star trek fan fiction

Nov

2013

Starts

So starts matter as much as endings.

Boldly Reading asks us, now, about Beginnings.

First sentences, first kisses, first missions, etc. – what are some of your favorite ‘firsts’ on Ad Astra? What sorts of openings and firsts and premieres get you to keep reading?

I enjoy a good beginning as much as anyone else does, I suppose. Crafting the perfect opening line is a challenge, and some writers do a better job of it than others, just like anything else. Here’s a great one.

“I was sure I was going to die, but was so afraid I wouldn’t in time.”

Little Black Dog’s Aftermath cuts right in, immediately, and you realize that something awful has happened, and is being (maybe) recovered from.

Here’s another.

He spoke flawless Federation Standard, possessed perfect visual acuity and hearing abilities unmatched by human ears.

kes7’s Year One opens not necessarily with a bang, but it’s obvious that whoever this is, he’s physically superior to humans. Is he an Augment, perhaps?

DHA Molecule (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

And here’s one more, if you’ll indulge me.

“I … I think …(that) I need to see a doctor.”

trekfan’s While You Were Unconscious pulls two people together, although the details are a little … tricky. Yeah, there’s a good word for it.

Bonus questions!

How do you convert blank pages and blank computer documents into works of art? How do you get first ideas? What gets you started, or re-started?

I find that, for me, getting a story started is difficult but of course it’s necessary. Otherwise, nothing is ever produced! But sometimes the ideal opening is elusive. When that happens, I try to write the middle, or even the end. And I will go over and over again, in my mind, when it comes to the opening line of a story. I want the reader to continue, of course, but what I also want is to set the tone.

Reversal

Reversal‘s opening line was written on the fly (as was nearly all of that story). It is, simply, this –

It didn’t hurt.

I really, really hope the reader’s question is – what didn’t hurt?

It is, possibly, the best opening I have ever written, and it colored the remainder of the story. Other stories have had good openings. I particularly like the ones for Paving Stones (“He’s too young.”) and for Brown (They were both pregnant at the same time.). Both of these opening lines defined the stories that followed, and shaped them.

The Week Never Starts Round Here (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Often a good opening line can get me going, and can really sustain me. However, sometimes I need to get a restart. This is especially after I’ve had to leave a story for a while, for some reason or another.

One thing I try to do is to keep writing (this includes blogging). More or less continually getting ideas onto paper or pixels means that it takes a while for all ideas to dry up. But sometimes that’s not feasible. When it isn’t, I also like to just reread my work, and not necessarily the work I’m trying to finish. I just need to, I feel, review past successes, at times, to remind myself that I can still do it.

Here’s to new beginnings for us all.

Oct

2013

Review – The Play at the Plate

The Play at the Plate – In response to a prompt about obstacles, I immediately visualized a catcher blocking the plate in baseball.

Background

Hall of Mirrors

That led my thoughts to mirror baseball, and I also thought of Game Night, which is my Star Trek: Enterprise fanfiction Mirror Universe counterpart to Movie Night. Hence the story began to fall into place.

Plot

It’s 2162, not too long after the events of Temper and Fortune, and Andrew Miller is calling for bets for a mirror baseball game as catcher David Constantine seeks to block runner Ty Janeway from scoring. Andrew is the Empress’s current toy. But in walks the new pilot, Melissa Madden.

Dumbstruck and more than a little smitten, Andy takes Melissa’s bet. And, when she loses, she offers to allow him to come to her quarters and collect. But Frank Ramirez reminds Andrew that it is just not a good idea. Andy, to his detriment, eventually ignores that sage advice. And that is a very bad idea indeed. Because, essentially, Andy is sealing his own fate. This is not a happy fate at all.

Story Postings

Rating

The Story is Rated K+.

Upshot

I like the little inklings in here, that there is something that could potentially be between them, but the Empress Hoshi Sato will never let Andrew break free. Furthermore, when the principals conspire, and later when Andrew makes his escape, these decisions haunt him. Andrew Miller is very much a tragic figure in the Mirror Universe. He is the person who, amidst an environment where everyone takes whatever they want, he cannot have just what – who – he wants the most.

You can find me on Google+.

