For Frank Todd to have a boyfriend in Star Trek fanfiction, there had to be someone. I liked the idea of some contrast between the tough MACO and the object of his affections. While Dave was originally also a MACO, I later made him a stellar cartographer.
Portrayal
I see Jason Patric in this role. I like the actor’s look but he’s also had a rough life (this is of course an image of him when he was rather young).
Jason Patrick as Dave Constantine (image is for educational purposes only)
But, in real life, Patric has had a hard time of it, having to sue for parental rights to his own child. I see him as melancholy and, for real, I gotta figure he must be.
Personality
Dave is one of the gay crew members on the NX-01. A bit bookish and sensitive, he’s a foil for Frank Todd, his great love. Frank reports that Dave can be rather lovesick at times.
Relationships
Frank Todd
In the prime timeline, Frank and Dave get together in Detached Curiosity and Idle Speculation, where they talk about the E2 timeline and the fact that they had ended up together. In The Way to a Man’s Heart, Frank asks Lili to make a special dessert for Dave. Lili bakes a blueberry pie, recalling that Dave enjoys blueberries. By the time of There’s Something About Hoshi, their relationship is in full swing. However, by the time of Shell Shock, Frank’s alibi is that he’s at a gay bar during the time the crime occurs. Is he with Dave? It’s not specific, but he probably isn’t. Does that mean their relationship came to an end? I’m not really sure, myself.
In the E2 timeline, they get together after Frank rather loudly and angrily comes out, during the events outlined in Entanglements. During the second kick back in time, in Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, they again take up with each other.
Jason Patrick as Dave Constantine (image is for educational purposes only)
As a mirror baseball player, much like Joss Beckett during the alternate timeline events of Temper, being a professional ball player means he can usually get out of killing people in order to get ahead in life.
Quote
“I just wanted to tell you that I appreciate what you said.”
Upshot
Gentle and caring, yet fiercely proud, I want to explore Dave as a character as much as Frank has been explored. He’ll be back, by himself and with his great love.
The character is, of course, Star Trek: Enterprise canon. Her role on the Enterprise was as a Science crewman, often assisting Doctor Phlox. The actress, unfortunately, died during the first run of the series.
Portrayal
As in canon, the character is portrayed by the late Kellie Waymire.
Cutler and Phlox
With Waymire deceased, I’m not so sure who I would get to replace her. I imagine the same was true for the writers of the show. They ended up indicating that people had died in some of the Xindi attacks and some bodies were never found.
While that’s a horrifying thought, perhaps Cutler is one of those persons. All too sadly, that will happen when we finally, truly, venture into space.
Personality
Pleasant and intelligent, Liz Cutler is alien-curious about Phlox. Even learning that he has three Denobulan women does not faze her. But nothing happens; the actress died before the writers could really do anything with her character. She also never makes it to the Mirror Universe episodes. A pity, as I think she would have made a dandy Mirror Universe character.
Relationships
Charles Tucker III
As I write Cutler, in the Mirror, she and Tucker have a history. During Reversal, when the opportunity presents itself, they get together. By the time that story is finished, they have left together, for a new life on Lafa II. In marked contrast to the canon end of Tucker, they end up founding a dynasty, with two children, Betsy and Charlie (Charles Tucker IV). Their great-grandson, Charles Tucker VI, is a success to Empress Hoshi, and becomes the Emperor Charles I, as is noted in Temper and Who Shall Wear the Robe and Crown?
Mirror Universe
Kellie Waymire as MU Cutler (image is for educational purposes)
Known as Beth, the Mirror Universe version of Crewman Cutler leads a hard life. Much like I write other female denizens of the other side of the pond, she lives her life at the whims of men. This becomes an existence lived at the whims of the Empress, and Jun.
In Throwing Rocks at Looking Glass Houses, Beth is given a syringe full of tricoulamine and is told to fatally inject either Phlox or Malcolm‘s counterpart, Ian. She chooses Ian, knowing full well that Phlox will also get a lethal injection. However, the Denobulan’s injection will be far more painful. It’s a final act of mercy for her fellow human. I’ve even been asked if she and Ian had a history, and it’s an intriguing idea that I have not yet explored.
