#read that one just after I watched ds9 for the first time...

[trillscienceofficer]

extremely disappointed that no other Trek short story collection will ever compare to “The Lives of Dax” to me

[sineala]

Are there ANY stony/Star Trek AUs?

Okay. Um. I'm just going to assume this is a legitimate question and not actually a way to express frustration about my progress on the sequel I am writing (I stared at this ask for a while), so I will just conclude that you must have missed the Steve/Tony Star Trek AU I wrote, um, back in 2016:

Straight on till Morning (109848 words) by Sineala Chapters: 6/6 Fandom: Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, Avengers (Comics) Rating: Explicit  Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply  Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark  Characters: Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, Carol Danvers, Janet Van Dyne, Hank Pym, Wanda Maximoff, Pietro Maximoff, James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Clint Barton, Donald Blake (Marvel), Jocasta (Marvel)  Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Action/Adventure, Romance, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pining, Angst, Secret Identity, Identity Porn, Sex Pollen, Fuck Or Die, Caves, Sex In A Cave, Technobabble, Happy Ending, Cap_Ironman Big Bang 2016, Community: cap_ironman, Podfic Available  Summary: 

Tony Stark resigned his commission in Starfleet five years ago, after a disastrous away mission, and he swore he'd never go back. He just wants to be left alone to build warp engines in peace. But the universe has more in store for him than that, as he discovers when Admiral Fury comes to him with an offer he could never have expected and cannot possibly refuse: first officer and chief engineer aboard the all-new USS Avenger, a starship of Tony's own design. What's more, the Avenger's captain is Steve Rogers, hero of the Earth-Romulan War. Believed dead for over a century, Steve is miraculously alive... and very, very attractive. 

But nothing is ever easy for Tony. As he wrestles with his secret desire for his new captain and his not-so-dormant fears, another mission starts to go wrong, and Tony becomes aware that Steve has secrets of his own -- and the truth could change everything.

So, yeah, if you actually haven't read that one, that'll keep you busy for a while. It's a Trek fusion with comics Steve/Tony, set in the era of the later TOS movies. (This is important so that you can picture the correct uniforms, and also because it actually matters that the events of Star Trek II, III, and IV have happened.) It was a Big Bang fic, so it's got some great art by Ran and Phoenix -- embedded in the story -- and also M_Samro made a really amazing podfic of it, if you like podfics.

For a charity auction in 2017, I promised I would write a sequel, and I plotted the whole thing out and started writing this extremely epic sequel, which was unfortunately, about a plague threatening the galaxy, and I got about 120,000 words in and then 2020 happened and I decided I needed to not be writing it right now. So it went on an extended hiatus.

But the good news is that I've actually gotten back to it! I picked it up again last month and I've put 40,000 more words in it since then and at this exact moment I am currently working on the last scene of Chapter 4 (out of six total)! I swear it is happening! I've been putting in about a thousand words a day for the past month! It is really happening this time! The sequel is coming! I promise! I know it has been years but it's happening!

See? It's happening! (I would include a screencap of the part that is happening, but all of Chapter 4 is pretty spoilery.)

So that will exist! Someday! I mean that!

And if you're asking about Steve/Tony Star Trek AUs by people other than me, there are some! If you filter the AU - Star Trek Fusion tag by Steve/Tony, there are 25 matches. Several of them are related to my fic (remixes, art) but there is some stuff that isn't my fault! I haven't read a lot of them because I was trying not to read things that seemed like they might be similar to mine while I was plotting my series here, and also I have never finished watching DS9, so I skipped the DS9 ones.

Under Stars by vulcanscully: A fun fusion that I thought was interesting because Steve is an ensign and that's not how this usually goes.

Discovery of the Century by DepressingGreenie: More 616 in flavor than a lot of the Trek AUs, this is basically Finding Steve In The Ice but Make It Star Trek. As far as I am concerned, Finding Steve In The Ice is great every time.

and so we rebuild by raeldaza: I'm probably biased because this one was inspired by my fic, but I also really enjoyed this one for not being how these things usually go. A lot of Trek AUs in many fandoms are written through a TOS/AOS kind of lens and will often do a Kirk/Spock thing and make one of them a Vulcan or half-Vulcan. In this one that's Tony, but also he's a terrible Vulcan! He's found a new way to disappoint his father!

Stellar Love Affairs by AvengersNewB: I honestly had never imagined a Star Trek fusion that was also A/B/O but I think it really works here! It's like bringing pon farr full circle.

Xenophilia by Captain_Panda: Captain_Panda has several Trek AUs but I am reccing this one because it's the longest. And also the whumpiest. Everyone loves some good away-mission whump!

So there you go! Live long and prosper! I promise I am still writing this Star Trek AU sequel!

[ooojudithooo]

Go watch Star Trek Prodigy, it´s awsome

Here be spoilers, I guess

With everthing going on at the moment I really needed a lot of distraction and binged Star Trek: Prodigy season 2.

And it is awesome. Really good. Story wise the best Star Trek I have seen in years, if not ever. It masks as a childrens show, as many good shows do, and it certainly is fun for (older! Those monsters are scary!) children, they just can´t appreciate the details of it all.

This was made by hardcore fans. They watched every show, read every book, comic, leaflet, fanfic that was ever written, they played the games and assembeled the models. Then they put it all together, wrote an amazing script, hired every Star Trek actor they could find and animated it with an obviously much higher budget than season 1.

There are so many easter eggs, you have to watch it three times to even scratch the surface. I certainly didn´t get half of it (which is mainly because I pretty much stopped watching after voyager and only kind of sampled the new shows). There a obvious things, and there are things like naming the new vulcan character Ma´jel. I only got that after looking for fanfiction (as one does) and saw it written for the first time. Speaking of names, theres a humpback whale on the new Voyager, and their name is Gillian (I got that one)!

There´s Catherine Janeway. I love her. There´s Janeway and Chakotay being lovey-dovey like in the series, before it went all to shit in the last season (I was so mad. They were my OTP before I even knew what that was. Seems I was not the only one).

There´s Wesly Crusher. I had a crush on him when I was 17 and I still have a crush on him now when I´m 47, and it´s "just" Wil Weatons voice and an animated character in a cableknit jumper. With me being aro ace that is really an accomplishment (mind, I have a crush on Wesley, not on Wil). His story arc is great!

The story is really good. It´s so tight-knit, that you kind of jump in at the beginning and come out dazed and delighted at the end. The young protagonists are exactly that - young, enthusiastic, sometimes brilliant and sometimes very dumb, carrying the plot with ease (they are also very much traumatised from their life before, but doing their best in all circumstances).

Of course there are also thing I did not like that much, like the Vau N'Akat, who got a bit too much spotlight (kinda like the Klingons in DS9), or the animations, which were, as said, much better than in season 1, but still weirdly clunky sometimes.

But still, a very good series. It´s the kind of Star Trek I want to watch - lovingly written, well acted, weird and funny and sad. And full of hope. No, not just hope, certainty, that it will get better.

Go watch it, I want season 3.

[walkingstackofbooks]

After the war, Section 31 want Julian to work for them, but no matter how many overtures they make, they just can't seem to persuade him.

So they turn to the old tried-and-tested method of using an alternate holosuite reality.

They start in the real world, sending an operative to ask him for something small - they just want access to all the medical files concerning DS9's inhabitants, they believe there's some sort of security threat. He refuses: it's medically unethical. The back-and-forth continues over some days - he says that if they let him know what they're looking for, he'll check for it himself. They say they can't let him know unless he agrees to join Section 31. He says fine, don't get your information then.

The pressure ramps up: they're now asking him to destroy any samples of X chemical he has, to stop a Bajoran vaccination programme, along with some other equally non-sensical things that he of course rejects just as vehemently because they still refuse to tell him why these things are important.

At some point, this business stops being conducted on DS9 and moves to the confines of a holosuite - not that Julian knows this. Other details are added in: a surprise visit from the O'Briens; Kasidy subsequently making the trip to say hello; a family meal, of sorts in Kira's quarters with her guests, and Quark, and Nog, and Jake, and Julian.

That night, Julian is woken up by explosions rocking the station. He reaches for his combadge, just as he is surrounded by a transporter beam, materialising onto an unfamiliar ship. He is stood by a window, looking down onto Deep Space Nine, helplessly watching as everything he loves is destroyed below him.

"We got you out just in time," someone says. He does not respond. He can't.