Oct

2013

Review – Apple

Apple? So of course I thought of temptation.

Background

In Between Days

For my own prompt about temptation, I decided to fill in a missing scene from Reversal. The idea was also to dovetail with a scene in Fortune, where Shelby and Travis spend time together, and it appears that they might be starting a relationship soon.

But I did not want things to run smoothly.

Plot

It is the day after the day of all-orange food. Lili is not sleeping well, because she has been dreaming about Doug. Jennifer is even teasing her a bit about it. And just like in Reversal, this is somewhat embarrassing to Lili.

A perfect Gala

She sets out harvest produce for the crew, and then Lili explains what’s available for dessert. It is a fruit and cheese plate. Malcolm looks up as she is speaking, thereby neatly prefiguring his own interest in her. Much later in my fan fiction, he confesses he was first smitten with her on the day of the all-orange food. She seemed to be a lot like “sunshine and happiness”.

Shelby picks up an uncut, perfectly ripe Gala apple, and she offers it to Travis. Tripp Tucker even jokes about Adam and Eve. And then Travis flees the scene.

Story Postings

Rating

The Story is Rated K.

Upshot

For a small fill-in scene, I think the story works just fine. I would not add it permanently to Reversal, though, as I feel it would interrupt a lot of the flow. But it was fun to add a different slant to a day in that story that doesn’t get a lot of detail. This time around, the characters get more depth and dimension.

Sep

2013

Inspiration – Pets

Pets and Origins

Pets inspire. A lot of my characters come from, in one way or another, people I have known. But some come from animals.

Dogs

I am a dog person and make no secret of the fact. The first dog character I wrote in Star Trek fanfiction was the Star Trek: Enterprise canon character, Porthos, in The Adventures of Porthos.

Barking up the Muse Tree | jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | Cria | Pets

Cria, a tween secondary female Daranaean

Caitians of course are canon, and they are felinoid. So the idea was to respond directly to that, with a canid species. I had been reading about the marsupial wolf and so the two ideas were combined, and the Daranaeans were born.

A Dog’s Eye View

Their personalities tend to be canine, too, from their pack-like hierarchy to their desire to sleep communally to the lower castes’ need to serve. The pack structure is shown off in The Cure is Worse Than the Disease and Beta individuals challenging the Alpha are shown in Take Back the Night.

In the upcoming Barnstorming series, their sports are even doglike, including mazes (based upon lure coursing), ring throwing (based upon frisbee) and staggered relay (based on agility).

The hyperactivity of the press parallels, in particular, terriers that I have known. The sentient marsupial canids are great fun to write.

Cats

M’Roan, a Caitian

I am allergic to cats and have never had one as a pet. However of course I have known plenty of felines as pets. For Caitian character Parenelsa, her shyness is absolutely based on shy and withdrawn cats, as in The Further Adventures of Porthos – The Stilton Fulfillment. But Ambassador Gopalahr, and the explorer, M’Roan, are a lot more adventurous. M’Roan was shown off to quirky effect in A Single Step.

In The Continuing Adventures of Porthos – The Future Cat, I confess I was a bit nervous about writing Spot, Data’s cat.

Lizards

We had an iguana when I was very young. So I have thought a bit about Iggy when creating reptile characters.

A Xindi Reptilian

These include Skrol and Bron, D’Storlin and my favorite, the best-realized one, Kevin O’Connor.

I have tried to play against type with all of them, giving them more warmth and depth and trying to stay away from the simple idea of ‘coldness’.

Upshot

Inspiration is all around; you just have to know where to look for it. You might even be scratching it behind the ears right now.

Aug

2013

Focus – Ikaarans in Star Trek Fan Fiction

Focus – Ikaarans

Ikaarans are canon.
A focus (unlike a spotlight) is an in-depth look at a Star Trek fanfiction canon item and my twist(s) on it.

Of course, all of fan fiction is like that, but the idea here is to provide a window into how a single canon concept can be used in fan fiction.

Background

With almost nothing to go on, Ikaarans were ripe for reinvention. The only person of even partial Ikaaran blood who is ever seen in canon is Karyn Archer.