After the events of First Born, Empress Hoshi selects Beth to be the babysitter for her first born child, Jun. The horribly bratty Jun even gives her a black eye during Reversal. When it becomes possible to leave the ISS Defiant, Beth jumps at the chance, and leaves with Charles. They meet Jennifer and Treve on the surface of Lafa II, and blend into the forest. She even stands by him as he recovers from delta radiation poisoning, although his facial scarring never goes away.
Quote
“Charles! I get the feeling we won’t always be able to do it in the captain’s chair! Think of all the people who are on the Bridge.”
Upshot
This actress’s life was cut short, which of course is tragic. And it’s unfortunate, too, that the character had so little screen time. I hope this alternate life story has done her some justice.
Tristan Curtis has problems in all timelines and universes, it seems.
Origins
Tristan originally arrived in Temper (I named him Craig, and then I wanted that first name for Craig Willets), and in the Mirror Universe, as a garden-variety bad guy.
I like this smart, likable comedic actor who can also play sensitive. Also, I think it’d be a kick to see him in a not so nice role.
Further, I like the idea of someone who seems harmless to be a Security crewman and, inevitably, a pretty awful guy in some scenarios.
Personality
Prickly and a bit off, Tristan is quite the outsider. In the E2 stories, he is out of the genetics sweepstakes in the first kick back in time. He and Daniel Chang take out their frustrations in some horrible ways, particularly in The Three of Us. Because Tristan is something of a follower, it’s entirely possible that he was just following what Dan or Gary Hodgkins was doing. In Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, he understands what a horrible person he was. Given a chance to do better, he takes it.
In the prime timeline, he plays cards with Malcolm, Hoshi, and Sophie Creighton, in Cobbled Together, and hits on Sophie. In Shell Shock, he’s one of the accused. Much of the time, he works with Gary Hodgkins, and the two are friends.
Relationships
Sandra Sloane
During the second kick back in time, Sandra is somewhat bereft, as Brooks Haynem has died young. Because Tristan is looking for a better life for himself, he goes after Sandra, although she is often a rather mean person. They have a daughter who they name Penny (which is of course a shout-out to Galecki’s series, The Big Bang Theory). However, before Sandra’s death, they separate. After her death, it’s unclear whether Tristan gets into another relationship, although he probably does not, given the dearth of women on board.
In the alternate timelines set up in Temper, they die when José Torres crashes the ISS Luna into Malcolm‘s ship, the USS Bluebird. When the prime timeline is restored, they are executed for failing to prevent Chip Masterson from escaping to the surface of Lafa II with Lucy Stone and his children with the Empress, Takara and Takeo.
Quote
“We’re gonna die down here, Mayweather. Don’t shoot! We’re done here.”
Upshot
Even gentle-looking people can be monsters. They can be deadly, and they can be abusive. Tristan shows that. He has few chances, in my fiction, to be a good guy. I don’t think I’ll change that. I like him wicked.
Miva is more important than I originally planned her to be.
Origins
Miva, a Calafan, started off as the criminal, Baden’s, nighttime lover, in Reversal in my Star Trek fan fiction. She was a doctor, although I did not have a handle on the type of doctor she would be. By the time of Together, I needed for Lili to have an obstetrician, so that decided her specialty. Her name, a reference to Steven Culp‘s character on JAG (Clayton Webb), means clay.
I like the actress’s looks but also that she ages (as we all do) yet doesn’t seem to be afraid to show at least a limited version of that in public.
Personality
Friendly and gregarious, Miva is a pleasant, positive person to be around. She’s also got a heavy Lafa V accent, which sounds a lot like an Irish brogue.
She and Lili become fast friends and she even stands up for Lili and Doug at their wedding, in A Kind of Blue. By the time of Fortune, she’s looking for a new nighttime lover, and sets her sights on Jonathan Archer. In A Hazy Shade, they’re an old married couple.