They take him to unfamiliar quarters on this unfamiliar ship. The room is empty, bare, unlived in. He sits on the bed, numb, his mind refusing to comprehend the enormity of what he has just lost. In his haze, he turns to reach for Kukulaka.

Kukulaka is not there. Kukulaka will never be there again.

The damn bursts, and he weeps for his bear. In the coming days, he will also cry for the loss of his home, his friends, his family, but for now, thinking about them is just too painful. First, he will spend this night mourning Kukulaka, focussing all his grief on the memory of his oldest companion.

The next morning, he will be debriefed. Section 31 is too professional to blame him directly, but as the other officers discuss the explosion, putting together piece by piece a picture of how it happened, Julian will easily be able to read through the lines. An unstable patient. Theft of medical chemicals. Piece by piece he is shown how if he had just co-operated from the outset, his home would not be a bruning wreck among the stars of Bajor.

He cannot let this happen again. No-one else will lose their homes, their family, because of his failure to act.

When Section 31 offer to take him back to Earth, he refuses them once more.

"I think it's about time I stepped up, don't you think?"

[thegeminisage]

star trek update time! wednesday we watched voy's "displaced" and ds9's "children of time" AAAAAA from which i will. never recover

displaced (voy):

this one was truly so fun. i loved the mystery of what was going on, i loved how janeway was (i felt) unnecessarily hostile and then it turned out she was RIGHT, i loved when chakotay gave up on winning and decided to simply do as much sabotaging as possible before the same was up because i loved watching him cause problems on purpose

similarly the scenes in the biomes/tunnels were fun not only because janeway had a blast bargaining with that one guy but because and and tuvok were ALSO having fun creeping around causing problems on purpose

the final moment of joy was janeway willing to leave those aliens to freeze to death in their own fake biome if they didn't let everybody go. prime directive? we don't know her. sometimes it's annoying how trek only remembers the prime directive when it's convenient, but this was so much fun that i don't really care

shoutout also to tuvok for vulcan nerve pinching that one guy. not nearly enough vulcan nerve pinches lately

and, all right, look. tom and b'elanna are cute. i'm not going crazy stupid over them or anything but it was really special to me when he didn't fuck her. you can overlook so much annoying buffoonery from a guy when you begin giving him the benefit of the doubt (because he didn't fuck her) instead of being instantly annoyed every time he opens his mouth. tom paris maybe earned his redemption. i only wish i could have had a turnaround like this for picard instead

i was really glad they didn't Talk About It at the end. they both opened their mouths as if to say more and then decided not to and that was PERFECT. like the fact that she came and sought him out was apology enough. well done.

children of time (ds9):

girl, help

never in my life...

I DID NOT EXPECT THIS. i read we were due for a season 6 get together

AND HJE JUST STROLLS IN AND

like.

ok. like. ok. she's by the bucket rip odo back in the bucket so she's by the bucket smiling fondly at it and then THE OTHER ODO. WALKS IN. AND JUST SAYS IT. I HAD TO ADJUST. PRESENT DAY ODO IS SICK RN I KNOW IT

the way he almost touched her face without actually touching it. the way he says it because he's had 200 years to regret not saying it

also, the way that he can love someone for 200 years and not have it diminished in any way. like i'm not saying offing 8k colonists was the way to go but for someone whose body can change shape his will and the way he loves people is so steadfast and UNchanging and that is very. wow. what a situation that is

HIIIII THEY HELD HAAAAANDS. did i have to pause the episode and recover from hysterics and maybe also tears? don't worry about it

he makes hands to touch people with and when he woke up that morning for the first time in 200 years he made hands to touch her with.........

also, kira praying over her own grave. insane.

THE KISS!!!!!!! she was very much like giving that to him as a one time goodbye thing but AAAUGHGHGH

i kind of wish she'd asked WHY he loves her - that it had had a little more substance - but we gotta save some goodies for modern day odo

also aw he's still bad at shapeshifting even after linking with his other self...

also, i had odo vision this entire episode. kira has never looked more beautiful

anyway, sorry, the ethical dilemma. i don't think erasing 8k people from history is quite the same as killing them. they don't know they were erased and no one grieves them. it's more existentially horrifying, worse in some ways, but also not the same as murder, because again - what about the people on ds9 who exist right now and need their families? keiko and molly and yoshi and jake and kassidy? what about the people who would be born because they go back? the people who need sisko especially in the war efforts?

there's really not a clear right and wrong answer and it kind of sucks that the episode painted staying behind as like "the right thing to do even though it's very difficult to make such a sacrifice." like maybe the colony is miserable. struggling to survive. and that thickens things up a little

i read that dax was originally supposed to be the one to redo the autopilot because of his guilt over the accident which would have made lots of sense - i think we could have swung it to dax getting helped by odo, because dax's dedication to keeping the colony alive makes less sense the more you think about it, and then kira's slightly less horrified? maybe that removes some of the teeth, idk

also, imagine being bonded to your grandma's trill. like you'd remember her sex life. wack

AND I NEARLY FORGOT BUT SISKO BABY TALKING HIS LITTLE DESCENDANT!!!!!!!! please please PLEASE somebody give that man a baby he loves babies so much

anyway, 10/10, blew me away, i can't believe that really happened

TONIGHT: voy's "worst case scenario" and ds9's "blaze of glory"

[sepdet]

Have you SEEN the original moon landing feed, especially the scary bit near the end?

Now stay with me. I grew up hearing about these few minutes from my parents (in fact I took the TV they watched it on to grad school; DS9 and Babylon5 worked well in b&w).

This is even crazier than it looks like.

My parents were both scientists, my grandmother a planetarium director, and my dad was just about to land his job at a rocket company that built 95 small rockets that were part of the UpGoer Saturn V. (Yeah. Just the small ones. Saturn V was a BEAST.)

So my parents had a fair idea how dangerous this was, how Neil going manual was a bad sign, and just how close he was to running empty and crashing. They knew the problem that every ounce of fuel you carry requires even more fuel to lift off, so the Eagle was built light, carrying no excess weight even in fuel (it had to lift off the Moon with no rocket, after all).

But they didn't learn until years later just how jury-rigged and bespoke Apollo technology was. Every vehicle and part was designed like a Mythbusters build: extremely customized for the procedures it had to accomplish, using parts and even technology invented for specific mission tasks.

rope memory, predecessor to modern silicon chips: 1s and 0s woven by women (of course) at a Massachusetts textile plant

At the time, computers were the size of rooms and very touchy. Apollo's computer memory was core rope memory, never used before or since, to save space. The read/write guidance computer, too, was woven: physical media could better survive the rigors of space travel. (I suspect even my parents don't know it also used some of the very first integrated circuits, soldered by hand under a microscope by Navajo women).

Spacesuits were (and still are) designed and hand-stitched by Playtex bramakers. The lunar rovers' wheels were titanium meshes woven with piano wire to let dust through, and even had a clever navigation system despite no GPS or magnetic north.

They couldn't test these rigs with computer modeling. They didn't know for sure what the moon's surface would be like, apart from basic parameters like low gravity and near vacuum and a temperature ranging from 250°F in the sun to -250° in the shade. And it was nearly impossible to test for or practice in those conditions on Earth.

And then there were the unknowns. A massive solar flare between Apollo 16 and 17 might have killed or sickened them too much to operate their ship.

While the spacesuit and to some extent the rover design carried on, a lot of these hacks were so unusual that they might as well be alien tech. (I'm sorry woven technology fell out of vogue for several decades.) That goes some way towards explaining why humans haven't left Earth orbit since I was two.

The other problem, of course, is expense. Tech for human space exploration requires as much R&D and testing as fighter planes, which have developed through a century of multiple countries' military budgets. Human space programs are lucky to last two presidents; the next president usually doesn't think giving glory to his predecessor is a good use of money.

So for 40 years, NASA has mostly worked with other countries on human spaceflight or built robot explorers that can be launched in 3-4 years before Congress or the president can axe the program. They're less likely to shut down a mission when 99.99% of the money's been spent, and all that's left to do is download data and uplink occasional instructions.

TL:DR; Congress and the White House keep flashing the equivalent of that computer error message, every time NASA gets ready to send humans into space again. Overload. Abort mission.

Unless, you know, American citizens start saying Go. Go. Go. Go. We have some pretty important priorities down here on Earth (which Amazon and Disney and oil companies should be footing the bill for, though they try not to), but I bet the military can cough up the cost of a few fighter jets.

