at this primitive computer!” Which Kirk can identify because he likes going to museums because he’s a NERD I rest my case.

I feel like Spock is super alien today. Just giving off a lot of alien vibes. “I am working on my calculations.”

This episode is so hilarious; I love it. This guy’s reactions to Kirk and Sulu and their communicator, and their reactions to him and the whole situation. It’s really pretty cure comedy without much bearing on the plot--just for fun.

“I don’t hear anything.” I mean--you’re officers?? That’s the best you can do?

“Hmmm, you’re not Jim.” “We seem to have another problem.” “An unfortunate accident.” Bones taking the gun and probably keeping it. The absolutely on point score. “Our guest seems quite satisfied to remain where he is.”

Also “A subplot of this episode is that Kirk and Sulu steal government documents from an Air Force base” sounds very fake, but it’s completely true and accurate.

Kirk just straight up LAUNCHING himself at those guys. The ONLY valid fight scenes are in Star Trek TOS and it’s all because of Kirk and his highly choreographed fight moves.

“Three against one? Why don’t you get two more guys and make it a fair fight.”

But then as soon as he’s caught he turns on the charm.

Spock: “Poor photography.” He never knows the right thing to say, does he?

And now the obligatory moment when Bones accuses Spock of not caring about Jim even though he of all people should know better.

This interrogation scene is also hilarious and one of my favorites. How he doesn’t say his middle name is Tiberius. Wincing when they throw the weapon around. “I’m a little green man from Alpha Centuri.” “This little thing? Just something I slipped on.” “Two hundred years? That oughtta be just about right.”

Tbh sometimes I do feel better about the AOS!Kirk characterization because of scenes like this. Like, you could see that mid-20s Kirk turning into this mid-30s Kirk; the sense of humor is similar.

This man in the beret is having a fun time. I think he’d like to stay here. Also, I find the food replicators in the transporter room really random but I guess that was a budget issue.

This is such a good-natured episode. Everyone’s so friendly, so forgiving of light moments of back-stabbery, so generally good-hearted.

You’ve seen the Vulcan nerve pinch, now get ready for the Sulu shoulder chop! And then the Vulcan nerve pinch! And then the  Kirk very-fake-looking punch in the face!

Spock so obviously wants to kiss it better. The camera is away from them for so long, it’s possible there was a lot of hand fondling going on.

And then everything about the rest of the scene--how Spock somehow leaves by one door and comes in by another to get behind Christopher; how he lurks out of focus in the background; the random shots of Sulu’s face; all the opportunities for Kirk to look Fond.

Aw, poor Christopher. Didn’t get into NASA but he still gets to go to space. I wonder if a part of him did remember all this and that’s how he inspired his son to work on the Saturn probe.

Also there is no way for DC Fontana or anyone else to know this but there was a Saturn probe launched in 2004, which is approximately the right timeline to match this ep--if Christopher’s son was born in 1970, he would have been in his mid-30s in 2004.

“You only have 15 years, so you better hurry”--Kirk, hurrying to get his last flirty comment in.

More shaky ship and more people throwing themselves around the set. Never gets old.

Christopher sure learned the ship fast. He’s already pushing buttons to talk to the bridge. Maybe NASA made a mistake.

Scotty is a genius lol--they were SUPER precise in getting both of those guys back to the exact right moment in time.

“Mr. Scott is still with us”--again!

Uhura really likes the lady computer voice.

“The Enterprise is home!”

Amazing ep, as expected. I don’t have deep commentary on it because it wasn’t a deep episode, but it was a rollicking fun time. Next up is Court Martial, primarily memorable for the introduction of Kirk’s ex-girlfriend, The Lawyer.

[ramblingsofachristiannerd]

tagged by the lovely @castiel-saved-me-from-myself​ <3

pick 10 ships without reading the questions (only 10?! XD)

1. Rey/Ben Solo (Star Wars)

2. Ninth Doctor/Rose Tyler (Doctor Who)

3. Rumpelstiltskin/Belle (Once Upon a Time)

4. Revan/Bastila Shan (Star Wars, Knights of the Old Republic) 

(This fandom is so niche I couldn't find a gif of them so I used this beautiful art from aimo at DeviantArt.com XD)

5. Lotor/Allura (Voltron)

6. Kanan Jarrus/Hera Syndulla (Star Wars Rebels)

7. Remus Lupin/Tonks (Harry Potter)

8. Odo/Kira Nerys (Star Trek Deep Space 9)

9. Bucky Barnes/Natasha Romanoff (Marvel)

10. Bruce Wayne/Selina Kyle (Gotham)

1. Do you remember the episode/scene/chapter that you first started shipping 6?

I watched Rebels out of order my first time, so the first time I really saw them interact was when he came back from Malachor blinded, and she just wordlessly hugged him. I actually thought they were already together XD 

2. Have you ever read a fanfiction about 2?

so many XD Nine/Rose is one of the best pairings for fluff fic

3. Has a picture of 4 ever been your screen saver/profile picture/tumblr?

they were my desktop on my computer for a while haha

4. if 7 were to suddenly break up today, what would your reaction be?

I mean they’re kind of dead, so...but if they had broken up I’d be really upset because the whole fact that they’re together is an important part of Lupin’s character development, and leaving her would have meant he lost all the confidence he gained

5. Why is 1 so important?

ho hoooooo, I am glad this one lined up, because I have a lot of thoughts on why 1 is important. I think key for me is that they help each other grow - they’re always honest with each other and point out each other’s flaws in a way that’s helpful. They see each other for who they truly are, and value that. And their power dynamic is truly equal; he comforts her as much as she comforts him. She saves him as much as he saves her. There’s no gender role thing going on, their personalities just nicely mesh. And they don’t sell themselves short for each other; she slammed a door in his face until he proved he actually changed, and only then did she take him back. And he left the dark side because he was tired of it, not because she told him to. I just think they’re really healthy 

6. is 9 a funny ship or a serious ship?

They’re kind of both in the comics, where they are canon, but it’s still played for drama more often than not

7. out of all the ships listed, which ship has the most chemistry?

toughhhhh question, because all the ones with extensive screentime have great chemistry. so I guess all of them 

8. out of all your ships listed, which ship has the strongest bond?

also a tough one, but I think i’d have to say either Kanan/Hera or Kira/Odo, because both pairings were best friends for years first and went through a lot together 

9. How many times have you read/watched 8′s fandom?

I have watched DS9 so many times I've lost count XD

10. Which ship has lasted the longest?

uhhh out of universe, Kira and Odo; in-universe, probably Belle and Rumpel

11. how many times, if ever, has 2 broken up?

if you don’t count eternal separation, never

12. if the world was suddenly thrust into a zombie apocalypse, which ship would make it out alive, 2 or 8?

difficult call; Kira and Odo both have experience with guerilla warfare, and one is a shapeshifter. But on the other hand the Doctor is, you know, THE DOCTOR. Kira and Odo probably have a better chance of both making it out alive, however. Sorry, Rose. 