Relationships
Baden
Miva is only shown with him at the end of his life, as he dies in a crossfire when Doug, Lili, both versions of Jennifer and both versions of Tripp defeat Polloria, in Reversal. She gives him some depth and, I feel, makes him at least a bit of a sympathetic character, certainly less evil than Polloria.
Darywev
Miva’s first husband is never seen. She refers to him when she first meets (and hits on) Jonathan, in Fortune. The Calafan view of love and loyalty is somewhat troubling to Jonathan, but he does join her, at least that evening, for a dream. As to what happens, I leave that to the reader’s imagination.
Jonathan Archer
Upon Darywev’s death, Jonathan thinks he should stay away as that would be more respectful, but Miva insists on having him close by. He does move slowly and cautiously, and waits a good year before making his move. During the time of Flight of the Bluebird, he’s still a single man, pursued by the tabloids.
Mirror Universe
Mirror Miva (Julianne Moore)
In the Mirror Universe, Miva is the mirror Baden’s nighttime lover, and she is also a doctor. However, during the temporal dislocations in Temper, she becomes a slave of the Terran Empire, and works as a field hand, picking tomatoes at a farm on Mimas.
Once the prime timeline is restored, it is presumed that the mirror Miva is restored to whatever her earlier life was really like. As a physician, she would probably have a better life than most women. And as a non-human, so long as the Terran Empire remained distant, she could potentially get better treatment than most human women with her level of education and wealth.
Quote
“Allow me to explain what is going on here, although we all know what is happening. I just feel it might help to get the message across to you both. Your endowment is greater than most human males. Your wife is the same size or smaller than most human females, despite having had one child already. In order to accommodate your dimensions, your wife has had an operation to clear space. Otherwise, your parts do not fit, and you can injure her – which has happened in the past. For both of her pregnancies, I have reversed the operation so that your children could develop properly. You were all right with Jeremiah, and you waited. Why are you unable to wait when it comes to your second child?”
Upshot
I’d like to showcase her marriage to Jonathan Archer some more, and not just in the very twilight of their lives. Readers will see her again.
Yimar has more of a life than I originally planned.
Origins
I wanted a Star Trek fanfiction character who would be kind of compelled to do certain things, even if she didn’t want to. As a child, Yimar fits the bill, particularly in Bribery and then in Reversal, where she’s forced to accept her father’s lover, Polloria, as a family member, even as she and her brother, Treve, despise Polloria and she frets for the fate of her critically ill mother, the Calafan High Priestess, Yipran.
Portrayal
Charlize Theron as Yimar (image is for educational purposes only)
Yimar, as an adult, is played by Charlize Theron. I haven’t decided who plays her as a child or a teenager.
I love this smart, beautiful, Oscar-winning actress who has been through a lot in her life.
Personality
Dutiful and intelligent, Yimar is an obedient child. But the appearance of Polloria is too much for her, and she and Treve quickly figure out the score. Yimar in particular wants to protect their mother, but she’s essentially helpless. After all, she’s just a kid.
When she becomes a teenager, she starts working as a babysitter for first Joss and then Marie Patrice and, eventually, Declan. Her existence and her willingness to work hard make it possible for Lili to return to work as the chef at Reversal. This also makes it possible for Doug to have a career again. Yimar is particularly helpful during the events of Together.
During the alternate timelines in Temper, Yimar takes on the High Priestess role (she doesn’t do this in the prime universe, in the correct timeline), and is also the leader of the Calafan government in exile. When the line is restored, she’s able to resume her regular life.
As an adult in the correct timeline, she marries and has a daughter, Yinora, who is named for Leonora Digiorno. With Yinora in the role of nighttime woman to Neil Digiorno-Madden, Yimar and her family forge a permanent connection to the Beckett-Digiorno-Madden–Reed clan.
Relationships
Brian Delacroix
During Together, Brian and Yimar bond, as she is stuck caring for Joss and he’s sympathetic to her plight. They are also fairly close in age although she’s only sixteen, and he’s twenty-one. Her frank talk about sex does make him nervous, though.
