jespah

Shuttlepod pilot, fan fiction writer, sentient marsupial canid.
Shuttlepod pilot, fan fiction writer, sentient marsupial canid.
27
May
2014

Review – The Continuing Adventures of Porthos – The Future Cat

Review – The Continuing Adventures of Porthos – The Future Cat

Future cat?

Background

Tarisian Dreams suggested that I somehow find a way for Spot and Porthos to meet. The only methods were, I felt, either time travel or a holodeck simulation. I chose the former.

Plot

It’s during the Xindi War, and Lili has only recently been hired. While starting dinner, she brings Porthos to the galley. He sits, hoping that’s she’ll drop something tasty. Will comes in and scolds Lili, as this is a Health Code violation.

Review – The Continuing Adventures of Porthos – The Future Cat

English: This is an orange/yellow tabby cat.

He insists that she return the beagle to Captain Archer‘s quarters. Lili does so, and departs as the ship is hit by a spatial anomaly. This creates a hull breach on B Deck. But this anomaly is temporal as well as spatial, and so it also results in Porthos being whisked away. And it’s over a century into the future, to the Enterprise-D, where Data, Spot, Geordi, Wesley Crusher, and Captain Picard all are.

Review – The Continuing Adventures of Porthos – The Future Cat

On the NX-01, they fear Porthos is deAD. On the Enterprise-D, they try to get him home.

Plus I tell the whole thing from the perspective of Porthos, including his conversations with Spot.

Does Porthos get back to the right time period? Who helps him? And what happens to him and Spot, before he departs?

I guess you’ll have to read in order to find out.

Story Postings

Rating

The story has a K rating.

Upshot

I love writing animals’ points of view, and Porthos is always great fun. Spot was much more of a challenge, but readers have told me that I got cat POV correct. That was rather satisfying to read. Will they return? Absolutely, although I have no idea as to how to (if ever) get them back together again.

Posted by jespah in In Between Days series, Interphases series, Review, 13 comments
23
May
2014

Portrait of a Character – Phlox

Portrait of a Character – Phlox

Phlox is a great character.

Origins

This Star Trek: Enterprise canon character is one of two alien members of the NX-01‘s crew (the other is the Vulcan, T’Pol). The Denobulan species is a creation specifically for ENT.

Portrayal

As in canon, Phlox is played by John Billingsley.

Portrait of a Character - PhloxThe actor is well-cast and it’s hard to think of anyone else in the role. Much like Leonard Nimoy and Vulcans, Billingsley essential defines what it means to be a Denobulan.

Personality

Personable, cheerful, and kind, Phlox is also, at times, a bit baffled by humans. For starters, at the beginning of the series, he can’t quite figure out the idea behind pets.

Relationships

Feezal

Portrait of a Character - Phlox

Feezal

This canon relationship is with his second wife, of three. There are no canon names for other two. I’ve never written her except in the context of Phlox missing her after the Enterprise goes back in time, during E2.

Amanda Cole

Also canon, in the E2 episode, Phlox and Amanda get together, a scene that I show in both Entanglements and Everybody Knows This is Nowhere.

Mirror Universe

This character exists in canon.

Mirror Phlox

Mirror Phlox

At the end of the pair of canon ENT Mirror Universe episodes, his fate is unknown. But I figure his days are numbered. Hence, in Throwing Rocks at Looking Glass Houses, I have Empress Hoshi order his death. When Beth Cutler is given two syringes, one with the proven fast nerve toxin, tricoulamine, and the other with replicated orange juice, the Science technician knows that both shots will kill whoever receives them. But she hesitates until Hoshi tells her that she’ll be next if she takes any longer. The choice is to inject either Phlox, or Ian Reed, Malcolm‘s counterpart. With a small sympathy to her fellow Terran, Beth gives Ian the proven fast killing agent. Therefore Phlox, unfortunately, suffers at the end.

Quote

“Your mating rituals do fascinate me. Always a complicated minuet of sorts. Mind if I observe?”

Upshot

I don’t write Phlox that much, except in the context of E2 stories and Intolerance. Part of that is to pave the way for other physician characters, such as Blair Claymore, Pamela Hudson, and Cyril Morgan. It’s also because, until Reflections Down a Corridor, I wasn’t really all that comfortable writing him. He’s absent from a lot of my main timeline, and nearly all of my Mirror Universe timeline. Will he return? Yes, although many storylines shut him out completely.

Posted by jespah in Hall of Mirrors, In Between Days series, Portrait, 49 comments
20
May
2014

Review – The Best Things Come in Pairs

Review – The Best Things Come in Pairs

Pairs? Yes.