13. did 5 ever have to hide their relationship for some reason?

not really

14. is 4 still together?

you bet they are! RevanShan is reylo lite(tm) twelve years before reylo was ever a thing. and they were written by people who cared about the characters and got their happy ending

15. is 3 canon?

yep

16. If all ten ships were put into a couples’ Hunger Games, which couple would win?

hard to tell; I can sadly guess who wouldn’t win, but a lot of them have the force and/or magic at their disposal, or are suitably cunning and experienced with guerilla tactics XD 

17. Has anybody ever tried to sabotage 10′s ship?

at least once a season lol

18. Which ship would you defend to the death and beyond?

all of them? i’d never say this is the only acceptable relationship for a character, but I would throw hands with anyone who said one of these wasn’t a great ship 

19. do you spend hours a day going through 1′s tumblr page?

I sure did when I was hyperfixated on star wars XD

20. if an evil witch descended from the sky and told you that you had to pick one of the ten ships to break up forever or else she’d break them all forever, which ship would you sink? 

heck what a terrible decision XD i’m not sure I can pick haha. never thought i’d be glad most of them ended with one of them dead or forcibly separated anyway lol

tagging @xdawnofthestarsx​ @consultingcupcake​ @nitarachan​ @nothinginlifebutmist​ @wynnemoon​ @darkalinas​ @space-gay-ahsoka​ @s-tevenrogers​ and anybody else who wants to participate!!!

[alienspawnwrites]

Laying Hands Chapter 3

Read on AO3

End of Introductions

Tony Stark was clearly very rich. If having his own skyscraper hadn't been an obvious clue, the casual glamour of the interior of the building certainly reflected his wealth. The open floor plan and comfortable living areas were a far cry from Althea's previous arrangement with the group she now knew as Hydra.

Tony proudly escorted Althea through the building, showing her to the lounge first. A large sunken floor was ringed by deep, plush couches. A long row of window cushioned seats ran along the floor to ceiling windows of the room, looking extremely warm and inviting even in setting sun. The bar occupied pride of place near the center of the room, and he boasted that it held just about every liquor ever produced. One wall was dominated by huge bookshelves. Combined, they contained more books than Althea had ever seen outside the public library she had frequented as a child. On another wall hung a massive television screen, and she marveled at how thin the electronic was. Technology had certainly advanced during her years in confinement. The space had a small kitchenette stockpiled with various drinks and snacks as well as a large round table with room enough to seat ten, at least. Tony informed her he had once tried to initiate a game night, his tone indicating the attempt had not gone well.

A few floors down, the kitchen proper was no less impressive or technologically advanced. Tony pointed out various appliances, going over their functions with dizzying speed. Some looked familiar, others looked to her like something straight out of an episode of Star Trek. Even the refrigerator was outfitted with it's own display panel, though Althea couldn't fathom what possible purpose they could serve. It was a cold box; why would anyone feel the need to attach a computer to something so simple?

Steve, who had joined them for the tour, noticed her obvious confusion. "Don't worry," he whispered, leaning in. "It took me forever to figure this stuff out too. I still can't make a normal cup of coffee on that thing." He pointed to a device that looked to be more buttons than machine. "I keep making something Tony calls a 'frappe'." His exaggerated look of frustration earned a chuckle from Althea. He smiled, happy she was starting to feel at ease. "It is delicious, though."

Below the dining floor, Tony explained, were the sleeping quarters of everyone on the team. "Except for me, of course. I'm up top in the penthouse. They might call it 'Avengers Tower' but I still pay the bills. That comes with certain perks."

Tony had just shown Althea to what was to be her bedroom when they were interrupted by a voice emanating from the watch on Tony's wrist. "Sir, Miss Romanoff has returned. She is waiting for you in the debriefing room." Althea was hardly surprised to learn Tony had a stereotypical British butler. What kind of eccentric billionaire would he be without one?

"Ah. Looks like the rest of the tour is going to have to wait until later. We'll let you settle in while we get everyone caught up to speed. Feel free to explore if you want, though I imagine you're probably tuckered out after today. If you need anything just ask J.A.R.V.I.S."

"Jarvis?" Thea looked around. She hadn't seen anyone other than Tony and Steve during the entirety of their tour.

"How can I help you, ma'am," came the same British voice as before. Althea started and looked around, searching desperately for its source.

"J.A.R.V.I.S. is an artificial intelligence program, a computer if you must, of my own invention. He runs just about everything around here," Stark explained. "J.A.R.V.I.S., meet Thea. She's going to be staying with us for a while. Let's start with level 3 clearance for now and go from there."

"Very well, sir."

"We'll come get you later. You should meet the rest of the team once you've gotten some rest." Steve gave her a last parting smile before he and Tony turned, leaving her alone in her new quarters.

Althea examined the room. It was simple but incredibly spacious, outfitted with a king size bed covered with a plush blue bedspread, and a pair of long, low dressers. Curious, she opened one of the drawers, but found it empty. For a moment she debated asking Tony's A.I. butler for a change of clothes, but decided against it. Even if it was capable of filling the request, a new wardrobe would probably be too bold for her first day. The room only had one window, albeit a large one, located just behind the bed. Through it, Althea had commanding view of the city, no less impressive in the waning light of the nearly set sun. Again, she found herself captivated by the sight, unable to tear her attention away for several minutes.

When at last she turned away, she noticed a second door stood on the far side of the room. She opened it cautiously, revealing a pristine bathroom. As she stepped inside, her movement in the large wall-mounted mirror caught her eye and she stopped to investigate her reflection.

She couldn't remember the last time she had properly seen herself, and she was unimpressed at the sight. If she didn't know better, Althea would say she looked sickly. She fingered a lock of her lackluster hair, rubbing the dry strands between her fingers. The understated luxury of her surroundings only highlighted her pathetic appearance. Suddenly, she remembered Steve had mentioned meeting 'the rest', and she grew even more self-conscious.

She decided a shower could do nothing but improve her sad condition, and was pleased to find towels conveniently laid out nearby. Even better, she noticed, she was able to lock the bathroom from the inside. Althea couldn't recall the last time she had locked someone out, rather than been locked in. The small taste of power helped her relax. She removed her clothes, hoping J.A.R.V.I.S. wasn't somehow watching, and stepped into the shower.

She emerged from the bathroom clean and redressed, toweling off her damp hair. The shower had been well stocked, and she held out hope that the conditioner she had found would make some improvement on her unhealthy locks. At the very least she smelt a good deal better. A small platter of food had been placed atop a box on the dresser in her absence, and Althea became aware of just how hungry she was. She immediately set about devouring the simple meal: a turkey sandwich and a packet of crisps. It wasn't until she had polished off the last remaining crumb that she paid the box any mind. Opening it, she found a brand new pair of tennis shoes. The gift brought a smile to Althea's face. They had noticed her shoddy footwear and found her a suitable replacement without her needing to ask. She mentally added a check in the "good guys" column. She added another when she slipped the shoes on, finding them a near-perfect fit.