[sshbpodcast]

Character Spotlight: Nog

By Ames

After some great blogposts on Quark and Rom, we’ve got one Ferengi left to shine the spotlight on, and that’s another of our fan favorites: Nog! Similarly to his father, Nog’s character arc over the seasons of Deep Space Nine is captivating to watch, as he grows from a little punk ne’er-do-well into a fully realized, complex person full of nuance and opportunities to learn. Which is pretty much DS9 in a nutshell.

So get prepared for some character whiplash, as we’ve got both childish pranks and severe post-traumatic stress disorder to explore in our blogpost below as we applaud the impressive versatility and range of the late Aron Eisenberg. Check out what your A Star to Steer Her By hosts have assembled as some of the young Ferengi’s best and worst moments, and check out our discussion on this week’s podcast episode (jump to 1:15:10 for Nog!). And there’ll be no running on the promenade!

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best moments

Vulcans stole my homework As usual, we’re starting off with the good moments, and early on in “The Nagus” we see Nog get pulled from Keiko’s school out of Rom’s sheer racism. But what’s most commendable in the young Ferengi is that he sticks with it, secretly learning to read in the cargo bay with Jake and entirely subverting Sisko’s expectations and systematic racism against the Ferengi!

Maybe this isn’t a problem. Maybe it’s an opportunity. While we gripe about how the Ferengi can be cartoonishly one-dimensional at times, there are times when their obsession with profit makes for good character and plot moments. When Nog encourages Varis Sul, Tetrarch of the Paqu, to view her land-rights situation in “The Storyteller” as a business negotiation, she finds a compromise everyone enjoys!

Say that five times fast Speaking of Nog’s business acumen, he’s clearly still learning some of the basics in “Progress” but we still enjoy watching as he and Jake create their own Milo Minderbinder–like syndicate to sell yamok sauce and self-sealing stem bolts for what will turn out to be great running gags for years to come… not to mention tongue-twisters that frequently plague us on the podcast.

Because I don’t want to end up like my father From what we know about Nog by the midpoint of season three (including some of the bad moments you’ll see below), it seems entirely random for him to want to join Starfleet as he says in “Heart of Stone.” But when he exposes to Sisko that he has dreams outside of making profit, of being something greater than his father, you really root for the guy and know he’s really going to do it!

Best friends in subspace When old man Jake Sisko is ready to embark on some outlandish quest to find his father, lost in subspace for decades, in “The Visitor,” there is absolutely no surprise that Nog is right there at his side in the Defiant, ready to do whatever it takes for his old friend. Sure, it’s an alternate future version of Nog, but the connection he has with Jake is as real as ever.

On Wednesday we wear red Of course, Starfleet Academy is a challenge for Nog, who has set his sights on getting into the elite and extremely cliquey Red Squad to make a name for himself. But when it turns out that Red Squad is just a bunch of cadets being used by Admiral Leyton for his coup in “Paradise Lost,” Nog helps Sisko to find the truth of the matter, even if it is reluctantly at first.

Not quite a Vulcan Hello The B-plot in “Blaze of Glory” may not entirely gel with the A-plot of watching Eddington’s sacrifice, but it’s still some cute stuff for Nog. When he stands up to Martok after a whole episode of getting walked all over by the Klingons, you’ve got to respect the guy. As Martok says, “Courage comes in all sizes,” and it’s great to watch Nog tackle his problems head on.

Have a good day! There’s just something about “In the Cards” that makes you feel good. Nog, being the best friend a kid could ask for, agrees to help Jake win his dad a baseball card, going so far as to loan all his money to Jake (I can hear every Ferengi screaming at that). And then the rest of the episode is them going around the station, making everyone have a genuinely nice day. It’s so cute!

Boogie woogie woogie Okay, Nog might only have one line in all of “You Are Cordially Invited,” but I just find him dancing with Jadzia at her bachelorette party just so endearing that I had to include it. Aron Eisenberg came up with the little Ferengi frog dance himself, and when Terry Farrell joins in, I find myself smiling every time. Thank you, Aron, for creating this adorable moment.

Have faith in the Great Material Continuum So the whole Rube Goldberg device that is the chain events of schemes in “Treachery, Faith, and the Great River” may be kind of a repeat of the deals from “Progress” but it’s still very clever. After he joined Starfleet, you could almost forget that Nog is a Ferengi under the ensign uniform, but he pulls off deal after deal after deal to get the chief the stabilizer he needs.

We have a casino to build While it is painful to watch Nog struggle with PTSD in “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” the way he knuckles down to assist Vic with his finances and to work on expanding the lounge into a casino is simply fascinating. It’s helping him cope, so that by the end of a brilliantly acted episode, he doesn’t even realize that he’s put himself on the road to recovery that is right for him.

He’s not just a hologram, he’s my friend Speaking of Vic’s casino, Nog is quick to pay back his holographic crooner friend for helping him recover by participating in the big heist in “Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang.” Nog’s part is to crack the safe in the countroom, and when he learns that it has an auto-relock tumbler that no one was expecting, he keeps his cool, gets to work, and helps the whole crew save the day!

—

Worst moments

You never get a second chance to make a first impression The very first glimpse we get of Nog in “Emissary” is him stealing shit (almost certainly at Quark’s bidding) and getting locked in the brig by Odo. He has all of two lines in the episode – “Hurry up!” and “Now!” –  but he is immediately cemented as a bad seed under the thumb of his uncle. The show literally starts Nog off with such a bad reputation there’s nowhere to go but up!

What this place needs is a school Nog’s delinquent behavior doesn’t stop there. When he and Jake strike up a friendship in “A Man Alone,” it’s by sharing the experience of pranking a couple of civilians on the promenade with some Garanian bolites, which cause them to itch terribly and turn colors in a scene that legitimately looks like torture. It’s no wonder Keiko steps in by starting up her little school.

Buckets of fun! We see another of Nog’s juvenile pranks in “The Storyteller” when he fills Odo’s bucket with oatmeal and dumps it on Jake who, utterly mortified, believes for a second that they’ve somehow killed Odo. It’s a little funny in hindsight, but at the moment it just seems cruel. Jake’s reaction of terror certainly helps that along, cementing Nog’s station status as a nuisance.

No running on the promenade! There’s one more Nog prank to make the list! When he sprays some foul-smelling fluid on Tumak in “Sanctuary,” it causes a big fight to break out with the various Skrrean kids. Nog just can’t help himself. As if these refugee kids haven’t been through enough, they have this short, big-eared, froglike nuisance wreaking havoc for them. What a brat.

No one’s asking you to think, my dear As we’ve discussed in Quark’s and Rom’s respective spotlight posts before, Ferengi culture is garbage, especially how they treat females. We see some of that come through in Nog in “Life Support” when he goes on a double date with Jake and acts like a complete asshole to Riska. He’s demeaning to her, he requests she cuts his food for him, and somehow Jake’s the one apologizing!

I’ve been looking for it for two years Even when Nog has matured and joined Starfleet Academy, we get little reminders of the miscreant that he was from the start. At his coming-of-age yardsale, Kira discovers that Nog has had her lost springball racket all along and was attempting to sell it in “Little Green Men.” Sure, that was two-years-ago Nog, but he could have returned it in all that time!

Could you massage it some more? Across so many of these posts, every time oo-mox comes up it automatically makes the worst moments lists. So when Nog tricks Faith Garland into giving him oo-mox in “Little Green Men,” and not for the first time evidently, I find it abhorrent. Here’s hoping I don’t have to bring up such rapey behavior again for a while (at least until that one Ferengi episode of Enterprise).

Healthy body, healthy mind After a season or so at Starfleet Academy, Nog suddenly becomes a tightass. The conflict with Jake, now his roommate, in “The Ascent” is manufactured and trite – the kind of odd-couple antics of eponymous sitcoms. Nog is now a neatfreak. He constantly works out. He corrects Jake’s stories without permission. It’s like his character has been rewritten to fit a punchline, and an old one at that.

I won’t turn my back on you again This one’s just a little silly peeve. After the events of “Empok Nor” when Garak’s little murder spree on the titular station, Nog vows to never turn his back on Garak when they’re out searching for supplies in “Rocks and Shoals.” But then after they get hostage-handoff’ed, he immediately turns his back on Garak as they cross the levy. Dude! What did you just say?