Background

They can refer to playing cards and couples, and this little story touches on both as a play on words and for a little bit of humor. In response to a Star Trek fan fiction prompt about losing, I wanted to write a story about a losing poker hand that, instead, ends up being a winner. Hence the plot.

Plot

Review – The Best Things Come in Pairs

It is maybe a year after the end of Fortune, and Treve takes Pamela home after a date. They have been going out for a good year. She has been a bit pushy about getting physical, but he has been pulling back. As of the time of Saturn Rise, they have exchanged ‘I love yous’.

This is the first time that Treve has actually gone into Pamela’s new apartment on Lafa II. She has immigrated there, partly to be near her elderly uncle, Doctor Cyril Morgan, and partly to be near Treve.

So they are a little drunk, and there are playing cards on the table. Hence Pamela suggests a game of strip poker. Since Treve has no real idea of how to play, she feigns losing and, as a result, gets her man. Treve certainly does not object to this!

Story Postings

Rating

The story has a K rating.

Upshot

So this little short story is meant to be a little silly, maybe, and a little amusing. Plus it segues rather neatly into Complications. A touch of happy ending mixed with some humor? Then sign me up.

Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, In Between Days series, Review, 8 comments
16
May
2014

Portrait of a Character – Yipran I

Portrait of a Character – Yipran I

Yipran I now has a fate which differs from my original idea.

Origins

As I wrote Reversal, I needed a character who would, in our universe, be someone who the natives would mimic with Lili. In the Mirror Universe, she would be mimicked by Jennifer. She would be mother to Treve, Yimar, and Chelben. Enter Yipran.

Portrayal

I like Susan Sarandon for Yipran.

Barking Up the Muse Tree | jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | Susan Sarandon as Yipran I (image is for educational purposes only)

Susan Sarandon as Yipran I (image is for educational purposes only)

The actress is tough and smart, and is an Oscar winner.

She can play all manner of characters. Hence I feel she would easily be able to show a Yipran who is not yet healed. Yet she would also be one who is, in dreams, the spiritual leader of her people.

Personality

Barking Up the Muse Tree | jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | Susan Sarandon as Yipran I (image is for educational purposes only)

Susan Sarandon as Yipran I (image is for educational purposes only)

Intelligent but damaged, High Priestess Yipran never fully recovers from what Chawev, Baden, and Polloria do to her. Essentially, by poisoning her with an excessive amount of potassium, they have cut off her dreams and eventually she becomes comatose.

In Bribery, Yimar and Treve express the desire to visit her in the main hospital, but are thwarted, as Chawev wants to bring in Polloria as their new stepmother – despite the fact that Yipran is far from dead.

By the time of Friday Visit, Yipran is slowly recovering, but her damage remains. In Fortune, she can speak clearly in dreams, but not during waking life.

Relationships

Chawev

In both universes, Yipran is the victim of her husband. He attempts to do her in, in order to pave the way for the ambitious vixen, Polloria. Treve, their eldest son, reveals in Together that Chawev and Yipran really can’t divorce, as no one wants to believe that the First Minister and the High Priestess would ever not have a perfect marriage.

Mirror Universe

Barking Up the Muse Tree | jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | Susan Sarandon as MU Yipran I (image is for educational purposes)

Susan Sarandon as MU Yipran I (image is for educational purposes)

Just as in the prime universe, Yipran is the High Priestess of the Calafan people. As such, she is their spiritual leader, although her husband is their political leader.

In the mirror, Yipran’s life ends near the end of Reversal, as Polloria and Polloria’s cronies kill her. Hence her daughter, Yimar, succeeds her.

Quote

“Yes, and my time will be up soon anyway. But you will continue on, as planets form and die and break apart and become new things, you will watch. And as lives begin and end, you will bear witness. {And} when the last atom has been blown apart in the remnants of the Big Bang, as the last of the energy converts to dark matter, and the universe hits absolute zero, you will be there. And you will watch it, and go with it, as it turns onto itself, and again renews, in an endless cycle. For when it is all dark matter, and it has all recompressed, as it passes through another septum, one that does not yet exist, and it goes to another place, crossing another pond, there will be another Big Bang. As there have been countless ones before, there will be countless ones after.”

Upshot

Yipran spends a lot of time as a victim. However, that’s one of the main drivers of the plot in Reversal. At some point, I might write more of an origin story for her. Yet right now that is very much on the back burner.

Posted by jespah in Hall of Mirrors, In Between Days series, Portrait, 6 comments