Althea found she was too nervous to take Tony up on his offer to explore on her own. Truthfully, he had been right: she was exhausted. She carefully laid herself down in the middle of the expansive bed, studying the ceiling above as she ran through the events of the day. Her nerves were far less frayed than they had been just a few hours earlier. The chaos surrounding her meeting the Avengers and her escape from the organization they called Hydra already felt so far away. She silently chastised herself. She didn't know these people. It was too soon to get comfortable and let her guard down. A hot shower and some shoes shouldn't be enough to win her trust; she knew better. Despite her renewed resolve to remain wary, Althea soon drifted into the deep dreamless sleep brought on by physical and mental exhaustion, still wearing her new shoes.

An insistent knocking woke Althea. She shot up and looked around blankly at the now dark room. Her mind raced as she groggily tried to place herself and remember how she had ended up asleep atop the covers of the strange bed. The rapping persisted as the circumstances surrounding her new quarters returned to her, and she leapt out of bed to answer the door.

Althea was still blinking the sleep from her eyes when she opened the door, revealing a rather annoyed looking Tony Stark. "Jesus kid, I was beginning to think you were dead or something. Come one," he waved for her to follow. "The gang's all assembled. They're just dying to meet you." He led her through the halls and to the elevator. Althea's nerves caught up with her as they rode up towards the lounge and she wrung her hands anxiously.

"Don't worry," Tony attempted to console her, noticing her distress. Despite the costumes and nicknames we're all nice enough, pretty normal even. Well, most of us anyway." Before she had a chance to ask for clarification, the doors slid open, revealing five persons scattered about the room.

"Cap you already know," Tony gestured to Steve, now casually dressed in a simple t-shirt and jeans. Maskless and out of costume he looked surprisingly... normal. "As well as Natasha, though I don't think you guys had a chance to properly introduce yourselves." Natasha nodded towards Althea in greeting, even gracing her with a small smile though it didn't seem to reach her eyes. Despite the relaxed setting she still appeared to be all business.

"Let's move on to the new faces." Tony clapped his hands and spun to face the rest of the assembled group. "Bruce here, well he's probably the second smartest person on the team, next to myself of course." A timid looking man with graying hair gave her a small wave. "Don't be fooled though. He may look like a mild-mannered scientist, but he's got one hell of an anger issue. Best not to push it, unless you want to butt heads with the not-so-jolly green giant." Althea was suitably confused, and Bruce's bashful reaction did nothing to clarify Tony's meaning.

"I'm not, that's not really the whole story. It's.. it's complicated," stammered Bruce. Althea looked between the two men for an explaination.

"Oh 'complicated' doesn't even begin to describe you, does it Brucey."

"Alright stop it, Tony," Steve cut in. "You'll scare her."

"Sorry," he answered, dripping with sarcasm. Then, seeing Althea's anxious face, more seriously, "Sorry. Bruce is a stand up guy, really. Nothing to be scared of. Honestly." Althea gave Bruce a dubious side-long glance but nodded. Despite Tony's insinuations, she couldn't bring herself to be scared of the sheepish looking man.

"I would like to introduce myself to the new girl." Althea spun to face the loud, commanding voice. She found herself face to face, or rather face to chest, with an enormous, brawny man. He was standing so close that she had to crane her next just to see his face. Bright blue eyes sparkled above a broad, sincere smile, framed by a head of sandy blond locks. "It is a pleasure to meet you, Lady Thea. I am Thor, son of Odin, Prince of Asgard and God of Thunder." He offered her a giant hand, which she took hesitantly. His grip was incredibly strong, painfully grinding the bones of her fingers together. Oblivious to her discomfort, he gave her hand a vigorous shake, the force nearly lifting her off her feet.

"God?", she repeated incredulously as he released her. She chose to ignore her sore digits, unconcerned with the obvious damage his zealous greeting had caused.

"Yes, the God of Thunder." He seemed unfazed by her skepticism. "I channel lightening through my hammer, Mjolnir. It was crafted for me by dwarves in the furnaces of Nidavellir. It is very impressive, it has no equal." His words were boastful, but his tone sounded matter-of-fact, as though he were merely conveying mundane facts. Althea slowly turned to Steve, whom she felt to be the most reasonable of the group, for some sort of explanation, but he merely shrugged and nodded.

She turned back to Thor, who was still beaming at her. Althea found herself smiling back, albeit tentatively, at his unbridled affability. "Nice to meet you too, Thor...uh, your majesty?" She added nervously. She had no idea what was proper etiquette when speaking with royalty, let alone a superhuman prince.

"No, no no no, don't do that," cut in Tony. "'Thor is fine. He only gets titles on his own planet. Besides, 'majesty' is for a king, you call a prince 'highness'."

"His planet ?"Althea wheeled on Thor, her eyes wide a saucers. "As in 'not Earth'?"

"This mortal appears denser than the average Midgardian," came a condescending voice from behind Thor. "Why is she here again? Is she some sort of pet?"

Althea noticed the tall, lanky figure for the first time. He stood a little apart from the rest, leaning casually against the kitchenette counter and looking entirely disinterested by the entire situation. He wore street clothes, but they were a far cry from the casual outfits donned by the rest of the assembled Avengers. Instead he wore a fine, expensive looking suit, perfectly tailored to his lithe frame. Every piece of the ensemble was jet black, barely distinguishable from one another. It matched his raven hair and highlighted the paleness of his alabaster skin. Looking at him, Althea was reminded of the marble statues of antiquity.

"Do not mind Loki." Thor strode leisurely over to the man. "It is in my brother's nature to jest." He made to land a good-natured pat on Loki's shoulder, but his hand met no resistance, instead passing through the illusion in a ripple of green light. Thor was caught off balance, and gracelessly stumbled forward a few steps.

The rest of the party momentarily joined in Althea's confusion, though none of them seemed to share her surprise. They all looked around the room. Movement from a dark corner drew their attention, and Althea saw the same figure, Loki, rise from the window seat farthest away from where the rest of the group was seated. Without acknowledging them, he made his way to the door.

"In the future, I ask that you only summon me for important matters... or at least interesting ones," he called out behind him, without turning around.

The entire interaction left Althea stunned, and she closed her gaping mouth, unaware it had fallen open.

"Like I said, most of us are nice," Tony grimaced.

"Forgive him," Thor pleaded on his brother's behalf. "Loki may not be the most courteous, but he has a good heart. It will reveal itself in time."

"Yeah, so you keep saying," came Tony's retort.

Althea turned her attention back to the rest, "Where's Clint...uh, Hawkeye?", Althea wondered aloud. She had been hoping to learn more about the quiet, sullen archer.

"Oh Clint doesn't like to hang around with us much. He's not really the sociable type." Tony didn't seem too bothered by the absence.

"He has his own place," corrected Natasha, and left it at that.

"So, that's introductions out of the way. These are the Avengers: Earth's mightiest heroes, and one sulky jerk. Why don't you tell the class a little about yourself." Tony offered her the floor.

"I, uh, well I don't really know what to say," Althea shifted uncomfortably under their joint scrutiny.

"You could start with what you were doing in a top secret Hydra hideout in the Alleghenies," prompted Natasha.

"I don't even know who or what Hydra is."

