There are two other gay men on board, Preston Jennings and Lucas Donnelly, plus Christian Harris is asexual and Kelsey Haber is possibly bi (main character Melissa Madden definitely is) and is definitely trans (I’m still kind of on the fence about Kelsey these days). Plus Diana Jones is a lesbian, as are the Starfleet Rabbi, Leah Benson and main character Leonora Digiorno.
But it was Dave and Frank’s relationship that I wanted to show at its absolute beginning, in the prime timeline.
Plot
Jason Patric as Dave Constantine
The premise is that E2 has just concluded in the prime timeline.
Of course, people are talking about what happened, who was chosen, etc. Dave and Frank realize that they were together. But they only know about the second of two kicks back in time. So they just think it was some sort of a mutual decision. However, the reality of the first kick back is that Dave approached Frank. This was after Frank rather loudly and angrily came out.
Be that as it may, things are a little different. The ship is not generational and they are not desperate. But that’s all right. There is still an attraction there.
And there was some mental meandering on both sides. This was as to who was available and who was interested. For a minority sexuality, there are not only are there questions of attraction and availability. There are also questions of wiring and preference. Even if Dave had the biggest-ever crush on Frank, if Frank was only interested in women, it would not have happened. Hence, the moves are cautious. It’s a little tentative.
I have read slash online. So much of it is either out and out PWP (porn without plot) or angst-filled hurt/comfort or unfulfilled adolescent-style longing. So it makes me wonder about genuine romance between either two men or two women. Fortunately, Star Trek Discovery changes all that!
Who writes gentle slash? I suppose I do. I love this story, love how it came out (wordplay intended). And I love that it’s in my own personal fan fiction. Plus it’s even got a sequel. Viva Dave and Frank!
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.
So for a prompt about sweetness, I gave two answers.
This was the second one. My idea was to get across the sweetness of relationships, both the long-term and the fairly new.
In addition, in Fortune, one of the family photographs was of Joss and Jia at their prom. I wanted to fill in the blanks, the missing details, of that.
Plot
Joss, a little jumpy in a tuxedo, is cooling his heels before Jia and her parents arrive to take him to the prom at their little school on Lafa II. Marie Patrice is, as she often is, a little snarky. Declan even jokes a bit. Lili is of course more supportive. Malcolm is mentioned very briefly.
There is a little bustling as Doug arrives with groceries. The kids go out to help (after Lili tells them to), but she holds back Joss so that he won’t get dirty. There is a mysterious blue bag. No one is allowed to touch it.
Once the food is put away, Doug opens up the bag, revealing a carnation boutonniere for Joss and a corsage for Jia. Jia’s parents, Mai and Geming, arrive with their daughter. Savvy readers will recognize Geming’s counterpart as being Doug’s final deliberate kill in the Mirror Universe.
After they depart, and the other two children return to their homework, Lili laments that Doug never had a prom. He confirms that, at the time, he was finishing up at West Point and about to go into Basic Training. But he’s got one more surprise for her.
I enjoyed bringing this story together, and I think it works rather well. So Doug and Lili’s love is obvious, and Jia and Joss’s relationship is on the cusp of becoming something great, too.
Azar was created as a small statement in The Light. That Star Trek fanfiction story is dominated by Jewish characters, so I wanted there to be a Muslim character as well, who would be friends with them. Azar was to be a quick mentioning but it would be obvious that differences would have ended aside long ago, and replaced with understanding.
Smart and pleasant, Azar is respectful and polite with his peers, and is a lot of people like him. As a Security Crewman, he gets a promotion to the rank of Ensign. In the E2 timeline, he starts off in Engineering, but is still gets a promotion to Ensign and ends up in Security at some point.
Relationships
Maryam Haroun
Starting in Reflections, he and Ramih Azar compete for Maryam, who is afraid that she’ll choose the wrong man. Since she is expecting an arranged marriage, she works with Phlox to try to determine who will be the one. She chooses Azar not so much for his looks (although Maryam does think he’s better-looking than Ramih), but for his answer to the question of what he would do if she did not choose him to be her husband. Their marriage is a good one, and they have a son, Ali, in both kicks back in time.
In the prime timeline, in A Hazy Shade, it is implied that they may have wed then, too. I haven’t decided yet.
Mirror Universe
Mirror Azar Hamidi (image of Arnold Vosloo is for educational purposes only)
While I have not specifically written a Mirror Universe version of Azar, there are no impediments to his existence.
I can see him as being less disciplined and kind (like most denizens of the Mirror), and probably not as religious. In Bread, I establish that practicing faith in the Mirror is not something you want to do at all openly. Hence, much like Leah Benson, he might be a secretly religious person.
This could make him vulnerable in many ways, possibly to blackmail or the like.
Quote
“‘I would do nothing. At least, not to start, for it would hurt so much. I cannot predict the future. If marriage were to be a possibility at a later date, I feel I would take it, for I do not wish to be alone forever. But I would not seek it, at least not to start. And I would wish Maryam and her new husband well, for marriage is so difficult, and all I want is for her to be happy.’”
Upshot
For a character who I created to make a point, I like how he ended up, particularly with Maryam.
For an early Lili story, I got the idea as I was given a prompt for a story about the seven deadly sins. I chose pride.
Jonathan Frakes as Chef Will Slocum (image is for educational purposes only)
For quite a while, I had had the idea of pitting Will and Lili against each other in an Iron Chef-style competition.
Putting together the prequel idea, pride and the competition brought me directly to this story.
Plot
Naomi Watts as Lili O’Day (image is for educational purposes)
Lili is a new employee on the NX-01, recently hired by Will and so this is after both Voracious and Harvest.
It’s the middle of the Xindi War, and the crew needs a break. Apart from an extra Movie Night, what do you do for entertainment? Hence the idea for a competition was thought up.
I decided the judges would be Jonathan, Malcolm and Jay, thereby prefiguring Lili’s relationship with Malcolm and her connection to Jay, plus her failed connection, during the first E2 alternate timeline, with Jonathan. The food, too, would prefigure some things, including the smoky cumin which is referenced in Temper.
Preston Jennings makes an appearance, thereby tying the story to More, More, More!He is Chef’s assistant between Daniels and Lili. Lili selects Brian Delacroix as her assistant, thereby neatly prefiguring his becoming a chef (hinted at in Reversal, and then fully realized in Together and Fortune).
Hoshi and Chip host the event, which is broadcast throughout the ship. The secret ingredient, almonds, must be incorporated into all of the dishes that Lili and Will make. Then the judges anonymously taste and decide, giving points for flavor, originality and presentation. Lili and Brian work well as a team, and poor Preston has a bit of a meltdown. As for Will, well, you know what pride goeth before, right?
I like the frenzied nature of the competition and the details about the work that goes into it. I have watched these kinds of shows more than once, and they continue to amaze me with people’s creativity and risk-taking. Plus, truth be told, it’s a bit of a slam at the Frakes character, given my annoyance with These Are the Voyages. I think it worked out pretty well.