Part-Ikaaran, part-human Karyn Archer

The only alien characteristic that can be seen is the rather pronounced ridge running from her forehead to her nose. Her nose is also wider than most humans’, although she might have had human ancestry providing that look. She also has crow’s feet, but those are more likely to be signs of aging and stress. Furthermore, she is apparently of Asian descent, which seems to indicate a kinship with Hoshi Sato or Dan Chang or any other Asian crew members rather than any Ikaaran features.

Language

Clicking languages have been around since prehistoric times and, genetically speaking, at least the peoples who speak them can be traced back a good 35,000 years. I believe it’s highly likely that, when we go into space, we’ll encounter click languages. In canon, the only such language is Xindi Insectoid, which appears to be a function of the shape of that alien race’s mouth parts.

For the Ikaarans, my idea is that they would be speaking in clicks by choice, rather than necessity. But they would speak names and, therefore, the intonation would be slower.

Culture

There is no information on Ikaaran culture so I created all of this. I decided to make their society completely against birth control, not even bothering to invent it. Therefore, their planet, Ikaaria, would have gross overpopulation. In order to alleviate the burdens of a huge population, two things would happen to their society.

First, they would send their young people out to work, in single-sex work gangs. They would farm or mine, mostly, as a form of community service to their race. These work groups would go out every four years during one festival, and would return in another. By staying offworld, they would not consume as many resources. Plus they would create or obtain more resources, and bring them back at the end of their work commitments. In addition, they would be separate from the other gender during peak fertility years.

The other means of controlling the population would be more sinister. Instead of birth control, their scientists would alter their genome. Hence, as a result, they would all have a kind of self-destruct sequence in their genes. They refer to the disease as the decline, and it is uniformly fatal, and kills Ikaarans before they turn 50. As a result, they don’t trust scientists much, and they don’t trust doctors. But they don’t need doctors.

Empathic Healing

Doctors are unnecessary because Ikaarans can heal themselves, and each other. They can heal members of other species, too, so long as the organs are more or less equivalent. In The Three of Us, the Ikaarans Jeris and Jobiram are able to heal Lili and Jay, but Jay has internal injuries that they cannot do anything about. In Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, a weapon is devised by the Imvari and the Xindi Insectoids, and that weapon is specifically designed to counteract Ikaaran empathic healing. When that weapon, which uses percussive shock, is used, the victim must be attended to very quickly for doctors to be able to do anything at all.

In The All-Stars, the team’s trainer is an Ikaaran. This therefore opens up the possibility of giving many on-field injuries more or less instant cures without rehabilitation. No more disabled list!

Romance and Family Life

Ikaarans are generally monogamous and enjoy humans’ company. The gift of a living thing is the equivalent of a marriage proposal. Ethan Shapiro gives Bithara a perfectly ripe orange as his proposal gift in The Three of Us. In Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, Jonathan gives Esilia his dog, Daisy, as his proposal gift.

With the help of scientific information from Jobiram and Jeris, Phlox is able to perfect human-Ikaaran interbreeding, and hybrid children are born, including Karyn’s ancestor, Aaron Gregory Archer, named after Jonathan Archer‘s old friend, AG Robinson.

Upshot

This species could have been fascinating in canon, but they are never really seen and the viewers don’t get to really know anyone. As a tabula rasa, they’ve been a lot of fun to create. I’ll try to find other occasions to show them, in addition to the upcoming sports series.

The Ikaarans will be back.

Aug

2013

Reviews, a Love/Hate Affair

Reviews

Reviews matter.

In the continuing saga of looking at Boldly Reading blog prompts, we have the second such prompt about Star Trek fan fiction (and, really, about any other kind of writing, for that matter) – what do you like to see in a review of your work? what do you comment upon yourself in a review? has a received view changed your opinion on a story you wrote or were writing? and finally, has a review sold or warned you off another author’s story?

The Good

Everybody loves good reviews. They make us feel warm, happy and special. They pull us up when we’re feeling low. Good vibes all around.

thumbs up!

But really short good reviews (e. g. I loved it!) are nice but they are dissatisfying. It’s like a half a sip of really good coffee. Hence, whether I read a review or I write one, I feel that a good review should have a little more depth than that. Why is the story so beloved?