Josh Rosen
In the Mirror Universe, Yimar and Josh meet during the events of He Stays a Stranger. As much older people who are both alone, they find each other attractive. The colony entity known as Branch Borodin confirms that they end up together.
Charlize Theron as MU Yimar (image is for educational purposes only)
In the Mirror Universe, Yimar loses her mother as Polloria’s murderous ways garner some success. But Jennifer Crossman has also named her (Yimar) to be the next High Priestess. Polloria originally believes that she will be able to control Yimar and act as a regent. She sees Yimar as her puppet.
But the headstrong teenager has other plans.
One of the mirror Yimar’s first acts is to permanently throw open the doors between the two universes. Calafans can shuttle back and forth without any further assistance. This serves as a plot point in Temper. It also allows for a mixing of the two closely-related species that had been denied for centuries.
Later, in the HG Wells stories, the reader learns Yimar is behind plans to sell Constitution-class starship plans and parts to the Terran Empire’s enemies. Because this a means of assuring some measures of protection for the Calafan people. As matters resolve with Empress Hoshi, Yimar’s main concern is, as always, for her people. She’s a good ruler, even as her system is subjugated and overrun. Plus she does her best to keep her people safe and well-fed.
Quote
He’s the cleanest human I’ve ever known.
Upshot
I really like this character but I haven’t explored her much as an adult in the prime universe. I’ll have to try to rectify that in the future.
For a weekly prompt about escapes, I chose what would be, to some, the only way out of the mirror.
Suicide.
For Andrew Miller, who has become the Empress‘s toy, and has been so for years, life is too much of a burden, and he wants it all to end, and end soon.
And so he goes about figuring out how to end it all.
Plot
Sick of everything, and sick of the Empress, Andy sets about putting together the means and opportunity to kill himself. He obtains a tricoulamine capsule but the later investigation shows it’s from Crossman Pharmaceuticals and is of an older design, so it was possibly from the earlier doctor, Cyril Morgan.
It’s all because of the death of Melissa Madden, a fact disclosed in Fortune. After Andy and Melissa meet (during The Play at the Plate), a sexual relationship develops between them. When Melissa becomes pregnant, Andrew will have to get her off the ship without the Empress finding out, as Hoshi will kill both of them. Because he can never see his child, he at least wants to try to support the baby, who they have agreed to name Tommy.
Andrew asks his friend, Josh Rosen, to help set up a dummy fund to help support Tommy and Melissa. Josh agrees to launder the funds and make it appear as if it’s an account comprised of the payment of old gambling debts from Game Night. Melissa’s death, in a shuttle crash, moots all of that work.
Several years later, Andrew has the nerve, the means, and the privacy. He write a short note and takes the drug, thereby finally getting away from Hoshi.
In Hold Your Dominion, a somewhat earlier Star Trek fanfiction piece, Gina and Gabrielle Nolan experience immeasurable loss when Gina’s husband, Michael, loses his life in a senseless Breen attack before Gabrielle is even born.
But life goes on, and eventually it’s five years since the attack. Gabby and Gina go to Gabby’s school, where they are having a presentation of artwork commemorating the attack. Gabrielle’s artwork is a little disturbing, but there is a much better piece done by a little Klingon girl, Freela, who has lost her mother. When Gina finds a Klingon man who seems to be looking for something or someone, he turns out to be Kittris, Freela’s father. Gina immediately starts calling him Kit.
The actor is affable and intelligent and seems a better mate for Gina than a lot of the more standard Klingons would be. He seems to be a guy with a sense of humor and timing and grace, and not just a grappler with brawn.
Personality
Kit is a butcher by trade, but he does his best to assure that the animals he has to slaughter don’t suffer. When he and Gina first talk, he’s tentative (he doesn’t speak English very well yet). They make conversation as well as they can, and Gina can see how Kit interacts with Freela. He doesn’t belittle her when she’s afraid, with some notion of insisting that a little girl somehow behave like a Klingon warrior. Instead, he’s kind and patient.