Red Squad, Red Squad, Red Squad! Nog got tempted by the allure of the corrupt Red Squad in “Homefront” and “Paradise Lost,” but it’s in “Valiant” that he gets thoroughly taken in. Acting Captain Watters offers Nog everything he’s ever wanted: respect, rank, and some semblance of power, in exchange for his unquestioning obedience when the utterly impossible plan goes swiftly sideways. Gee, who’da thunk?

And you find that impressive? The Dominion War sure brings out the worst in a lot of people. Sisko commits some war crimes. O’Brien is typically racist about the Jem’Hadar. And Nog starts to fancy himself a soldier, bent on killing the enemy. In “The Siege of AR-558,” he blatantly admires the Ketracel-white tubes that Reese has collected as war trophies, and Quark is all of us, displaying utter disgust at this.

You don’t come into my club and start hitting customers While we totally get that recovery from the loss of his leg is a struggle, that’s no excuse for how Nog treats his friends in “It’s Only a Paper Moon.” Living in a holodeck starts off as a way to not only avoid the people he thinks are staring at him, but to avoid helping himself get better through therapy and rehabilitation. And when Jake visits, Nog is rude to Jake’s date, and then outright attacks Jake in the middle of Vic’s set. Pally!

— You’ve got a deal! That’s the end of the Ferengi spotlights (for now?), but we’ve got more great DS9 recurring characters to examine for the next couple weeks, so make sure you’re following along here. We’re also still plodding through the Xindi arc over on our watchthrough of Enterprise, so join us on SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcasts, and hail us over on Facebook and Twitter. Now say it with me: self-stealing stem– dammit!

[catgrassplantdad]

fic writer interview

i was tagged by the luminous @energievie & @suzy-queued to fill this bad boy out! i remember doing this last year too, how fun! 🩷

1. How many works do you have on AO3?  I've got 20 on there now!

2. What’s your total AO3 word count? 143,320

3. What are your top 5 fics by kudos? kinda raw, float, cinematic, and i'm your warm receiver, watching. the four after kinda raw are all pretty close together in terms of kudos, but kinda raw has a lot more kudos than the one after it and i don't understand why. i have written better fics lmfao! y'all are just nasty. and honestly i appreciate that.

4. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? i try to always respond, but sometimes it gets away from me! i just really appreciate people taking the time to leave a comment, and i want to show that appreciation.

5. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending? i don't think any of mine have been angsty!

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending? they're all happy, but it might be you outshined the best there was just because of the nature of the story. soft dads, seen from mickey's perspective as he grows into fatherhood over the course of a year, but also so, so plotless. soft!

7. Do you write crossovers? no and i doubt i ever will. one of my very favorite conversations though is when my husband and i insert characters from other media we like into star trek tng or ds9. it's so dumb and so funny. lmao what if i wrote it

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic? yeah! once, on one of my favorite fics, ligature. they told me i should sterilize myself because i'm glorifying abuse by writing bdsm, it's a good read

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? i almost exclusively write smut! nasty and loving. i don't know how to describe it but whenever i think i've written something disgusting i inevitably get comments about how sweet it is. which, yeah, it's not like they're mutually exclusive ways to fuck. so yeah, sweet and dirty husbands

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen? i don't think so! i mean i hope not

11. Have you ever had a fic translated? nope!

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before? i haven't, but i've collaborated on a couple of projects with my dear friend @heymrspatel! i wrote and she made art for cinematic and honeycomb. cinematic was more julissa making art for parts i'd already written, but honeycomb especially was a collaborative process with the way that a bunch of what i wrote was based on things that julissa was visualizing for her art, so parts of it did feel like co-writing. it was the most fun i've had working on anything!

13. What’s your all-time favorite ship? don't make me choose between the angel who fell in love with a faithless man, and the closeted thug who fell in love with the kid who had it bad for him and ultimately had the most satisfying ending. destiel and gallavich are both such incredibly compelling ships!! aahhh!!

14. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will? if there's something i'm not going to finish, it's generally because it became something i didn't want to work on anymore.

15. What are your writing strengths? describing physical sensation and emotional impact, dialogue

16. What are your writing weaknesses? exposition

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic? i like evie's idea of just indicating that they've switched to another language without actually writing the language out

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for? gallavich

19. What’s a fandom/ship you haven’t written for yet but want to? i really want to write destiel smut. i think the nonhuman element could be fun to play with. i've read a lot of grace sex and that shit is soooooo. hot. i want to try my hand at it.

20. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written? this changes so often! one i come back to a lot is chapter two of 2022's kinktober collection, the prompts were wax & "yeah, that's it baby, just like that" and i wrote some wax play and i suppose cockwarming although it's not tagged as such. i also really fucking love lush, it's inspired by one of julissa's pieces and it's drunk lovemaking and breathplay. i also need to shout out a newer one, beauty in simplicity from this year's kinktober collection. mickey getting his ass eaten on the kitchen table. there's three fics! i don't care!

tagging @howlinchickhowl @whatwouldmickeydo @whatthebodygraspsnot @gallawitchxx @ohkate @sam-loves-seb @sisitrip @crossmydna @thisdivorce @mmmichyyy @arrowflier if you guys feel like playing 🖤

[guppygiggles]

Hey friend!

Maybe this has been asked before, but was Avery inspired by anyone? ( ·ิϖ·ิ)

I don't think anyone has ever asked me this on this blog! Honestly, I've tried many times to nail down exactly what inspired Avery, but... I never can, not completely.

This is going to get long, I'm sorry.

I turned 30 last year. It wasn't in a "midlife crisis" or depressive kind of way, but I started thinking a lot about how I wanted the rest of my life to go, and what I wanted out of life that I'd never had a chance to have. I decided that there were two things I really yearned to do -- make art, and make friends. I figured a good place to start dipping my toes in would be Tumblr, since I'd used it in the past and I knew there would be a lot of art here to inspire me. And I was inspired... massively. Especially after I started actually drawing, myself. I started getting more ideas at once than I'd ever had in my life, and it triggered a bout of insomnia I am still dealing with now, almost six months later.

The first time I can remember thinking about Avery was during one such sleepless night, desperately trying to coax myself to sleep. Laying in the dark, I'd close my eyes and imagine leaving my body, floating above my apartment complex. I'd wander around like a ghost, exploring places I'd seen, but which are normally inaccessible... private roads, fenced estates, etc. I'd imagine sitting on the edge of a skyscraper, watching the city move beneath me, imagining what people were doing, why they were up so late, etc.

I imagined this many nights... It became a pet fantasy. When I was a kid, I read a book called Billy the Bird by Dick King-Smith, maybe that's where I got the idea... I don't know. Along with the insomnia were vicious bouts of nostalgia, too, so... It's possible.

But, anyway... I'd get lonely.

I wanted someone to talk to, so I imagined someone sitting with me. Someone who could only come out at night, for fear of being seen. Someone for whom sitting on the edge of a skyscraper was no concern, and who could catch me if I fell. I imagined he was soft, gentle... a good listener, maybe even a bit shy. I imagined he was an intellectual, capable of being quite serious, but never dour. He was quick with a smile, and it was easy to make him laugh.

In some respects, I suppose, he was inspired by a friend of mine, who died many years ago. In most ways, he wasn't like Avery at all -- he was extremely blue-collar, the exact opposite of an intellectual, and very outgoing. He was not refined in any way, and could even be quite reckless, at times. But, he had a unique, gentle, innocent sort of kindness that I've found to be exceedingly rare. To know him was to love him, really; he was a hard worker and a fierce friend, someone who wanted nothing more than to love and be loved. My relationship with him and the way his passing affected me touches everything I make and everything I do, intentional or not.

When I was building Avery's character, I was very fascinated by object heads at the time (particularly Prince Robot from Saga), and I was also seeing a lot art for "doctor/scientist" type characters. Despite never playing the game, I liked TF2 fanart, especially of Medic. I thought about other characters I'd fixated on, too, and what exactly I liked about them... Milo Thatch from Atlantis, Data from Star Trek, John from Homestuck, Sans from Undertale, Stanley and the Narrator from The Stanley Parable, Pokemon professors both Oak and Elm, Nightcrawler from X-Men, Wilson from House, Dr. Bashir from DS9... The list goes on, really.