Some ideas

Are the original characters believable and multidimensional? Do you, the reader, understand who they are, their motivations and back stories? The answer does not necessarily have to be yes to all of these questions, by the way, but what is it about the original characters that grabs you?
Are the canon characters well portrayed? If they step out of character, is that explained in a satisfying manner? Can you, the reader, hear the canon character’s voice in your head, saying these words? Can you see the canon character performing these actions?
What’s the driver of the events? Is it a new ship or person? A conflict? A discovery? A problem that needs solving? A mystery? Was the situation believably introduced, showcased and wrapped up?
Where is (are) the climax(es) in the story? What is it leading to? Is it the logical release of the build-up that has occurred throughout the story?
How have the characters or the situation changed by the end of the story? If the story was a reset, does the resetting to the beginning make sense?

The Bad

Sometimes, a story does not completely work, but there are redeemable elements of it. When that happens, I think it’s time for suggestions. And again, a short review is not too much help. Authors need to learn (and be nice about this!) how to improve their works. It is possible to help someone become better, and writers should take the suggestions in the spirit in which they should be given.

sideways

I thought ___ was a bit of a hand wave. If you were rewriting the story today, how would you correct that and add more drama to that element?
___ is incorrect, per (cite research). Are you looking to write an alternate reality?
I loved your characters but I thought the situation didn’t quite suit them. Do you have other stories with these characters?
I thought the situation was compelling, but I’m unsure about the placement of the characters in it. Do you have stories with similar situations, but different characters?

The Ugly

Sometimes, it’s just … oh God. You feel like sowing the ground around someone’s computer with salt. What to do?

thumbs down 🙁

One option is to simply not review at all. After all, even in a review hunt challenge, you could forego the points and just bow out of reviewing. But that does not help the author get better. Can they get better? It’s a definite maybe. There are people who take suggestions to heart. And there are others who might accept the suggestions later. Then again, there are also people who think that everything they write is so wonderful that you must be the problem.

Some ideas

Try to find something positive to say, anything! Did they get a canon character’s voice right at all? Was the situation unique? Were there any memorable lines?
Once again, constructive criticism is the way to go. Be specific and detailed, but also be kind. E. g. a review that says, In canon, Scotty is not an Eskimo, and I’m just not so sure I’m buying him as one. I think that’s specific, and it does not trash the author or attack them personally. Hey, someone else might be convinced, but you, the reader, are not.
Are they new to writing? Maybe comment on the maturation process in writing. This is not to say that you insult people by suggesting that no one under the age of 40 can write, or that you need a decade’s worth of experience to be any good. Rather, you can suggest that continued writing, over time, often changes and hones one’s style.
Out and out plagiarism should not be rewarded, of course.

Personal Thoughts on Reviews

So as for me, I look at the number of reviews I get, and the number of reads. For short stories with no reviews and a high read count, that raises a red flag with me. But for longer stories with no reviews, it’s less of a flag, as there are plenty of longer stories that people just don’t stay with. It’s not necessarily due to the quality of the writing. Sometimes that’s just due to readers’ personal schedules.

And I can’t say that I love criticism, but I am a writer and I expect it and I understand it. People have told me that something looked like a hand wave, or that they couldn’t stick with something. I think that’s fine, and that tells me where to improve, and tighten things up. But I do have an ego and, like everyone else, it can sometimes be bruised.

So I ask, if you hate it, and you still choose to provide reviews, I do hope you won’t just trash me. And I vow to you that I will do the same.

Jul

2013

What Do I Like to Read?

What do I like to read?

As a part of The Twelve Trials of Triskelion, the program is coming to an end, but we on Ad Astra are looking to keep it up. As a result, we’re looking to expand blogging. And now there’s a new book club, called Boldly Reading, with its own blog!

So – the first prompt is – what do you like to read? what fanfic story type/era/character and heck even name an author here you gush over do you like to read?

And so I’m thinking.

Challenges

While I love the Star Trek Enterprise and The Original Series eras, that doesn’t necessarily define what I read. More often, I go looking for a good story, and then whether it fits into my own personal era preference doesn’t truly factor into it. Good stories are good stories.