"They're an organization bent on world domination, evil as they come by all accounts," Steve explained. "They've got long arms and fingers in just about criminal pie out there. Weapons, covert governments, terrorism, the works. We've been after them for years. They keep us pretty busy, living up to their name. Every time we find one base of operation another two pop up. The raid this morning was just the most recent battle in a long fight."

"We received intel they were working on a special project in the mountains. Intel that led us to you." Natasha pinned Althea with a biting look. "The 'asset'."

Althea stared at her feel, overwhelmed by this new information. She had never entertained the idea that she had suffered in the name of some philanthropic cause, but neither had she imagined anything so heinous or with such a large scope.

"I didn't know what they were doing, or even what they wanted with me. I didn't have a choice."

"How long were you there?" Bruce's voice was soft and sincere.

"I don't know exactly," she conceded. "What year is it?"

"2015," Steve replied.

"2015?", Althea reeled. After a bit of mental math, she had her answer. "Eleven, maybe twelve years."

"Twelve... twelve years? You're telling me you've been down in the bunker since you were a kid? Since Martha Stewart went to prison? Since before Facebook?"

"What's Facebook?", Thor, Steve and Althea all voiced the question in unison.

Tony looked back and forth between the three of them. "Unbelievable. How is it nearly half of the people living in this tower are completely removed from modern, human culture. Honestly, if you only knew the jokes I've wasted on you lot."

"If they kept you around for so long, they must have had a reason," Bruce gently pressed.

Althea only ground her teeth in response. She wanted to tell them, to trust them. She wanted nothing more to unburden herself and count these people as allies, or even eventually friends, but she knew that was only the best case scenario. The countless other possible outcomes kept her mouth shut. True, they seemed trustworthy, if not odd, but she had been here all of a day. It was too soon to know for certain, and she had to be certain.

With a deep breath, she gathered the courage to speak up. "I don't know what they were trying to do. Honestly, I don't. I know you guys want to know why I was there, what it is about me that made them so interested. And I want to tell you, but I... I need time. I just spent nearly half my life held prisoner by what you tell me is an evil, global organization bent on controlling the world. I didn't even know their name until today. I promise I'm not going to hurt anyone. I don't even think I could hurt someone if I tried, let alone any of you. From what I've seen you could take me out without breaking a sweat. But I didn't leave one prison just to hand myself over to another, all because of something I had no say in." She held her breath, hoping they could hear the truth of her words.

"Pretty sure that's the most you've spoken since we picked you up," muttered Tony, breaking the tension that had permeated the room.

"We can give you time," said Steve. He looked around at each of his companions, making sure they understood that the decision had been made. "We'll have to keep an eye on you for now, I hope you understand, keep you confined to the tower. But you're not our prisoner, and when you're ready to tell us, we'll be here."

Althea couldn't help the appreciative smile that crept across her face at his understanding. She added another check to the ever growing 'good guys' tally in her mind.  

[timeagainreviews]

Sifting through the Dregs

For series twelve of Doctor Who, I have opted to take a casual approach. I've avoided spoilers as much as possible. Although I caught the trailers, and the odd press photo, I've managed to stay away from things as simple as episode descriptions, writers, or even episode titles. I want to come into each story with as little expectation as possible. This is so that I might avoid hype, both of the negative and positive varieties. So when I read the words "Part One," after "Spyfall," it was genuinely a surprise. And when I read the words "Orphan 55 by Ed Hime," I was suddenly very hopeful.

If you remember from series eleven, I was a big fan of Ed Hime's episode "It Takes You Away." I praised its brazen absurdity, likening it to something Douglas Adams may have done. The episode is rather divisive in the fandom, as some might call it one of the worst episodes ever. Obviously, I disagree. Ed Hime stands out to me as exactly the kind of writer Doctor Who needs. Someone with a bit of a taste for the absurd, while still managing to capture human moments. Ironic then, that despite my best efforts to approach the episode without expectation, the hype I would most contest with would be my own. Does "Orphan 55," live up to my expectations? Let's get into it!

As I said, Ed Hime lends a sort of mad weirdness to Doctor Who that I feel a certain section of writers possess. Think your Lawrence Mileses, your James Gosses, or even the occasional Steven Moffat. These are writers, who for better or worse understand one thing about Doctor Who- it's weird. Strangely, one of the common most aspects ignored by Doctor Who writers is the absurdity. A blue police box wrapped around an impossible machine, piloted by an ancient trickster somehow becomes mundane. Doctor Who's weirdness is an integral element that has been around since its inception. That's why when the gang gets teleported by a contest cube Graham has assembled, and the first person we meet is a furry, I feel we're already onto a good start. Especially when they just finished cleaning up the biggest calamari ever from the TARDIS floor. (Anyone else think of the Nestine Consciousness?)

Characters like "Hyphen with a 3" or "Hyph3n," remind me of some of the '80s era's odder characters. I could easily see her and her tail living in "Paradise Towers," or perhaps riding a bus in "Delta and the Bannermen." But another reason I love her is that she's not just a furry, it's part of her identity. You don't get the idea that she's an outlier like real-life Trekkie, Barbara Adams, who famously wore her Star Trek uniform to jury duty and her place of work. Instead, you get the feeling that in the future, people respect identities. To use Star Trek again, I remember watching an episode of "Star Trek: Enterprise," where the character Trip has a crisis over whether or not a girl "was a man." When you compare this to the dialogue we're having about transgender rights in 2020, you're automatically reminded that Enterprise came out in 2001. By today's standards, furries are still seeking acceptance. Seeing Hyp3n in a partial fursuit may seem absurd now, but in its own way, it's futuristic. How very Doctor Who.

Things in this future, however, aren't all progressive acceptance of our fine furry friends, there seems to be trouble in paradise. As I said, the gang is greeted by Hyp3n, a sort of porter for a relaxation destination called "Tranquility Spa." The companions immediately take to the spirit of things, as they settle in for a bit of rest and relaxation. The Doctor, of course, starts snooping around. Meanwhile, a security team of two, Kane and Vorm are responding to "another security breach." Whatever it is requires machine guns, which seems like quite a lot. And if you're like me you'll spend the next half hour trying to figure out where you've seen Kane before. I'll help you out- it was Lydia from Breaking Bad. You're welcome. I just saved you a trip to IMDb.

The next scene introduces us to a concept that will run strong within this episode- Yaz as a gooseberry. We see a couple of pensioners, Benni and Vilma, enjoying their spa getaway. Just as Benni is about to ask Vilma to marry him, Yaz stands right between them. I mean, I know the pool is for everyone, but read the vibe, Yaz. Jeez. Meanwhile, Ryan is checking out the interior of Tranquility Spa. The bar looks like the kind of place art vampires go to get lemongrass enemas. It reminded me a lot of "The Leisure Hive," with a budget, or even a more modern twist on the Centre of Leisure from "Time and the Rani. So much of this episode reminded me of classic Doctor Who.

Ryan notices a vending machine, but as he's retrieving his food is infected by a hopper virus. The Doctor explains the virus is capable of jumping from computers to humans. After expelling it from his system, the Doctor bags it to take to whoever is in charge. While Ryan is sucking his thumb to reduce the hallucinogenic side effects of the virus, he sees a cutie in a similar situation, a young woman by the name of Belle. It's pretty obvious at this point that Belle is to be a sort of romantic interest for Ryan, and who can blame him? She lives up to her namesake!