I know this is kind of a non-answer, and I'm sorry about that. It isn't really a clear answer for me, either. All I can really say for sure is this: Avery is the embodiment of everyone and everything I've ever loved, as well as the reflection of my own self-love. Relatively speaking, we just met, but I feel like he's been here the whole time. I've made so many wonderful friends because of him, too! Can't say what the exact moment was, only that now that he's here, I can't imagine life without him. 💙

[thethirdromana]

Just hit 3,000 total kudos on AO3 so I think it's time for an updated version of my fanfic roundup! Going to go for only things published after my last roundup in November 2022.

The most popular one: V'Shal 2: Electric Boogaloo - Star Trek TOS/SNW, all audiences, Kirk/Spock, 1.6k words. What does the V'Shal ritual look like when Spock does it in preparation for his marriage to Kirk? It's wild that this one has gone down so well as I wrote it in <2 hours straight after watching Charades.

The smuttiest one: The Rewards of Command - Star Trek Enterprise, explicit, Archer/Reed, 2.8k words. One of those fics that I wrote mostly just for me and it's been a pleasant surprise that a handful of other people liked it too (though - weirdly given the number of kudos - it has zero comments).

A personal favourite: Happily Ever After, Jeeves and the sequel I Do, Jeeves, all audiences, Jeeves/Wooster, 13k words total. In which Jeeves and Wooster get first engaged, then married. These were such fun to write. There's a third one in the works if I ever get round to it.

The one (nearly) no one read: Deep Space Noir, teen, 5.3k words. In which a hardboiled detective is investigating on Deep Space Nine. Well, I liked it anyway.

The longest one: A Moment in Time, explicit, Sisko/Bashir, 12k words. Time freezes for everyone on Deep Space Nine, except for Sisko and Bashir. I would like to write more long fics! Should do something about that.

The shortest one: And The Stars Look Very Different, all audiences, Sisko/Kasidy, 418 words. One of my DS9 rarepair ficlets (the longest of which is 1,200 words), about what might have happened if Benjamin Sisko had never gone to the stars.

[only-in-december]

Hi! Here's a list of ten of the weirdest ships I could come up with for Star Trek off the top of my head! (Don't ask why. Just go with it....I was bored.)

The rules are simple, 1) the characters have to either come from the same show, or exist at the same point in the timeline (so for example Chekov x Kira would not be allowed, but Kira x Geordi would....that ship is solely for example purposes and will not be used in the final list.) 2) Characters can be used however many times I see fit. 3) No incest, pedophilia, or other generally icky pairings. And finally, 4) There is no forethought put into whether or not they would actually work as a couple. It's just for fun.😁

Christopher Pike x Sam Kirk

Hikaru Sulu x Spock

Pavel Chekov x Jim Kirk

Beverly Crusher x Worf

Quark x Guinan

Spock x Sam Kirk

Pavel Chekov x Nyota Uhura

Geordi La Forge x Kathryn Janeway

Kira Nerys x Miles O'Brien *EDIT* After many (read 3 or 4) people informed me that this is a real ship (usually in a polycule with Keiko) I rescind this as an odd ship. I apologize. In my defense, I've only watched like...maybe the whole first season of DS9 at most, and so haven't gotten to that storyline. My most humble of apologies to all.

Una Chin-Riley x Montgomery Scott

I don't think any of these are plausible romantic relationships for any of them. But if anyone wants to try and defend any of them, I'd love to see how you think that relationship would work! And if somehow I put a ship that you actually do ship, then I'm sorry! I tried my best to think of pairings that no one would really ship in the genuine kind of way!

[autisticandroids]

various tos/tng/ds9/voy/ent "spock" type characters and whether they could hang out with cas.

tos:

spock: could not hang out with cas. they would have nothing to talk about and also, despite being gay, spock is homophobic.

tng:

i'm gonna save tng for last because these are the most interesting answers.

ds9:

odo: they would get along fine, but i think odo would get bored talking to cas. also, cas is a serial killer, and not fun or mysterious about it.

there are a number of other characters on ds9 you could claim as a spock in various ways, but imo the only one who merits inclusion here is julian bashir, who imo isn't really a spock, his closest srchetypal compatriot is like, tom paris, but i think he bears mention anyway.

julian bashir: he would get bored with cas. julian likes people he can solve, or chase, or win approval from. failing that, he likes people who will unreservedly adore him and think he's the coolest guy ever when he shows off how clever he is. cas is not the guy.

voy:

tuvok: i think tuvok would be glad to hang out with someone who isn't bullying him for once, and also i doubt tuvok is homophobic because it's like a hundred and fifty years after tos, but they don't have much in common, and also imo tuvok is a genuine loner, not just awkward, so he wouldn't really wanna hang out too much, especially since he doesn't already know cas. cas is a lot more social and would feel kind of rejected by tuvok's lack of interest.

seven: they don't have much in common on the surface, but more importantly the things they do have in common are so overarchingly horrible and miserable that if they actually had a serious talk they would both have breakdowns.

the emh: they would get along like a house on fire at first because cas has a lot of patience and the emh will hang out with anyone as long as they'll pay attention to him, but even cas has limits.

voy has other arguable spocks but i'm going to stick with these three.

ent:

i don't remember super well because i watched it all when i was like ten years old and i've only seen sporadic episodes since then.

t'pol: if cas could get her to open up to him he would enjoy hearing about her many issues. on the other hand, she is homophobic. you win some you lose some.

phlox: they would have a fun little time together! cas could learn the names of all of phlox's pets!

if there's other spocks on ent i don't remember them.

tng, for real this time:

data: i think data would murder cas. i think cas would drive data absolutely up the wall batshit crazy. because the think about cas is he's like data, but he's stupid. he's bad at it. data pours all of his energy into being 110% palatable and charming and entertaining at all times. he's a living party trick desperate for human approval, and he's also always carefully and machiavellianly calculating everything he does socially to both perform palatability and accomplish his goals. and then along comes cas who is like, also autistic, but dumb, and bad at compensating, and making data look bad by comparison. i think data would Kill.

worf: i think they could genuinely be like, friends. like the thing about worf is that he is very lonely and wants to spend time with people but the social activities he likes engaging in are sitting in the same room silently reading books together, sitting in the same room silently listening to opera together, silently exercising in the same room together, sparring, and excitedly explaining/participating in his special interests. cas would enjoy all of these things, and worf would respect him and value him in return. cas also, by being kind to worf and treating him like a person (rare), would unlock secret perks like occasional extremely awkward but sincere affection. also cas can definitely beat worf in single combat which is a perk for worf generally speaking and would start them off on a positive note.

[weerd1]

It’s Been a Long Road: Two decades after “Star Trek: Enterprise” I still have Faith of the Heart.

After the click, there are 2300 words of me doing a deep dive on my love for "Star Trek: Enterprise." You have been warned.

When I was in elementary school, I was a year younger than my peers. My mom had decided I didn’t need to go to Kindergarten as I was already reading ahead of my level, so she insisted I be placed at age 5 directly into 1st Grade. In ways she was right; I completed the reading and phonics program in my little Arizona school for the entire first grade before Christmas. To this day though, I am clumsy with scissors, paste, and all the “kindergarten skills” and I spent the rest of my school career smaller, weaker, and less coordinated than everyone in my class. 

This probably all worked out in the end; sure, I couldn’t play sports, but to avoid bullies and getting picked on, I got funny, and that’s worked out pretty well for me. But in those days when I would play a sport such as baseball, the opposing team would step a little closer, the coaches would advise me to take the walk; I was not as good as my peers, so allowances were made for my performance.

That is exactly how I looked at “Star Trek: Enterprise” for years. It was only four seasons, while its powerhouse predecessors all had seven. It wasn’t set in a utopian far future, but rather not too far from now meaning more modern and vernacular language. The science seemed a little spurious, with writers seeming to think the term “Rigel” was just some made-up word from older Trek series rather than older Trek series using actual star names for locations. The knowledge of Trek seemed a little lacking as well, with the first episode citing “Klingon Warbirds” and basing the hero ship on a design introduced in a then recent movie…that was set 200 years later. 

I watched though, as we were coming off of there being CONSTANT Trek on television for the previous 15 years, and this was what we had.

I groused then, a lot. The lack of continuity, the trivia gaffes, the over-sexualization of women characters (ok, that WAS more than a bit overdone, and I still grouse that point).

The theme song. Oh my lord, the theme song.