I also have great respect for people who put themselves out there for the challenges, in particular, the monthly challenges. For newer authors in particular, it has got to be daunting. It presents the old what if they don’t like me? fear that I suspect all authors have inside us.

Once I’ve read a challenger (even if they don’t win, and even if I didn’t love their story), I try to look at more of their works. Sometimes people are just off, and one story didn’t hit its marks but that doesn’t mean that others won’t. But if I have disappointment enough times, I’m done. That is, unless it’s for a monthly challenge. And I can’t honestly say exactly when that moment occurs, but I know it when I see it. Then I’ll read all of the entries because I don’t think I can vote in good conscience without reading all of that month’s entries.

But that doesn’t mean I’m going to love the author who has disappointed me. Unfairly or not, that person now has more of a hurdle to climb over in order to get my love. But it’s not an impossible hurdle.

Characterizations

For authors not involved in monthly challenges, I am looking for good characters. I love action sequences, but the truth is, they’re hard to write. Sometimes what you’re thinking of just does not translate well to pixels. But characters can. Someone who is not a Mary Sue. And someone who doesn’t just get a description in some huge data dump. It’s as if the author were picking the character out from a police lineup. Someone who I can hate or love or be repulsed by or laugh with or at or want to hug or kick. Someone who stays with me.

Give it up for Templar Sora!

One author whose works I have loved pretty much from the beginning has been Templar Sora.

Star Trek Online (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Two of his characters I have particularly enjoyed are Jessica St. Peter and Seymour Sonia. Jess is an unlikely leader. She’s a person thrust into the role when everyone around her falls down on the job. Or they are too scared or damaged or inexperienced to step in. And, as a young leader, she deals with something that a lot of young leaders in fan fiction never seem to have to deal with – insubordination by people who think she should not have her place.

Enter Seymour Sonia, the consummate jerk. Everything from hitting on Jess (before she gets a command) to openly being hostile to her, he’s a fun character to despise. The beauty of this character is his passive-aggressive nature. I have found that often jerk characters are written as utterly one-dimensional, as authors might feel they have to stack their decks. After all, who could possibly hate a Starfleeter?

Try me.

Upshot

I love a lot of what I’m reading. But to really hit the stratosphere, give me a character where all I want to do when I see him in a scene is yell, “Bite me!”

May

2013

Review – Day of the Dead

Background

Day of the Dead. More than just a holiday, it also references the horrors of a particularly infamous period is history. On Ad Astra, there was a prompt about the burdens of command.

I had been kicking around an idea about Tripp Tucker being caught in a temporal interphase (which is canon in Star Trek) and liberating the Dachau concentration camp. Hence I decided to put that together with the prompt.

Tying In

The idea about Dachau was to tie into Milena Chelenska, who is Richard Daniels‘s love interest. For her, there would be a bit of a back story, as Tripp would deal with the problems that come along with witnessing just so much horror.

Furthermore, there would be a tie into Wesley Crusher, as I liked the little family and backstory I had created for him in Crackerjack and wanted to revisit some of that as well.

The backdrop to it would be Halloween, and then the Day of the Dead.

Plot

As Halloween rolls around – and this is the last Halloween of Tucker’s life, although of course he doesn’t know that – Tripp arranges with Chip Masterson to have a number of classic horror films shown. On the actual day, they show John Carpenter’s Halloween.

But before that, the NX-01 goes about some of its regular business. And the reader should be seeing that life is going on, and they are all moving forward with their lives.

Malcolm is on Lafa II with Lili, for Declan‘s birth, and Aidan MacKenzie is running Tactical in his stead. Travis has just met Ellen Warren. Jonathan is talking about his new ship, the Zefram Cochrane. Lucy Stone, the new Science Ensign, is catching the eye of both Andy Miller and Chip Masterson, even though Chip is married to the pregnant Deborah Haddon. In short, everyone is going somewhere. But Tripp Tucker is living in the past.

Movie Night

For Movie Night, he can’t ask either T’Pol or Hoshi to join him, as they are both exes of his. These are references to the Star Trek: Enterprise canon relationship with T’Pol and the fanfiction relationship in Together. But he sees MACO Corporal Amanda Cole, and begins to flirt with her rather openly. Phlox is also present, and they talk about the picture.

