Hold Your Dominion

Portrait of a Character – Freela

Portrait of a Character – Freela

Origins

Because Gina and Gabrielle Nolan were alone, and the seven stages of grief were finished, I decided I wanted their lives to go on in a somewhat unexpected manner. As a result, Kittriss and Freela were born. Freela was a linchpin character in the story line. Without her, Gabby and Gina never hear a crying child, and Gina and Kit never meet. So Freela is important to the series.

Portrayal

Freela

Saoirse Ronan as Freela (image is provided for educational purposes)

Freela is played by actress Saoirse Ronan. And this talented Irish-American actress is a two-time Academy Award nominee, as of the writing of this blog post. Much like is the case with Kittriss, I wanted Freela to not be the big, dominating warrior-type Klingon.

Personality

When we first meet Freela, she is an artistically talented first grader who commemorates her mother’s death in the Dominion War with an eerily accurate painting. And this eventually leads her (presumably) to drafting and then eventually to study engineering. So this talented and sensitive Klingon will not become a warrior; instead, she will become a builder and a designer.

However, she also expresses some anti-Breen prejudice, even as she fully accepts Gina and Gabby as new members of her family.

Relationships

Freela has no known relationships.

Mirror Universe

A Mirror version of Freela is impossible, as the Dominion War does not seem to have happened on the other side of the pond.

Quote

“You know, capital buildings and bridges, but also public monuments. There’s, um, there’s a monument to the honored dead from the Breen Attack on Earth. It’s being built on Keto-Enol. We’ve been studying it; it’s a steel and glass structure made to look like thousands of birds flying up into the sky.

The bottom is tall and wide enough for a class to fit underneath. Under it, the names of the honored dead are to be etched, and they can be highlighted either randomly or as the observer wants to see. So, if you wanted to only read human names, you could, or the victims who were in Paris or the like. And the whole thing is to be made of debris from San Francisco and Beijing and even from ships that crashed that day, that sort of thing. Mother’s name will be etched underneath, as will that of Michael Nolan, Gabby’s Dad.”

Upshot

Although she demonstrates some anti-Breen prejudice in Wider Than the Sargasso Sea, Freela is essentially a decent person. Furthermore, she is the only sister Gabby really has. And the two women love each other as much as biological sisters often do.

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Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, Portrait, 0 comments

Review – Good-Bye

Review – Good-Bye

Good-bye to whom? When Gina Nolan reminisces about Michael, she can finally let go and move on with her life. As a result, so can Gabby and everyone else in her orbit. Michael’s memory remains as vital as ever but with a lot less associated horror and pain.

Background

So in response to a prompt of the same name, I decided to revisit Gina Nolan, Kittris, Freela, and Gabrielle, and let her say farewell to Michael. So for Gina, this ending is somewhat bittersweet but it also opens up other doors. If she can let Michael go, then she can fully embrace Kittris and their new life together. In addition, the endless anniversaries can finally become less important to her as the hurt recedes and her life fills with promise and possibility.

Plot

Barking up the muse tree | jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | Hold Your Dominion | Good-Bye | Goodbye

Hold Your Dominion

Gina Nolan can finally let go.

On the tenth anniversary of the Breen attack on Earth, widow Gina Nolan is interviewed by the local news. And she finds the courage to allow her late husband, Michael’s, memory to recede and to finally, truly, get on with her life.

Hence even for a woman who has remarried, the pull of her first husband remained strong. The hurt was still fresh, until this particular moment of reflection and release. And if Gina can heal, then maybe everyone else can as well.

Story Postings

Rating

This story is rated K.

Upshot

So the Hold Your Dominion series is a reflection of 9/11 and, as such,  it follows what really happened in our world. Pregnant widows rose to the occasion and became stronger than they ever thought possible. And, eventually, they made their peace with things and carried on.  Therefore, eventually, so does Gina.

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Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, Review, 0 comments

Review – Smash Your Dominion

Review – Smash Your Dominion

Smash your dominion? Why, don’t mind if I do!

Background

I wrote this story when I was pretty new to Ad Astra, and so I didn’t have much to draw upon. The prime universe version of this series was all about a widow, Gina Nolan, recovering from the traumatic death of her husband. However, this would be … different.

Plot

Barking up the muse tree | jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | Smash Your Dominion

Smash Your Dominion

So this is a Mirror Universe version of Hold Your Dominion as imagined if a network executive demanded that a Mirror Universe episode be written.

Hence in this version of events, the storyline actually begins with her saying, “Of course I wanted him dead.” It felt like the perfect opener. Gina tosses away a timid fragility from the Hold Your Dominion stories and instead becomes a force of nature.

Therefore, I reimagined Gina as a Captain’s Woman, to a Simpson Keller (that is the real-life name of Helen Keller’s half-brother, by the way. It has no other meaning and I just like the name). Gina leaves their bed and she wanders the halls of a starship, and is called away because her daughter, Gabrielle, has gotten into trouble. And the person complaining is the Klingon, Kittris. As a result, they cross paths in both universes.

Story Postings

Rating

The story is rated T.

Upshot

As a character, Gina was pretty meek and mild at the time. Here, she’s a force of nature, and I kind of like that. As to whether I will revisit this storyline, I have no plans to do so at this time. So this is it for Gina really being in control and powerful. Ah, well.