But eventually, this show won me over, almost in spite of itself. Then there was a major shift in tone for the third season, and it got to be pretty solid, and the FOURTH season was…STAR TREK! Like its predecessors, the show had taken some time to find its footing (c’mon, admit how uneven the first couple of seasons of TNG were), but had pulled itself together, and the show’s future looked bright in 2005!

And then there was a truly terrible last episode and ENT was cancelled and gone. 

Twenty years later, here I am, and though the absence of new Trek only lasted about four years—until JJ Abrams 2009 movie—I felt that absence keenly then. I am glad to report there has been Trek I really enjoy since then…and some marginal entries, but that’s not new either honestly. But with all this new material, I still find myself going back to revisit Archer and his crew. I’ve rewatched maybe two TNG episodes in the last 15 years. Maybe two or three Voyager episodes. But TOS, DS9, and ENT I hit regularly. Why does ENT keep forcing itself to the front of my Trek consciousness?

From the beginning, ENT suffered from some external pressures that weren’t helpful to its development. There was a tension between doing more of the same, successful formula Trek had been delivering since “Encounter at Farpoint” (the TNG pilot episode from 1987) and doing something experimental and new. Viewer fatigue was setting in a bit, but fans were vociferous in what THEY thought Trek meant. Anything that strayed too far would take a beating on the internet message boards. 

DS9 had just finished off their wartime storyline, and though there were adamant Niners, it was only just beginning to truly find its audience with the advent of home video allowing one to actually watch the whole thing. Meanwhile, the less arc-oriented VOY had added the character Seven. There had been a ratings increase, which the producers took to mean any new show needed an attractive woman in a catsuit. Remember also, we were in the midst of the Star Wars Prequel trilogy, so going BACK to a time when the story could be a little looser was floating in the zeitgeist. 

But it was also 2001, and though the visual continuity of the then modern Treks had maintained a history inclusive and accepting of TOS, putting a starship on screen that would look like a century’s LESS development than Matt Jefferies’ design from the mid-1960s was going to be problematic. 

I don’t know this is true, but I also suspect that since the previous shows had a British man, a Black man, and a Woman as captains, someone in Production wanted to make sure there was a white, American man back in the center seat. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s my gut.

So all of this goes into the show, and honestly it kicks off as a bit of a hot mess. So much seems to be playing it safe. Some fairly cliched storylines that occasionally try something a little new. A few things it does try new are not quite there: That aforementioned over-sexualization of the women in the crew*. Cringy comments about relations with aliens. Archer watching water polo.

There are a lot of forgettable episodes, contradictions. And yet, I kept watching. Yeah, I was on message boards complaining about the tech looking too advanced. I’d gripe about how un-Vulcan the Vulcans seemed. I’d gripe about every violation of what I accepted as canon, that was often really just things the fandom had settled on in the 70s and had no basis on the show. And I was just a complete tool online when the first cloaking device showed up. 

And the theme song, oh my lord, the theme song.

But I kept watching. And before I knew it, I started to appreciate something about this show. I had to make a choice between griping that this modern show that I was actually enjoying didn’t adhere to a single line of dialog written (then) 40 years before for a show that wasn’t expected to last a year. I, a staunch Trek gatekeeper, was having an awakening about continuity and canon, and I had to figure out why. Finally it hit me. 

These characters, these performers, they were more than they should be. These characters were making me love them, even when the stories were mediocre or cliche or counter to what I believed was canon. 

Take Jonathan Archer, played with almost megaton-levels of earnestness by Scott Bakula. Archer’s earnest, do-gooder nature is so extreme…you know how a show like “Family Guy,” does a joke, and it’s ok, and then it keeps going way too long, and you get sick of it. And then it keeps going still, and somehow, this only kinda-funny joke goes so long or so far that it actually manages to somehow loop back around to being not just funny, but hilarious. That’s Archer’s earnestness, his naiveté.  His “oh gosh” nature is interesting and fun compared to Kirk’s bravado. Then, after he oh goshes his way into losing ANOTHER fight, he’s simply grating. THEN you start to think he’s just devastatingly boring. But if you keep watching, then it comes around to this unironic serving of safe-guy that doesn’t blink in how GOLLY he is as a hero and you smile when he all but winks at the camera. And then, in later seasons when he’s faced with some pretty devastating moral dilemmas, you FEEL it!

T’Pol, played by Jolene Blalock: she’s so attractive it almost hurts to look at her, but you realize soon after that while she somehow seems to keep ending up getting rubbed down in decon Jolene is BRINGING the performance. That her delivery, her tone; the micro-expressions which betray her stoic facade for the Vulcan emotions at a full boil underneath…you buy it. You realize her performance is wonderful, and she’s one of the best Vulcans in the entire franchise.

Connor Trinneer as the character I recently described as “Florida Man in Space,” Trip Tucker. He’s a walking cliche, his accent making “warp-field plasma conduits” sound like something you’d serve up with sweet tea and grits. He’s got Himbo energy that rivals the output of his anti-matter reactor, and still it works. His “I don’t really know much about anything, but I’m willing to learn…oh God I’m pregnant” (actual episode) speaks so beautifully to humans DISCOVERING things for the first time, screwing it up, but learning from their mistakes and going back for more! 

I could easily go on about Travis Mayweather, the kid who grew up in space and is both completely knowledgeable and blissfully ignorant of anything that goes on out there. Malcolm Reed, the British tactical officer who if his upper lip was any stiffer, he could use it as a weapon. Hoshi Sato who starts out completely out of her depth, and ends up loving it all. Dr. Phlox, your over-friendly, polyamorous uncle who brandishes optimism like a flame thrower and plays with eels. 

They are all just…TOO. Too this, too that, and in doing so, somehow all circle back to being absolutely perfect. Because as flawed as ENT is in its storytelling at times, and how mired it is in attitudes before #metoo, the IDEA of the show is a great one: How does humanity get from the mess we are now to the icons of TOS or TNG? Enterprise shows us it wasn’t a switch, but a road.  A long road, getting from there to here.

Yes, even the damn theme song, hokey and way too on the nose is EXACTLY RIGHT for what this show means.  

Somewhere along the line, we all knew we had to move in a little closer when ENT comes up to bat, but we all started wishing, hoping, that maybe it would get a home run.

And sometimes, just sometimes, these characters that are great in spite of themselves, and this design, that’s too good for what it should be**, and this show that’s just not on the level of its predecessors does exactly that and knocks one into the stands. Suddenly it’s season four, and Enterprise manages to sum up the humanity Star Trek has been serving up since 1966 better than any show before or since:

Vulcan Ambassador Soval: We don't know what to do about Humans. Of all the species we've made contact with, yours is the only one we can't define. You have the arrogance of Andorians, the stubborn pride of Tellarites. One moment, you're as driven by your emotions as Klingons, and the next, you confound us by suddenly embracing logic.

Admiral Maxwell Forrest: I'm sure those qualities are found in every species.

Vulcan Ambassador Soval: Not in such confusing abundance.

We’re not perfect, we’re not utopian, but we are AMAZING when we give ourselves the chance, and for me, Enterprise takes that idea and runs with it. It often swings and misses, but when it connects, we can smile and clap and let it take its run around the bases, because it makes us feel good. And if it weren’t for Enterprise teaching me how these lessons, these characters are more important that visual continuity or strict adherence to arcane canon, I wouldn’t have accepted the Kelvin timeline. The DISCO Klingons. The Strange New Worlds uniforms, sets, and character interpretations. Because as much as I love what Star Trek means, all of that deeper meaning is nothing if it isn’t entertaining. And Enterprise taught me how important that was. 

I could go on about how much better the show got when Berman and Braga took a back seat to Manny Coto, though there are certainly strong arguments that he got a little too fan-servicey. But in the end, the point is CBS took over and closed down Enterprise just as it found its footing. I hope the wave of nostalgia we’re seeing applied (perhaps TOO applied in shows like “Picard”) to modern Trek means we get more than a passing Lower Decks reference to the show. And if not, well, I’ve got my copies, and my fan fic, and my Tumblr memes. 

Most importantly though, I’ve got (I’ve got, I’ve got) Faith of the Heart.

*I will give the show credit at least that it was pretty willing to flaunt shirtless men as well, and biceps-a-plenty. 