But then Commander Tucker vanishes.

Meanwhile – well, meanwhile in the story, but not in history – Wesley Crusher is considering the aftermath of a static warp bubble experiment where his mother, Beverly, could have lost her life. But he’s lost the warp bubble, and doesn’t know where it went.

Coincidence?

Nope, it’s just another temporal-spatial-somatic interphase, much as happened in Concord.

So, where does Tucker end up? Why, he’s in the Forty-Second Infantry Division, and it’s April 29th of 1945. They are about to liberate the Dachau concentration camp.

The remainder of the story deals with Tucker’s displacement, getting him back, and how both the NX-01 and the Enterprise-D work to solve their own, respective, problems.

Music

As the plot unfolds, classic spooky music shows up, and each chapter begins and ends with lyrics as follows –

Story Postings

Rating

The story is rated K+.

Upshot

I added a number of questions about command and promotions, as characters flirt with garnering more responsibility, and how they will deal with such things. In addition, the changes made during the story have the potential to affect the principals for years to come. The burdens of memory and the horrors of war intersect, as Tucker discards his love of horror, and Wesley thinks outside of his own personal bubble, and they both think and act outside themselves.

This story won the challenge; it was my second win (after Paving Stones Made From Good Intentions). I am immensely proud of it, and have featured it in the second Adult Trek Anthology.

Mar

2013

Focus on Tellarites in Star Trek Fan Fiction

Focus

Tellarites are canon.
A focus (unlike a spotlight) is an in-depth look at a canon item and my twist(s) on it.

Of course, all of Star Trek fan fiction is like that, but the idea here is to provide a window into how a single canon concept can be used in fanfiction.

Background – Tellarites

The species is canon, and they are normally shown as being obese, bearded men who enjoy hurling insults.

I don’t tamper with that.

However, my first questions were – what do their women look like? And, as importantly, they are (in canon) a founding member of the United Federation of Planets. So how the heck do they get along with everyone else?

Occurrences

In the two (so far) Mary Reed stories, Tellarites get a bit more of a look than they did in canon.

In Gainful, Mary gets her first-ever job outside of the home – answering fan mail for pop sensation Kurt Fong. But it’s not all glitz and glamour, as the Romulan War is going on. Kurt wants to be informed of any requests to entertain the troops, or provide visits or autographed pictures for the wounded. It’s up to Mary to get all of that to him in a timely manner.

One of her coworkers, Cympia Triff, is a Tellarite, and Mary initially isn’t sure whether that person is male or female. Furthermore, their boss, Ehigha Ejiogu, tells Mary that Cympia really wants to hear an insult, a fact that mortifies Mary a bit. They trade these unconventional pleasantries and Mary learns that Cympia (the computer programmer) is female. A small friendship, perhaps, is forming by the time the story ends.

In The Tribe, it’s the end of Mary’s first day, so she takes a commuter mag-lev train home. While riding through Southeast Asia, the train becomes stuck. A fellow commuter is in labor, and all of the men in the car flee for other cars save one – a young male Tellarite.

Upshot

While they are difficult people, the truth is, plenty of humans are, too. The way I see Tellarites is a lot like a curmudgeonly relative. They may be hard-nosed and harsh on the outside, but inside, they really do care. I hope I’ll have occasion to showcase them some more, and I will in the upcoming Barnstorming series.

Feb

2013

Starts

Bonus questions!

Reversal

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Review – The Play at the Plate

Background

Plot

Story Postings

Rating

Upshot

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Review – Apple

Background

Plot

Story Postings

Rating

Upshot

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Pets and Origins

Dogs

A Dog’s Eye View

Cats

Lizards

Upshot

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Focus – Ikaarans

Background

Language

Culture

Empathic Healing

Romance and Family Life

Upshot

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Reviews

The Good

Some ideas

The Bad

The Ugly

Some ideas

Personal Thoughts on Reviews

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What do I like to read?

Challenges

Characterizations

Give it up for Templar Sora!

Upshot

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Review – Day of the Dead

Background

Tying In

Plot

Movie Night

Coincidence?

Music

Story Postings

Rating

Upshot

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Focus

Background – Tellarites

Occurrences

Upshot

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