After they have wed, he takes in Gabrielle and treats her as if she were his second daughter. He insists that the two Nolans be a part of any family events or activities. This includes the wedding of Lannis’s younger sister, Lukara. Freela and Gabrielle even share a bedroom. When the girls are older, and Gabby has to act opposite a Breen, Kit is supportive. He also checks to make sure that the Breen actor treats Gabby all right.
Relationships
Lannis
Just like Michael Nolan, Lannis is killed in the Breen attack. However, Lannis was no civilian. Instead, she was a bombardier on a two-person Daranaean ship, and was shot down during a fire fight over San Francisco. When Kittris and Gina first meet, he intimates to her that he did not always get along with his first wife’s family, but he was dependent upon them to help with Freela, who was an infant at the time of her mother’s death.
Gina Nolan
With Gina, Kit finds a willing and equal partner in life. They blend their families in such a way that I often refer to them as the Klingon Brady Bunch. The union is respectful and as equal as it can be.
Mirror Universe
Mirror Kittris (Chris Jericho)
In Smash Your Dominion, the meeting in the Mirror Universe between the Mirror versions of Kit and Gina goes far differently as Gina, a Captain’s Woman, has to get her rambunctious daughter out of trouble before the Captain Keller (who is not Gabby’s father) finds out.
In exchange for a little something fun, Kit keeps quiet about Gabrielle getting into a small scrape. But Kit knows that it’s a bad idea to get involved with a Captain’s Woman. Unless one is a captain, of course.
Quote
“We realize that you must rehearse. But, well, everything about that boy disturbs me.”
Upshot
I haven’t really thought about what else to do with this family, at least, not for a while. The situation may present itself, but right now Kit is on hold with the remainder of his blended clan.
The character, of course, is Star Trek: Enterprise canon, and is the Mirror Universe counterpart to Hoshi Sato.
Declaring power
However, the Enterprise series only showed her declaring her power, and never actually consolidating or wielding it, as the show was cancelled far too soon. I have tried to rectify that, and I recognize that the official books have done so as well. But I think Star Trek is a big tent, and there’s room for all sorts of fanfiction interpretations of what happens next.
Portrayal
As in the series, the Empress Hoshi Sato is played by Linda Park.
Personality
Empress Hoshi Sato on the Bridge
Suspicious, nasty and ruthless, Hoshi makes a perfect Mirror Universe Empress and all-around villain because she will stop at nothing.
She’s just a bit campy in canon, but I make her truly dangerous. In Throwing Rocks at Looking Glass Houses, she violently takes charge, beginning a bloody reign by first killing off Phlox and Ian (Malcolm‘s counterpart), and then moving onto the Emperor Philip IV (counterpart to Colonel Philip Green) and, eventually, T’Pol.
Machiavellian
As a true Machiavellian, she eliminates the Emperor’s entire family, in order to prevent the people from perhaps, in the future, rallying around a successor. This includes the Emperor’s infant daughter, Anastasia, a reference to Princess Anastasia of Russia, killed when the Bolsheviks came to power. This also establishes Hoshi’s reign as having the potential to become totalitarian, which is confirmed with later stories. But that’s nothing new. In The High Cost of Dissidence, her predecessor has proven to be just as immoral.
In Paving Stones Made From Good Intentions, Hoshi pits Doug, Aidan and Chip against each other, in order to get someone new to run Tactical, as she has had Ian killed. However, rather than eliminate or emasculate his rivals, the victorious Doug decides to have them work under him, in a more cooperative type of venture. This continues to the time of Reversal. Aidan repays Doug’s kindness by cuckolding him and trying to take his girl, Jenn Crossman.
By the time of First Born, Hoshi has decided that she wants an heir. When Rick Daniels goes to the Defiant on a mission, they hook up, and she becomes pregnant. She proves to be a horrible mother, having Beth Cutler care for her son with Rick. By the time of Coveted Commodity, her childbearing years are coming to an end.
And by the time of Shake Your Body, Milton Walker seizes an opportunity and comes calling.
Relationships
Maximilian Forrest
This canon relationship is shown in the two ENT Mirror Universe episodes.