**In regard to things looking more advanced, I will give credit to Brannon Braga for dropping a hint in an interview at the end of season 1 that the Enterprise-E coming back in “First Contact” had subtly altered the timeline, making things a little more advanced. Fans—and I regret to include myself—railed against that online, and it wasn’t really mentioned again. Recently, Strange New Worlds has revisited and canonized the idea that the timeline, even though it is the Prime timeline, DOES go through shifts and changes due to temporal incursions, evidenced wonderfully in the episode “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” when a Romulan time traveler admits to altering time so the rise of Khan happens not at the 1992 date that Spock gave us in the original series “Space Seed” to now to him still being a child 30 years later. It’s in-story shorthand for the fact that when a show goes for six decades some continuity has to change and THAT IS OK. I wasn’t ready to accept it then, but am glad it’s now part of Trek. 

[girlonthelasttrain]

I didn't do a yearly roundup of my fic writing output before the end of 2023 because I was preoccupied with other things, so here it is now:

In 2023

I posted 5 stories, 4 in English and 1 in Italian

for a total of ~53,700 words, the most I've posted in one calendar year ever since I started posting fic online

2 fics for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, 1 for Star Trek: Voyager, 1 for Star Trek: Picard and finally, after many years of only writing Trek-related fic, 1 for Wheel of Time (TV)

all are f/f (because in this at least I'm very consistent), and two of the stories feature polyamory

the longest fic is Best Left (~38,400 words, the longest fic I've ever posted so far) and the shortest is Sotto il Passo Ratosha (~1200 words)

Under the cut thoughts on each fic!

Mistaken for Strangers (Star Trek: DS9, Kimara Cretak/Kira Nerys, ~1700 words)

Kira calls for the Habitat Ring, Guest Sector with more mixed feelings than her usual fare. It’s not that she blames Ezri, or anyone else for that matter, for assuming things about her enmity with the Romulan senator; they wouldn’t understand. In all honesty Kira isn’t sure she does, either. She remembers all too clearly how it was to be on the other side.

Written for the Rare Femslash Exchange 2022, this is the latest entry in my longstanding Kira/Cretak series. It was fun to imagine Kira as a young, and (understandably) rigid, freedom fighter and contrast her with Kira's current predicament (ie, enjoying a secret sexual relationship with Romulan Senator a little too much for her own good).

Even when I am not, I am (Star Trek: Voyager, Seven of Nine/B'Elanna Torres, ~9,600 words)

B’Elanna turns back to the console and resumes entering commands into it with grim determination. Harry watches her in silence, once again unsure what to do. There is clearly something bothering B’Elanna, there’s no doubt about it now, and it’s deeper than he thought.

Once again written for the Rare Femslash Exchange 2022, this one is kind of niche fic. The prompt specifically mentioned the Voyager novel “String Theory: Cohesion” which is an incredibly fun romp for B'Elanna/Seven fans. In it, the girls are forced to become a ‘collective of two’—essentially telepathically connected—and I wanted to explore the fallout from that with a bit of a personal spin. I love telepathy tropes, I'm fascinated by the idea of mind-sharing and horrified that anyone could know someone else's innermost thoughts, or even get lost in them. I was reading a lot of Gloria Anzaldúa when I wrote this (the title comes from “Borderlands/La Frontera”) and I thought that B'Elanna, who all her life has been forced to live on the margins, would especially not react well to that kind of identity-erasing experience, while also being forced to confront a latent attraction which has come to the forefront.

Sotto il Passo Ratosha (Star Trek: DS9, Jadzia Dax/Kira Nerys, ~1200 words)

Si guardò intorno, come stordita; si era nascosta lì per un rastrellamento quindici anni prima, buttandocisi dentro con il fucile, e ora era tornata e aveva in mano quello stesso fucile. Eppure la cesura fra i due momenti non poteva essere più ampia.

I wrote this for the None English Fest 2023, based on the first chapter of an autobiographical novel on the Italian Resistance to the Nazi occupation (“I Piccoli Maestri” by Luigi Meneghello). I admit I haven't translated it yet because I now feel pretty ambivalent about having connected an explicit narrative of decolonization like the Bajoran struggle to this particular page of Italian history (which was not that). The reference is still meaningful to me personally, and it fit the characters and Kira and Jadzia very well imho, but it's perhaps best left as a writing exercise that very few people will be able to read. That being said, in 2023 I realized just how much Italian I'm forgetting; carrying even a slightly involved conversation has become pretty challenging and my vocabulary is shrinking rapidly. Writing this short fic was not a small effort. I want to try and write (and read!) in Italian more often in 2024. And if you're reading this as an ESL fic writer: this is your sign to write more in your native language. Do It. Don't let English monopolize your creative output.

Best Left (Star Trek: Picard, Raffi Musiker/Seven of Nine + Seven of Nine/B'Elanna Torres + Raffi Musiker/B'Elanna Torres, ~38,400 words)

She’s older now, and out of uniform, looking much worse for wear after what she just went through. But there had been a time more than twenty years prior when her face had been on every Federation newsfeed, along with the rest of the crew of the USS Voyager. “You know her?” Raffi turns to Soji, frozen in bemusement beside Emil. “I’ve never met her but yes, I know who she is,” Raffi says. “You two stay here and keep an eye on things. Seven needs to see this.”

Written for the Rare Pair Exchange 2023, with this fic I brought my current OTP (B'Elanna/Seven) into the Picard timeline while also falling a little bit in love with Raffi and learning to appreciate S1 of the Picard show, despite my many complaints. I won't lie, writing this fic was hysterical, challenging, crazy fun and it broke me a little bit. I still can't say whether or not I'm proud of how it turned out; while writing it felt like I was courting disaster at every turn, and it would've certainly benefited from a better drafting process. Still, it is one of the most ambitious projects I've ever undertaken, and I feel like I didn't completely fumble the ending, so there's that. If you read it, please let me know—I'd love to hear what you thought of it, good and bad.

Master's Apprentices (Wheel of Time (TV), Lanfear/Liandrin Guirale + Liandrin Guirale/Moiraine Damodred, ~2700 words)

“All your life you have sought power out of fear,” she murmurs distractedly, as if finding the truth of your existence in braids you don’t remember plaiting. Then, her eyes meet yours again, solemn. “But no more. I found you out, Liandrin. I know every one of your secrets. There is no need for you to hide any longer.”

Written for the Femslash Exchange 2023, I admit this fic caught me by surprise. I've written for years in the same extended universe (Star Trek), and I wasn't sure I would be able to wade into a completely different setting. So in order to get over myself I tried something I had wanted to attempt for a very long time, second person POV. I think it fit well the ‘dreamscape’ I was trying to evoke, and I'm glad I took this route. Liandrin is a fascinating character to write for me, too. I share more than a few personality traits with her (most relevant for this fic her inability to get over old feelings—I still regularly dream about my ex, despite the fact that our break up almost fifteen years ago was hardly amicable), so it wasn't difficult to relate to her or realize that I could make the same terrible choices, or be preyed on by someone figuring out my weaknesses, if I don't take a principled stand. I had fun writing this fic.

[walkingstackofbooks]

5 times Julian watched Miles die (and one time he didn't)

When a bar fight goes horribly wrong, Julian does everything he can to save Miles. It's not enough. Miles dies, and Julian is left bereft and distraught. But this is a time loop fic, so when he wakes up the next day, Julian finds the universe has given him another chance to save his friend... And another... And another. There are many ways for Miles to die on a space station, and however much Julian tries -- furiously repressing his ever-increasing grief and dread to focus on this so-important task -- he just can't seem to stop the endless cycle. It doesn't help that, although his feelings are really too much to deal with, his friends keep pressing him to open up to them. He's fine, he insists, until he really isn't, and discovers that he does need a shoulder to cry on after all. Grief, hope, rage, hurt, comfort, despair, joy... A roller-coaster of emotions accompanies Julian through the most challenging six days of his life, and he is so, so tired.