Everyone is rounded up for a "tranquillity drill," to a safe location while Kane and Vorm run through the lobby with their guns in tow. As with most companions, travelling with the Doctor embeds a deeper curiosity. Much like the Doctor would, Ryan questions what type of drill requires guns. This question entices Belle to follow him as they investigate. I really liked this pairing of the two of them as their chemistry was natural, despite Ryan's repeated failures at chatting her up. It only added to their charm.

The Doctor confronts Hyp3n who seems just about as confused and nervous as many of the guests. Whatever she's hiding is only because she's been instructed to by her superiors. Considering the hopper virus and drill, the Doctor deduces that the spa is under attack, and demands to know what they're hiding. Who would want to harm a spa? The spa has been using an ionic membrane to keep out unwanted visitors, visitors which appear to have breached the membrane. Now under a full-on attack by a group of monstrous beings, guests become casualties. Not only is the base under attack, but the viruses have also handicapped the systems, disabling the emergency teleportation devices. With everyone trapped the Doctor has to work fast to stop the killing, as well as survive.

Graham finds a pair of green haired servicemen in the form of Nevi and his son Sylas. Their entire character design once again had me thinking of classic Doctor Who characters such as the Swampies from "The Power of Kroll," or the Karfelon androids from "Timelash." I liked wondering if they were a kind of species that has naturally green hair, or if they had father/son hair dying nights. In this brief interaction, you learn that Sylas is the better mechanic between the two of them, but that Nevi does a bad job of acknowledging this. Graham gathers them and others to evacuate while Ryan and Belle hideaway in a sauna of sorts. While there, they confide in each other that neither of them is nearly as impressive as they initially led on, and the truth strengthens their bond.

Sadly, as Graham is rounding people up, Benni gets separated after backtracking to pick up Vilma's hat. As life signs extinguish across a computer screen, highlighting the trail of carnage, the Doctor finds a way to push back the onslaught. By repairing the ionic membrane, the creatures, known as Dregs, are physically pushed out of the spa by a force field. The crisis averted, the survivors search for the bodies of their loved ones. Much to Graham's relief, Ryan and Belle have both narrowly avoided the claws and teeth of an angry Dreg. Benni, however, is nowhere to be found.

After discovering a hole, which looks like a tear in reality, our heroes discover that Tranquility Spa is actually an illusion. A dome separates the spa from a hostile planet far too polluted to inhabit. This abandoned, or "orphan," planet is designated "Orphan 55." This is the reason guests are teleported to the spa- to cover up its seedy location. However, it would appear that whatever the Dregs are, they seem to be apex predators, able to survive the hostile environment of Orphan 55. And they want the spa and its inhabitants gone.

The Doctor makes Kane drive them out into the wasteland to find Benni, as his oxygen tank would allow him to survive outside of the dome for some time. It was a thin chance, but it might be enough to save at least one person among the carnage. I was really hoping for some silly "Moonbase," style helmets, but instead, we got these minimalist blue breath right strips across the bridge of the nose that linked to small wrist canisters as supplied by Nevi and Sylas.

The trip out onto the surface reminded me a lot of the great Russell T Davies episode "Midnight." And much like Midnight, the confined space of a vehicle traversing harsh conditions offers plenty opportunity to explore the people within. Remember how I said Yaz is a gooseberry? She wastes no time getting right between Ryan and Belle. I honestly can't tell what's going on between Yaz and Ryan at the moment. Last season, there was a bit of a "Will they or won't they?" vibe between them. But series twelve seems less interested in coupling them off. First, we had the Master and Yaz getting weirdly touchy-feely, which surprisingly never comes up again. And now we've got Yaz teasing Ryan in front of Belle like a jealous school girl. We learn that along with sucking their thumbs, Ryan and Belle also share having a dead parent in common, so that's something.

The vehicle picks up a bit of barbed wiring leaving it, as the Doctor put it- completely knackered. Keeping with the Midnight vibe, the surface of the planet is too dangerous due to monsters and killer sunlight. Afraid for her own self-interest, Kane wants to abandon the search mission, but a pleading Vilma begs her to continue looking for Benni. After callously accepting Vilma's necklace as payment, Kane agrees to continue with the rescue mission.  The crew abandon their vehicle and run for the safety of an underground service tunnel, but Dregs attack from every direction causing them to return to the safety of the vehicle. But that safety won't last long.

It's then that they hear Benni calling for Vilma. He asks her to marry him and then asks them to shoot him as well. It's a morbid moment as you realise the only reason the Dregs have kept Benni alive is to taunt the survivors and prolong his suffering. I don't really understand what the point of having them run back into the vehicle actually was. They basically run back out a moment later with the new plan of Kane and Vorm covering with gunfire. I don't understand why it was so important that they leave one location just to return moments later.

As Kane and Vorm blast Dregs, the rest of the crew run to the safety of the service tunnel. In the scuffle, Vorm dies, but Kane catches up just in time to open the tunnel. The entrance to this tunnel had me thinking of the opening of "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers." I kept waiting for Rita Repulsa to pop out and say "Ah! After 10,000 years I'm free! It's time to conquer Earth!" They make it down into the tunnel where there is a short-range teleporter nearby. Vilma asks Kane if she saw what happened to Benni, and Kane coldly tells her not to worry, that she shot Benni as he requested. It's at this time that Belle steals Kane's gun. She reveals that Kane is her mother and that she's here for revenge for abandoning her and her father. Belle teleports back to the spa taking Ryan with her. Seeing as the teleporter only had enough juice for one go, the rest of the crew must go deeper into the tunnel to find their way back.

Back at the spa, Belle reveals a huge bomb she plans to use to blow up the spa. Poor Ryan, he just met this girl and already he's dealing with her baggage with her mum. I kid, but damn girl, take a guy to a movie first. It's lucky for the Doctor that this adventure isn't actually from the '80s. Had it been Ace in this position, she would have seen the bomb and said "Wicked!" while offering up Nitro 9 to add to the destruction. Instead, Ryan pleads with her not to blow up the spa, dooming everyone involved.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and crew discover a plaque written in Russian, cluing them in to the fact that not only is the planet abandoned, but it was also abandoned by humanity. Orphan 55 is in fact, Earth. This revelation hits Graham and Yaz hard, as they never imagined the fate of the world to be so ugly. Their grieving is cut short by the appearance of Dregs, who Vilma bravely sacrifices herself to, to save the others. The Doctor, at this time also appears to be running out of air. It appears that the ability to be the loudest talker isn't always helpful when oxygen preservation is to be considered.

The sole reason for her running out of oxygen serves only to discover the Dregs breathe out oxygen. She discovers this when she finds a Dreg conveniently hibernating within the tunnel. Why this is important is that it gives a bit of insight into the Dregs' motivation. Kane's big plan was to make a spa that slowly terraforms the planet, which would harm the Dregs. It also explains the trees seen on the surface of the planet. That or these trees are also apex predators able to adapt to anything. Using her Time Lord brain magic, the Doctor looks into the mind of the Dregs and affirms what she feared most- they evolved from humans.