Forrest’s Captain’s Woman
Both actors have said they believe she loved him. However, he may or may not have loved her. I go with this, that his love for her is ambiguous, if it exists at all.
Further, she is ambitious. Even if Forrest had survived, it would not have been enough. She would have left him, at some point, unless he could go a lot further, a lot faster, in their careers.
Even then, I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t have stayed for long.
Jonathan Archer
Another canon relationship, Hoshi cheats on Forrest with Archer. But when Archer proves to be too slow to get ahead, she offs him.
Travis Mayweather
MU Hoshi and Travis
The final canon relationship, Hoshi turns to Travis for help in dispatching Archer.
The way I write them, they stay together, but she is dominant in every single way. In Coveted Commodity, this becomes all-too clear, as he reminisces about how, every time she’s had a child from someone else, she’s told him that it’s for her security.
Travis is mainly interested in his own security, so he goes along with it. And, in Commodity, he comes to understand that he’s better off where he is, rather than to try to usurp her.
Richard Daniels
In January of 2156, Rick goes on a temporal mission to the Mirror, to fix the Defiant. With poor cash flow and no money to pay him, plus an urge to make it with a time traveler (he foolishly reveals that detail about himself to her), they hook up. Nine months later, Jun is born, and the Temporal Integrity Commission has to scramble. Because Rick wants his temporally paradoxical son to live, Jun has to be sterilized, and Rick is forbidden from returning to the Mirror at any time during Jun or Hoshi’s lives, not even long before conception or after her menopause or even after her death.
Rick’s boss, Carmen Calavicci, fakes Rick’s death by arranging for wreckage to be left on Daranaea. She also applies delta radiation in utero and Jun is thereby sterilized.
Aidan MacKenzie
Aidan, her second baby daddy, is seduced at the end of Reversal, an act that Doug wisely resisted. Hoshi makes it very clear that she does not care at all for Aidan, but he’s got good genes. By the time of the alternate timelines in Temper, Aidan is the designated babysitter for the royal brats.
José Torres
By the time of Brown, José is already trying to make time with the Empress, following up some small flirtation during Throwing Rocks.
Francisco Ramirez
At the same time that she is involved with Torres, Hoshi is also involved with Ramirez.
The Perks of Being in the Inner Circle
Chandler Masterson
Chip is next in the passing parade, and is thrown over when Hoshi has his children.
Andrew Miller
After Travis’s death, Hoshi goes after Andrew, who is stuck with her until he leaves via suicide. He is, in this instance, cheating on her, with Melissa Madden, who dies, pregnant by him, in a shuttle crash. When he refers to MM in his suicide note, Hoshi changes the note in order to favor herself and gratify her ego.
Milton Walker
After Andrew’s death, Milton shows up, as he is on the run from the authorities. This former Eligian Order monk hasn’t been with a woman in decades, but Hoshi is older and less attractive, so she grabs onto him anyway.
Theme Music
Offspring
Jun Daniels Sato
The first born ends up running the Empire, with Kira, after Hoshi’s death, in Who Shall Wear the Robe and Crown?Prior to that, Jun runs Communications on the Defiant.
Kira (Kirin) MacKenzie Sato
Kira (sometimes called Kirin, which means giraffe) is the tallest of the children and, by rights, was supposed to be the eldest. He runs the Tactical station before becoming co-Emperor with Jun, but predeceases his elder brother.
Arashi Sato
With a head for business, Arashi is the only of the children of the Empress Hoshi Sato who is born without the Y Chromosome Skew. His parentage is allegedly unknown, but Torres does not have the skew, whereas Ramirez does. Therefore, it’s a lead pipe cinch that the head of the treasury is Torres’s son.
Takara Masterson Sato
Takara, the only girl, is the elder of a pair of twins, and eventually becomes the forebear of the successor to Jun and Kira – Charles Tucker VI, AKA the Emperor Charles I. She is removed from the Empress’s influence at an early age.
Takeo Masterson Sato
The younger twin, Takeo is a gay man, and is rescued from a life with the Empress by his father, Chip, and Chip’s wife, Lucy Stone, taking him away at a young age.
