Adventures of Porthos

23
Jul
2013

Review – The Further Adventures of Porthos – the Stilton Fulfillment

Review – The Further Adventures of Porthos – the Stilton Fulfillment

A Stilton fulfillment? Don’t worry; I will explain

Background

After The Adventures of Porthos, there was a call for a sequel.

Barking up the Muse Tree | Jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | The Further Adventures of Porthos – the Stilton Fulfillment

The Further Adventures of Porthos – the Stilton Fulfillment

I got the chance to provide one when the Trek BBS had a monthly challenge in December of 2012 for ironic wish fulfillment. Porthos would get what he always wanted – more cheese – but it wouldn’t quite agree with him.

Plot

Review – The Further Adventures of Porthos - the Stilton Fulfillment

The Caitian Ambassador and his family are coming to the NX-01 for dinner. The captain is anxious for everything to go right, and wants to perhaps convince the ambassador to become a more formal ally. The ambassador’s young daughter. Parenelsa, is shy and sweet, but she warms up to Porthos, who begs at the table. And so she feeds him.

And feeds him and feeds him.

The problem arises when Porthos has a reaction. That is, he breaks wind. Malcolm, who is at the dinner and is bored out of his mind, volunteers to take the dog to Sick Bay. For Malcolm, it’s also a chance to get his own treatment, as he is lactose intolerant, a revelation I first made in Intolerance.

And then the ship is attacked.

Story Postings

Rating

The story is Rated K.

Upshot

The story works out well. A lot of little players get shout outs, including the idea that this is something of a sequel to A Single Step, too. Lili even makes an appearance.

My peers agreed with me, and the story won the monthly challenge.

Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, In Between Days series, Review, 7 comments
18
Jun
2013

Review – The Adventures of Porthos

Review – The Adventures of Porthos

Porthos has such fun adventures!

Background

When I was first starting to write Star Trek fanfiction,

Barking up the Muse Tree | jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | The Adventures of Porthos

The Adventures of Porthos

I seized upon an idea to write about the five senses. More, More, More is about hearing; There’s Something About Hoshi is about touch; If You Can’t Stand the Heat is about taste; The Puzzle is about vision; and The Adventures of Porthos, as would befit a story where a dog is the star, is all about smell.

Plot

The story starts off with Porthos narrating the action. Because he is a dog, he’s not too communicative in terms of language. Instead, the world divides into good smells and bad ones.

Review – The Adventures of Porthos

Most of the Enterprise is on the side of what Porthos refers to as good smells, everything from Sick Bay to the remnants of a cheeseburger that Hoshi ate for dinner. He listens to Captain Archer (Alpha) make plans about meeting a species called Azezans. Being Porthos, he doesn’t pay attention to every single syllable. He has acute hearing but, let’s face it, like many dogs, he sometimes only listens to what he really wants to hear.

The same scene is then repeatedly normally, and the story goes on that way throughout.

Porthos sees action when Archer learns that the Azezans are the victims of oppression. Captain Archer finds their predicament uncomfortably familiar, but he is initially unsure as to exactly why that is so. This ends up as one of my first links to Jewish characters and the Holocaust, as the reference is painfully close to the Judenrat.

Story Postings

Rating

The story is Rated K.

Upshot

I love dogs and I believe that they truly think quite a bit like this, paying somewhat selective attention and continually being distracted by the various aromas around them. They apparently understand some 200 – 350 or so words, so it would follow that a lot of what Porthos hears is just so much semi-random noise to him.

Furthermore, the emphasis on scents prefigures the Daranaeans, and the switching between the scenes was altered to great effect in Reversal. I like the story but don’t love it; the Alien of the Week plot could have been stronger, I feel. But the story had an unexpected, award-winning sequel, The Further Adventures of Porthos – The Stilton Fulfillment. And, as I have explained, it showcases some concepts and techniques that I have improved over time. I think it’s a decent older story.

Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, In Between Days series, Review, 8 comments
31
Aug
2012

Progress Report – August 2012

August 2012 Posted Works

I began August 2012 with spinning out Barking up the Muse Tree | Janet Gershen-Siegel | jespah | Quill | August 2012Where the Wind Comes Sweepin’ Down the Plain on Ad Astra. I also added Temptation to context. This month’s challenge was about crime, so I submitted Shell Shock. The following In Between Days stories were also placed into context – Gainful

On Trek United, I added A Kind of Blue. And on Trek BBS, I added The Adventures of Porthos. On Fanfiction.net, I added Party on Risa, Demotion and Paving Stones Made From Good Intentions. The character of J. Hayes is now available as an option there (thanks to my friend who goes by tahmtahm) and so I made sure that Reversal, Demotion, Together and Paving Stones listed that character.

On Star Trek Logs, in response to a prompt about first jobs, I added Gainful.

WIP Corner

I continued working on the E2 stories, in particular, the fourth book of four.

Prep Work

In addition, I added a cover for First Born, with a nice picture of the adult Jun Daniels Sato on the cover. I also added a cover for Wider Than the Sargasso Sea. I created an HTML version of The Point is Probably Moot in anticipation of spinning it out on Ad Astra in September.

There was a great deal of HTML work to be done once Shell Shock was posted. This is because a lot more below decks characters’ names were revealed, in anticipation of those names showing up in  the E2 stories.

I was able to get a fantastic photomanipulation of Katie Sackhoff in an ENT uniform . I have permission to use it. Hence I added it to the preexisting post about Deborah Haddon.

This Month’s Productivity Killers

Looking for work, as always, ate a lot into my writing time, as did working for a company where I perform community management.

I have been trying to get an Adult Trek anthology out by the end of the year, and put out the call for submissions. I also began to look for artwork for those stories.

Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, Progress, 0 comments