Everyone has now made their way back to the spa. The Dregs are closing in and they need to fix the teleporter. We're treated to a series of people once again leaving and returning to the same location for the sake of upping the tension. Kane appears to sacrifice herself and Sylas gets in an argument with Nevi once more over being told he's not a mechanic causing him to run away. But both of them are ok, as they both return unscathed. Yaz and Ryan wheel Belle's bomb to try and take out a few of the baddies. It's kind of a clusterfuck if I am honest. Lots of characters get taken in and out of scenes merely to pad time and add to the tension. It's not egregious but could have been edited better.

Sylas appears just in time with a solution to use the hopper virus to convert fuel for the teleporter. I was happy they brought the virus back, even if they don’t make a whole lot of sense. Were the Dregs weaponising the hopper virus? Were the viruses remnants of human civilisation? Regardless, I’m glad they brought it back. Sadly, this entire end sequence acts as evidence that perhaps there are too many companions in the TARDIS at the moment. Graham's job is to stand over Nevi and Sylus saying things like "That's right lads!" Yaz and Ryan are basically running around doing busywork, while the Doctor and Belle are having a stand-off with a Dreg. The Doctor manages to equalise the air in the room so that it is mutually beneficial to keep her and Belle alive. What the Dreg breathes out, they breathe in, and vice versa. This stalemate allows them the ability to leave. With the teleports up and running, the Doctor and her crew are transported back aboard the TARDIS, but not before Belle steals a kiss from Ryan. Are she and her mother going to be okay? We're left to wonder.

The victory celebration is short-lived as the companions remember the fate of the earth. Now, I need to preface what I'm about to say with the following- I fully believe climate change is a thing. I say this because we need to talk about how Doctor Who handles the subject. I've seen a lot of people (see: morons) complain about when Doctor Who gets "too political." They seem to think anything they don't like is political. The Doctor being a woman is political to them. But as I said with episodes like "Rosa," and "Demons of the Punjab," it's not that Doctor Who shouldn't be political, it's that it's simply not very good at it.

I can appreciate that the message of climate change is a real and pressing matter, but the cautionary edutainment way in which they present the information was so cringe. It felt so unnatural and tacked on. In their desire to address the audience directly, they lose a level of reality that makes the dialogue seem fake. These scenes always feel badly acted to me, but it's the fault of the dialogue. There's no good way to break the fourth wall without also sacrificing the characters' voices. It's like one of those adverts where you have two people talking far too candidly about something like their period flow, or constipation. It's a way to disseminate information about a product or ideology, but don't mistake it for dialogue. Nobody talks like this.

All in all, this was your standard "base in peril," episode. While not as transcendent as "It Takes You Away," I believe Ed Hime has given us another solid episode of Doctor Who. It's hard for me to tell if Hime's ability to write action was wanting, or if it is simply the fault of the director, but it definitely suffers at points due to the janky pacing. Pacing has really been an odd sticking point for series 12, and I hope they work it out. Even still, I was hoping that after the two-parter of "Spyfall," we would get something a little more grounded. Having this odd little contained storyline with little homages to classic Who is actually more than I had hoped for. It also gave us a new character in Belle, whom I expect to see return eventually. And despite the heavy-handed and unnatural way in which they dealt with climate change, I understand that it's a family show. In keeping with classic Who, it aimed to be educational, and for that, I cannot fault it.

[buzzdixonwriter]

The Rise Of Skywalker Review [SPOILERICIOUS]

=0=

I’m going to post all the SPOILER stuff way below in section 3, so as not to ruin anything for anybody who hasn’t seen the movie yet.

You’ll get plenty of warnings.

=1=

In my old age I’m starting to divide creative works into three groups:  Good, bad, and not-so-good.

A good creative work is any where the strengths overwhelmingly outweigh the weaknesses; a bad one is the obverse.

A not-so-good work is one where the strengths and weaknesses balance each other out.

It’s the kind of a work that will doubtless please those audience members who really enjoy the strengths in it, and equally irritate those annoyed by the weaknesses.

In my estimation, a not-so-good work is one done with straight forward intent and as often as not, a fair degree of technical and aesthetic competency, but fails to jell as a cohesive whole.  

No one need feel ashamed for enjoying a not-so-good work, and no one involved in the making of a not-so-good work should feel bad about their contribution (unless, of course, their contribution turns out to be one of the weaknesses that should have been avoided).

Theodore Sturgeon famously observed “90% of everything is crap.”

I think that’s a little harsh.

I agree with him that only 10% of anything is good, but think only 40% falls into the crap bin.

Most stuff falls in the 50% I call not-so-good.

Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise Of Skywalker is in that 50%.

. . .

The good stuff is really good.

Elsewhere I’ve posted my enthusiasm for Star Wars Episode VII:  The Force Awakens and Star Wars Episode VIII:  The Last Jedi hinge in no small part on just how emo Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) could get, and holy cow, does he ever deliver in The Rise Of Skywalker.

Easily my favorite parts of the picture.

Doesn’t really mesh with anything else in the movie but, hey, ya can’t have everything, right?  (I’ll discuss his performance in a little more detail in section =3=.)

Other performances range from adequate to doing-the-best-they-can-with-the-material to okay-smartass-you-try-recreating-a-dead-actress-via-CGI.

The dialog in The Rise Of Skywalker is the worst of any film in the series, with the possible exception Star Wars Episode III:  The Revenge Of The Sith, which I haven’t seen and have no intention of seeing (but more on that below…).

It’s not an attempt to depict characters talking, it’s a series of shouted declarative sentences.

Elsewhere I’ve referred to The Rise Of Skywalker as the best Jason Of Star Command episode ever made.

For those who don’t get the reference, Jason Of Star Command was a low budget albeit imaginative Saturday morning kid-vid Star Wars rip off by Filmation Studios.

To make sure the youngest kids in the audience understood what was going on, they tended to hammer home plot points repeatedly.

  DRAGOS Jason!  In just sixteen hours my space fleet will destroy Star Command!

  STAR COMMAND Jason!  Dragos is going to destroy us with his space fleet in just sixteen hours!

  JASON Don’t worry, Star Command!  I’ll stop Dragos from destroying you with his space fleet in sixteen hours.

  NARRATOR (i.e., Norm Prescott) Jason has only sixteen hours to stop Dragos from destroying Star Command with his space fleet!

  There is far too much of that in The Rise Of Skywalker.

Ten minutes into the movie, and there was already far too much of that…

The opening credit crawl reveals an off camera plot development that literally deserved an entire film of its own to fully explore.

There is no sustained coherent plot to The Rise Of Skywalker:  

Well, we gotta do this,

now we gotta do that,

first we gotta find this thing,

then we gotta find that thing,

now I’m feeling blue,

now I’m gonna get encouraged,

etc., etc., and of course, etc.

Everything feel frenetic, not fast paced.

There are far too many scenes that exist just to sell action figures and toy vehicles.