Sound like your kind of story? Within the next few weeks, my fic 'Vision Awry' - a remix of the DS9 episode 'Visionary' - is going to start updating again, so now's the perfect time to go and read the first half! 😉 (while it's still a manageable 50k... :P )

From the end of September, I'll be resuming my regular posting schedule every week until the story reaches its conclusion - so if you're looking for a feels-y Julian WIP to subscribe to that will have both •definite updates, and •a definite end, may I shamelessly recommend that you give my fic a whirl? I am incredibly proud of it, and am so excited to be on the verge of sharing the rest of it with you all 🥰

[thegeminisage]

ok, i'm getting behind on ym star trek updates. last sunday we watched ds9's "sanctuary" and tng's "parallels," monday we watched ds9's "rivals" and tng's "the pegasus" (out of order!!! 💔) and last night we watched ds9's "the alternate" and tng's "homeward." we were supposed to do "rivals" and "the alternate" monday, and then the "pegasus" and "homeward" last night and i really wish we had bc i was not in the correct headspace to really enjoy the alternate but that's what i get for forgetting to check my spreadsheet!! ANYWAY.

sanctuary (ds9):

i love sisko in this episode. he has the same vibe w his subordinates as he does with jake, that he will back them up even if they're breaking rules but also when kira didn't do her homework he does have to lay down the law a little bit. lovingly, but he does. and since he never does it w/o a reason and w/o compassion nobody really minds

i'm sorry but the reverse sexism was really funny. thank you 90s tv for being brave. especially with her having multiple husbands. get it girl

kira and haneek should have explored each others bodies also

quark picking up the nephew like yeah hes gonna do it again. poor odo

literally it was such a good little conundrum bc all the logical reasons they gave for bajor not being able to support more people were like correct or whatever BUT THEY WERE FARMERS. you get the idea they really could have helped and that kid didn't have to die but inherent, knee-jerk suspicion of new/foreign people just got in the way in both cases. like you had the solution right there!! unfortunately, as we know, people

why is it ALWAYS kira's episodes that go this hard also. it's always like "here's a thing about the complex and ugly truth of the human(oid) nature and how we just have to live with ourselves" and every time it pops off

parallels (tng):

we were just saying "there's no ways tng would have the pussy to do something like this" when tng came on and also was really good

first of all, my worf e deanna DREAMS are coming true. sorry to the actors ik they hated it but i know in my heart worf e riker e deanna is real..............

i read the episode summary for this one but it said AMNESIA not WORF SWITCHING REALITIES. so i had fun going wait the cake WAS chocolate earlier and being gaslit along with worf

his little surprise party hat. please.

i didnt notice data's eyes being blue at the time but going back and looking at the pics is WILD

my baby boy wesley crusher was there also........i missed him sm

the universe worf left was crazy. picard dead, geordi dead, deanna forever without her husband...jesus christ

but my FAVORITE part (aside from the romance) was the bit there the zillion enterprises showed up and the crazy borg-hunted riker was like NO NO WE'LL NEVER GO BACK girl i was like oh but i wanna see inside those other enterprises! actually no i didn't

worf finding out deanna began having the potential to develop feelings for him after the ritual suicide thing and then IMMEDIATELY turning around to seduce her when he got back to his universe...so true. i would have done the same thing. i know he's gonna get w dax later and deanna will eventually marry riker so he's GONNA fumble it but don't fumble it!!!

rivals (ds9):

have only seen princess bridge 1 time when i was a teenager so i was not able to enjoy the biggest appeal of this episode rip

actually i thought the a plot of this episode kind of sucked ass. i didn't find the conman particularly funny or charming but i also didn't hate him enough to get invested in his downfall. also, it was so stupid that he took that machine when the guy explained that it had literally killed him............like, girl, are you stupid? obviously ds9 can save it with endearing characters and like, Acting, but i wasn't having much fun with it

i DID love the obrien bashir racketball matches though. first of all the fact that luck decided who won and not actual skill and no we'll never know...but secondly, bashir like Oh No I'm Going To Kill Him With Tennis. like, my guy, you could have just showed off less out of the gate. it went against his twink instincts though

keiko's go-get-em-tiger was really good. he would have won anyway i just know it

quark trying to DRUG A DOCTOR. his audacity truly knows no bounds. i hope those orphans got their blankets

i do like also that when they figured out the matches had been rigged they weren't even mad about it, they were both just curious and trying to experiment. i love when obrien and bashir hang out it's really great

the pegasus (tng):

TNG HAD PUSSY TWO EPISODES IN A ROW EVEN

picard day really good. yes. be miserable. i love riker getting to dunk on him

i really really REALLY enjoyed riker's energy when his old captain came aboard. jonathan frakes isn't the most technically accomplished actor on that cast, but he does such a fantastic job with that shift - riker is normally such an easygoing, funny, down to clown guy that whenever he gets :| you notice RIGHT away. episodes where he gets to be serious and angry wouldn't work if he got them all the time (though my lament for tng is that we don't get character stuff more often...), but BECAUSE they're rare, even a little too rare, you take notice all the more

i wish we had gotten to see riker sparring with worf <3

argument between riker and picard was FUNNNN i don't like picard but i DO like it when sir patrick stewart acts and i think him being on his game and jonathan frakes also being on his game was wonderful. first of all, i love it when they say the m-word, and secondly, riker grinding his teeth because he WANTS to tell and all his instincts are screaming at him to tell and he CAN'T because his loyalties are divided or whatever...delicious.

beaming aboard the ship frozen in rock with the perfectly preserved bodies. mwah. dead bodies won't even age. i know it was a budget thing and space probably wouldn't really keep them from decomposing THAT well but it quite literally took riker back to the scene of the crime and he was like yeah no i'm not having it. GOOD for him.

bonus when riker gets locked into the brig <3

the alternate (ds9):

ODO...................................

i recognized the scientist by his hair!!! he mentioned before he copied it from him

dr mora die challenge. it's not exactly that he "abused" odo in the traditional sense but he did put him in a cage, and he dehumanized him with his experiments, and every single word out of his mouth was either dehumanizing or patronizing. i love how quick they both were to correct the assumption about this guy being odo's dad - like yeah maybe an adoptive dad in a way but odo wasn't a "child" he was just so different from humanoids he had to figure out communication from scratch

like, this mf commenting on odo not having gotten the ears, or like wow you can tell what emotions people are displaying just by looking! say that again to my face i'll kill you.

dax was so weird in this episode. i kept wondering if she was possessed or something because she showed up out of nowhere and offered to buy drinks with bashir and said something about the pillar being moved. a red herring which was perhaps unintentional but unsettling nonetheless. her personality is still fluctuating a lot - at times she's prissy and at other times she's just one of the guys! but at least now she has one, from time to time. not in this episode though

i felt. SO BAD for that little life form they kidnapped. you suffocated it to death :(

i also felt terrible for odo. firstly, he deserves to kill that guy. secondly, how humiliating for him to be seen in goop form by half the station...he doesn't like being seen like that :(

i still blame dr mora though for basically triggering that last transformation...i was so mad at the end when odo was like yeah we can reconcile :) like i get loving the people who "raised" you even when they "abused" you but this wasn't quite that. i wish we had got more of a sense of them having, at any point, actually ever liked working together to solve the mysteries of shape shifters. i looked him up on imdb though and he DOES come back so maybe better luck next time

homeward (tng):

i fucking hated this episode.

firstly, who brought worf to his parents? i thought it was their adult son who was in starfleet, but was it worf's dad who brought him home? cuz this guy is worf's age and was not officially in starfleet...

secondly, there should be a clause in the prime directive about "if everybody is about to die save them with the least interference possible." i get that that runs the risk of like, being written down in their bible as jesus and altering their culture, but the idea that the culture is better off totally annihilated than altered is a little bit missing the forest for the trees. like, putting those machines on the planet in the first place would have been WAY less inference than having worf and his brother lead them to safety.

ALSO, I CANNOT BELIEVE WORF'S BROTHER KNOCKED THAT WOMAN UP. like, this kid is not gonna pop out of the womb with his surgical alterations!!

also, that guy who killed himself didn't get his special document delivered back to his people...worf KEPT IT as a souvenir? one of the only surviving documents from their old culture??

furthermore, his brother did not "won up to responsibility" by staying with those people. he's further contaminating their culture with his outside influence including the HALF HUMAN BABY and since he's marooned there he will never see his parents or brother ever again. because he got the awooga eyes. like, yes, he saved them when starfleet (picard in particular) were being horrible, but also, he didn't save their culture even a little bit, and he's lying to himself if he thinks he did. and WE COULD HAVE SAVED THEIR CULTURE WITH THE MACHINES. that was so much lower risk...................

redeeming factor of this episode was that worf is HANDSOME under all that klingon makeup. like i knew he was attractive because i've seen like headshots online but i like never saw him moving his face and acting without it. he's actually really expressive..........why do you hire a man this beautiful and then put him under all of that. like he's absolutely stunning i was so shocked

TONIGHT: ds9's "armageddon game" and tng's "sub rosa," which i have seen celebrated online for some reason? something about sexy ghosts??