Izo Mayweather Sato
The youngest, son of Travis Mayweather, almost dies in utero, as Izo has a hole in his heart. Travis’s sacrifice suffers Izo to live; he grows up to run the Empress’s (and, later, his brothers’) Secret Police.
Quote
“Get me my ships! Get me my legions!”
Upshot
Empress Hoshi Sato is just the character that goes on and on, the gift that keeps on giving. I love writing her, putting her into difficult and easy circumstances, and generally giving her evil some buffoonish tendencies as she inevitably misses the mark in some areas as she all too accurately hits it in many others. I guarantee her return.
Portrait of a Character – Marie Patrice (Empy) Beckett
Marie Patrice is a bit of a brat.
Origins
At the end of Together, I wanted the very, very ending to be a bit of a surprise. Lili is pregnant throughout, with a kicking machine of a child. Everybody thinks she’s having a boy, and she and Doug have selected the name Peter Matthew. Lili refers to the baby as Petey.
But the baby turns out to be a girl. Enter Marie Patrice Beckett.
I like how Diaz can be goofy in one film, and serious in another.
Marie Patrice is beautiful, but also rather susceptible to ambition and suggestion. She’s a little spoiled, and is not always so nice to either her full brother, Joss, or her half-brothers, Tommy, Neil and Declan. A bit of a tomboy at first, she plays soccer and calls herself Empy (MP).
Sibling rivalry is alive, well and living in the Beckett–O’Day–Reed–Digiorno–Madden family, and Marie Patrice is one of its biggest proponents and practitioners.
Personality
A bit overly concerned with her appearance, Marie Patrice is perhaps overindulged by her parents. Doug, in particular, seems a bit at a loss as to what to do with her.
Relationships
Kenneth Masterson
The son of Chip and Deb, Ken is a divorced man who seems to have a great deal of patience with Marie Patrice. In Fortune, he is identified as her long-term boyfriend, but they never wed.
The Empress’s second-born, Kira, fights for her, but loses out to his half-brother, Jun. Marie Patrice is not too upset about this. She figures that being with Jun will give her more and better opportunities than Kira ever could. She cares about Kira, but not as much as she cares about her position.
Marie Patrice in the Mirror Universe (Cameron Diaz)
Like her siblings, Marie Patrice spends some time in the Mirror Universe, during Temper. But an actual counterpart is impossible.
While in the mirror, she gets along well with Takara Sato, and together they compare the boys and generally look to make the best possible matches for themselves, with little thought for love or other such messy considerations. Two boys fight a duel for her, using swords. She is a bit disappointed in the outcome.
Quote
“My mother was a ghost. I only remember a light grey shadow.”
Upshot
A little spoiled, a little flighty and rather artistic, Empy is symbolic of all of the non-Mary Sue ensuing generation characters. Not everyone’s kids will be perfect. Will she be back? Maybe, but I will admit it. She annoys me, too.
Derellian bats really get around. This fun little made-up creature, it seems, has been just about everywhere.
Background
When I first began to write Reversal, I did not perform too much detailed or careful research (oops). I knew that Dr. Phlox had kept a bat. However, I could not recall the real name of it (it is the Pyrithian Bat, by the way).
This bit of negligence resulted in my naming the creature. I went with the made-up term, Derellian Bat. I mainly just like the euphony. The name ‘Derellian’ is not meant to have a meaning. I am not even so sure any sentient species come from its planet. It could very well be the smartest species on its world.
As a part of In Between Days continuity, the bat even goes all the way back to A Single Step, making the species, and its mild empathic healing properties, known to the Caitians. Hence the creature is a part of the entire In Between Days timeline. However, it does not (yet) seem to be a part of the Times of the HG Wells. In addition, it does not seem to be a part of the Eriecho continuity, which includes the Kelvin timeline.
Upshot
Almost like Alfred Hitchcock in his own films, I like to see where I can slip the Derellian Bat into my fiction. This little Swiss Army knife of a creature will be back. I guarantee it.