There was a desire to tie off loose ends and say good-bye to favorite characters and that was a mistake.

It undercuts the urgency of the story (or rather, the desired urgency; the fact the film is called The Rise Of Skywalker means everybody in the freakin’ audience ALREADY KNOWS HOW THE DAMN THING IS GONNA END!

(This is not a problem unique to Star Wars.  Gene Siskell famously upbraided Roger Ebert for spoiling the ending to the third Star Trek movie, to which Ebert retorted, “Oh, come on!  They’re going to call a forty million dollar movie The Search For Spock and not find him?!?!?”)

There is one nice little breather scene (“little” only in screen time; visually it’s pretty big and impressive):  The Festival of the Ancestors on the desert world Pasaana that gives a nice touch of exotic space opera flavor to the proceedings.

All of the Star Wars movies offer really great art direction and visual design, and The Rise Of Skywalker certainly delivers in that category.

Which makes the occasional mediocre special effects shots all the more obvious.

The Rise Of Skywalker has a few painfully obvious matte shots, a few shots obviously composed in post-production, and a few shots where the audience becomes aware the actors are performing in front of a greenscreen. 

You can get away with mediocre visuals so long as there is consistency in their mediocrity.  

If everything else consistently looks great, a so-so shot spoils the illusion; if everything consistently looks so-so, it’s simply part of the work’s look.

Indeed, you’re better off with consistently mediocre work highlighted by a few great shots than consistently great stuff undercut by a few mediocre ones.

Best thing about the movie is the complete lack of Jar Jar Binks.

=2=

Before diving deeper in The Rise Of Skywalker, let’s look at the series as a whole (just the numbered theatrical episodes, not standalone films, TV series, video games, comics, novels, etc.).

I’ve said the original Star Wars was the movie an entire generation had been waiting all their lives to see.

George Lucas wanted to do Flash Gordon but when Universal turned him down, created his own space opera.

Lucas, it needs be noted, is not a good writer.

Whatever visual talents he has, they don’t extend to telling a good story.

One can easily find early drafts of Star Wars online, and while they all share certain elements, they’re all pretty bad.

The development of Star Wars the movie grew organically with storyboard and production art, characters and incidents changing and evolving along the way.

It’s long been rumored that a more skilled writer than Lucas came in to do the final draft; one thing’s for sure, the shooting script is head and shoulders above the earlier drafts.

Star Wars the original Han-shoots-first-dammit theatrical release is very much a product of the 1970s.

20th Century Fox thought they had a good enough kiddee matinee movie for summer release; they expected their big sci-fi blockbuster of the year to be Damnation Alley.

Instead, they hit a nerve and found themselves with a blockbuster on their hands.

Lucas did show one great example of foresight:  He trademarked all the names / characters / vehicles and held the licenses on them, not 20th Century Fox.

This gave him the war chest he needed to build the Lucasfilm empire.

And let’s give Lucas and his crew their due:  They added immeasurably to the technical art of film making, as well as making several entertaining films.

What Lucas did not fully envision was how to mold his Star Wars material into a coherent and thematically cohesive saga.

He started out with grandiose plans -- four trilogies with a standalone film connecting each for a total of 15 movies -- but that gradually got whittled down to 12, then 9.

After Star Wars Episode VI:  The Return Of The Jedi, Lucas put the Star Wars movie series on hold, waiting for film making technology to develop to the point where he could tell the stories the way he wanted to tell them.

Okay, fair enough.

But the problem is that while the film making technology improved, the technology of the Star Wars universe didn’t.

As I said, the original Star Wars is very much a 70s movie in taste / tone / style / sensibility.

While the designs look sufficiently sci-fi, they reflect robots and spacecraft designs of the 1970s -- in fact, even earlier in many cases.

That fit in with Lucas’ “used universe” look and the tag line “A long ago in a galaxy far, far away...”

But compare the original Star Wars with Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Kubrick spent a lot of time researching where technology was heading.

Long before visual displays and vector graphics became commonplace in real world aircraft, he showed them being used in the future.

The first example of what we refer to today as a computer tablet appeared in 2001 as a throwaway background detail.

Kubrick’s next film was A Clockwork Orange and he successfully predicted punk culture a decade ahead of reality (his only mistake being the assumption white, not black, would be the base color).

Star Wars Eps I - III take place a generation before the original Star Wars movie.

Star Wars Eps VII - IX take place a generation after.

Name a two generation span since the start of the industrial age that is not marked by radical technological change that produces an ensuing change in the social order.

Now I grant you, the Star Wars universe isn’t trying to tell that kind of story, but the story it is telling is static.

Characters in The Rise Of Skywalker talk about cloning as if it were A Really Big Deal.

Cloning today is cutting edge bio-tech, to be sure, but it’s already common place.

It’s as if the Star Wars characters were getting worked up over steam engines.

One can intercut scenes from the movies and, unless one is a familiar with each movie, it’s impossible to tell one film from another.

Lucas’ financial success enabled him to issue edicts re Star Wars (and other Lucasfilm projects) that undercut the strengths of his projects.

Lucas is a technological guru and a savvy businessman, but he really struggles to tell a story.

Frankly, I think he would have been a better film maker if he’d spent a decade or so making American Graffiti scale movies, not space operas and epic fantasies and adventure movies.

His decision to make the original Star Wars the fourth episode in his saga and going back to start his story with his villain was fatally flawed.

I grant following the Skywalker saga from Anakin to Luke to Rey could work if it started with Anakin.

But what he did was the equivalent of the James Bond movies jumping back in time to follow the pre-Bond career of Ernst Stavo Blofeld.

(And the Bond movies, at least up until the Daniel Craig era, are all standalone films insofar as one does not have to see any of the previous films to understand and enjoy the one being watched, not does the sequence they’re viewed in matter.  And the Craig films were conceived from the beginning as having a coherent overall arc, so in that case they are the exception to the rule.)

The joyous whiz-bang space opera of the original Star Wars got bogged down in a lot of meaningless politics and talks of trade treaties, none of which explained why anyone would want to conquer the universe in order to rule it as a decrepit, diseased dictator in a dark hole.

Look at Hitler and Stalin and Castro and Mao and the Kim family in North Korea.

These guys enjoyed themselves (well, Hitler did until things went south for him).  They loved the attention and went around preening themselves in public.

The off screen Empire (and implied Emperor) of the original Star Wars served that film well:  It was a story about a tactical conflict, not a treatise on the philosophy of governance.

Lucas’ universe does not make sense even in its own context.

And because of that, it becomes harder and harder to fully engage with it.

A sci-fi movie doesn’t have to explain everything, but it has to at least imply there is an underlying order that links up.

Lucas began subverting his own universe almost immediately.

The Force was originally presented as a spiritual discipline that any sufficiently dedicated intelligent being could gain access to.  (Robots seem to be specifically excluded from The Force, implying it needs a biological connection.  But that would seem to exclude intelligences that may not be organic in the commonly accepted sense of the word, which means such beings cannot appear in the Star Wars universe, which means…well, I digress…)

That was a big hunk of the original Star Wars’ appeal, the thought that literally anybody could become a Jedi if they so desired.

It speaks to a religious bent in audiences from many different cultures around the world, and it offers up an egalitarian hope that allows everyone access to the Star Wars fantasy (“fantasy” in this context meaning the shared ideal).

But already in Star Wars Episode V:  The Empire Strikes Back Lucas began betraying his original concept, sowing the seeds for self-serving deception and innate superiority as endemic in The Force.

By the time he got around to Star Wars Episode I:  The Phantom Menace, Lucas abandoned the hope established in the original Star Wars movie.

Now one has to be a special somebody, not just dedicated.

Mind you, that sort of story has its adherents, too.

Way back in the 1940s sci-fi fans were saying “Fans are slans” in order to claim superiority over “mundanes”.  Today many Harry Potter fans like to think of themselves as inherently superior to “Muggles”. 

It’s a very appealing idea, so appealing that the United States of America is based on it, the assumption being that white people are endowed with more blessings -- and therefore more rights -- than non-white people (add force multipliers such as “rich” / “male” / “Christian” / “straight” and you get to lord it over everybody).

Lucas with his stupid midichlorians robbed audiences of their healthy egalitarian fantasy and replaced it with a far more toxic elitism.

It appeals to the narcissistic stain in the human soul, and encourages dominance and bullying and cruelty and harm as a result.

It’s an elitism that requires a technologically and sociologically stagnant society, one where clones and robots and slaves can all co-exist and nobody points out they are all essentially the same thing.

A progressive society -- and here I use “progressive” strictly in a scientific and technological sense (though as stated above, advances in scientific fields invariably lead to changes elsewhere) -- does not let such conditions exist unchanged for generations.

As technology changes and improves, the culture/s around it change (and hopefully improve, too).

As I mentioned above, I’ve never seen Star Wars Episode III:  Revenge Of The Sith.

My reason for not seeing it?  Star Wars Episode II:  Attack Of The Clones.

Little Anakin Skywalker and his mom are slaves in The Phantom Menace.

He saves the Jedis and Princess Padame’s collective asses in that movie.

Okay, you’d think at the end of the movie that Padame would hand Qui-gon her ATM card and say, “Here, go back to Tatooine and bail the kid’s mom out.  He did a solid for us, it’s the least we can do for him.”

No, they leave her there because there is no desire to change the underlying social order of their universe.

There can be no changes in Lucas’ bleak, barren moral universe.

There can be no help, no hope, no improvement.

When an edict is issue -- be it Jedi council or Emperor (or president of Lucasfilm) -- it is to be obeyed without question or pause.

Daring to say one can change their status -- change their destiny -- results in tragedy (and ironically, proof that is their destiny).

It’s dismaying enough that a large number of people enjoy cosplaying Star Wars villains, especially storm troopers, as that seems to indicate they’re missing the whole point of why the rebels were striving against the Empire in the first place.

Originally that could be written off as (at best) just enjoying the cool costumes and props or (at worst) finding an excuse for bad behavior (i.e., “I vuz only followink orders”).

But Lucas’ tacitly endorsing a sense of innate superiority pretty much destroys everything about The Force that the original Star Wars audience found enlightening and ennobling.

The Star Wars universe has become at its core a very ugly thing, and The Rise Of Skywalker doesn’t really clean it up.

SPOILERS ahead.

=3= 

Seriously, SPOILERS follow.

Holy crap, The Rise Of Skywalker is a damn mess.

Nice eye candy, but a mess.

It pretty much undoes everything good in the previous two episodes.

I’m glad it’s the “official” end of the original saga because now I never need to see another Star Wars movie ever again.

(Oh, I’ll keep my DVD of the original Star Wars and if I find Solo in a bargain bin somewhere I might pick that up, but as far as the rest of Star Wars goes, I am D.O.N.E.)

The series stopped making sense long ago, so I’m really in no mood to analyze why nothing links up or really works.

It’s full of absurd, stupid ideas, such as space barbarians galloping across the deck of a star destroyed on their space horsies.

The whole back and forth between among Palpatine / Kylo / Rey goes on for two long.  If hating somebody is bad because it sucks you over to the Dark Side, then why doesn’t somebody start building Terminators that can track down beings with midichlorians and kill them?  (They’ve got the technology to detect midichlorians, that’s canon.)

It’s not anywhere near a good movie.  It’s not as bad as George Lucas’ Star Wars Episodes I - III, but it’s clearly the worst of the last trilogy.

The scene where Rey gets off camera encouragement from all the dead Jedi?  It seemed awfully familiar to me, as if the writers consciously or unconsciously remembered the John Wilkes Booth / Lee Harvey Oswald scene in Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins where all the presidential assassins and would-be assassins past and future encourage him to plug Kennedy.

Not what I want in a Star Wars movie.

I think we may be seeing the end of Star Wars.  It’s been crammed down our throats for too long.  I’m aware of The Mandalorian series and how insanely popular it is, but y’know, sooner or later every pop culture craze dies out.

Star Wars has nowhere to go.  Star Trek is hemmed in, too, but nowhere nearly as bad as Star Wars.

We’re about to enter a generational shift in America, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a badly dated 1970s sci-fi concept fails to make the cut.

It ends on a frustrating note, taking much too long to come to a close, far too much self-congratulatory bullshit, and the deliberate planting of clues for a future set of sequels should the Mouse start jonesin’ for that sweet, sweet Star Wars franchise money fix.

It’s a really bad script, and dragging Carrie Fisher’s digitally reanimated corpse into it and then killing her off by suicide is a damned stupid / offensive idea.

Mark Hamill’s ghost walking out of the flames of Jedi hell (thank you for that analogy, David Brin)?  Wow, who didn’t see that one marching down the avenue?

Harrison Ford coming back as a memory / hallucination to tell Kylo to do the right thing?  Skrue dat noiz.

(Though I have to say Kylo Ren is the best thing about the movie and his character turn parallels both Luke’s and Vader’s in The Return Of The Jedi only his is much more believable and poignant so dammit, Disney, you could have done a much better job with this movie than you did.)

The plot and pacing is straight out of a video game.  First do this, then do that, now ya gotta do another thing -- feh!

And unless I misheard the dialog, this whole film supposedly takes place over a span of sixteen hours!!! 

They visit a half dozen worlds, crash and repair spaceships, go undercover, get captured and escape, fight duels to the deal -- all in sixteen hours?!?!?

Yeesh.

And I’ll say this, the last line is wrong wrong WRONG.

If the Star Wars saga has taught us anything, it’s that Force users are a threat to everything.

They should be eliminated for the good of the universe.

Rey shouldn’t have buried the Skywalker lightsabers.

She should have destroyed them -- and the one she made, and any others she found lying around.

And when she’s asked at the very end what her name is, the answer should have been:  “Rey…just Rey.”

I know I put The Rise Of Skywalker in the not-so-good bin, but truth be told, that’s the nostalgia talking; it’s only a eyelash away from being bad.

The whole epic saga is a failure as far as I’m concerned.  One and done is the way to go; the moment it started making money as a toy franchise it went south.

  © Buzz Dixon