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Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, Review, 1 comment

Review – Wider Than the Sargasso Sea

Review – Wider Than the Sargasso Sea

The Sargasso Sea? It might be a stretch. Or maybe not. The gulf between different people and different species certainly feels impossible to surmount.

Background

Barking Up The Muse Tree | jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | Wider than the Sargasso Sea

Wider than the Sargasso Sea

So for a prompt about working together, I made a decision to revisit Gina Nolan‘s universe and wrap things up a bit. The best way,  I felt, was to try to bring the story more or less full circle. Hence the Nolan family would have to meet the Breen head on, but not in battle. Instead, in peacetime, they would have to deal with them, somehow. And for Gina and Freela in particular, that feels way too hard.

Plot

It’s about twenty years since the Breen attack on Earth. Gina and Gabby have more or less moved on.  Gina has even remarried, to the Klingon, Kittriss. Life’s going pretty well, and Gabrielle is in a special school for the performing arts. Freela, her Klingon stepsister, is starting college (she’s going into engineering).

Then a Breen family moves into the neighborhood, and Gina is one of the many people yelling, “Breen, go home!

Story Postings

Rating

The story is Rated K.

Upshot

I don’t know if the solution was too pat. I didn’t want for there to be easy answers, but I don’t know. I’m a bit ambivalent about this story. I feel that the characterizations are good and the plot line is a decent one. But I do wonder if the story arc and its payoff are truly believable, and I welcome feedback (as I do for all of the things I write).

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Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, Review, 1 comment

Recurrent Themes – Plant Lovers

Recurrent Themes – Plant Lovers

Plant lovers inform many of my stories.

Background

Botanists and plant lovers are canon. In the original Star Trek series, Sulu and Rand both attend to plants. Barking up the Muse Tree | Janet Gershen-Siegel | jespah | DNA | Plant Lovers In The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, Keiko Ishikawa O’Brien is a Botanist.

For an older ship like the NX-01, I felt like there absolutely had to be a Botanist.

Appearances

Naomi Curtis

Only seen during If You Can’t Stand the Heat, I’ve retconned her and now consider her to be the first Botanist on the NX-01 Enterprise. Much like Preston Jennings is shifted over to Navigation and Lili O’Day is hired for the Xindi War, Naomi is thrown over for the better skilled and more versatile Shelby. A pity for Chef Will Slocum, as she’s an early love interest for him. But they do get to fight off the Darvellians together.

Shelby Pike

Pike is the best-realized of my botany and plant-loving characters. Her talents range from growing food crops to keeping everyone sane with flowers, colorful fruits, and other pleasant reminders of home.

Eriecho

A true gardener and homebody at heart, Eriecho grows yellow peppers. It’s at her garden patch that she and Sollastek first scandalously hold hands.

Von

Recurrent Themes – Plant LoversA Ferengi engineer at the Temporal Integrity Commission, Von is also an amateur gardener, and gives Sheilagh Bernstein a yellow tulip while she’s deciding whether to join the commission.

Michael Nolan

Gina Nolan‘s late husband is in his Beijing lab, studying Bajoran dicotyledons, when he’s killed during the Breen attack on Earth.

Other Characters

The Hayes family and the Warren family farm during Concord, but that’s more a matter of survival and economics rather than study. Many of the Daranaean women also garden. And in particular they will grow Krivian weed, which is shaped into a type of boxwood-style hedge. But that’s not just for beauty’s sake. They can chew Krivian weed in order to determine the gender of a fetus a pregnant woman is carrying. In the E2 timeline, Esilia and the other Ikaaran women farm as a part of their obligation to their government.

Upshot

They may have their heads in the stars, but their feet are on the ground; they’re the gardeners, Botanists, farmers, and plant lovers of Star Trek.

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Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, In Between Days series, Interphases series, Themes, 1 comment

Portrait of a Character – Kittris (Kit)

Portrait of a Character – Kittris (Kit)

Kittris is an everyday hero kind of character.

Origins

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.

Portrayal

I like wrestler Chris Jericho for Kittris.

Portrait of a Character – Kittris (Kit)

Chris Jericho

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

Portrait of a Character – Kittris (Kit)

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.

Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, Hall of Mirrors, Portrait, 7 comments

Portrait of a Character – Gina Nolan

Portrait of a Character – Gina Nolan

Gina Nolan is more than a widow.

Origins

Portrait of a Character – Gina Nolan

As the tenth anniversary of 9/11 came closer, I found myself thinking about that day. I wanted, in particular, to write about women who had been pregnant at the time of the attack. The Breen attack on Earth seemed a good backdrop for that. Plus it was a chance to learn about a part of Star Trek that I really didn’t know anything about. Therefore, I began with a story of a pregnant woman, and framed it against Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief.

Portrayal

Portrait of a Character – Gina Nolan

Gina Nolan (Elisabetta Canalis)

Gina is portrayed by Italian actress Elisabetta Canalis, currently best known in the United States for dating George Clooney.

Personality

Brassy and no-nonsense, Gina becomes a widow. This is when her husband Michael, a Xenobotanist, is instantly killed at his Beijing laboratory. She has been at home on Proxima Centauri, safe from the attack, but bereft all the same. Most of her story is told in Hold Your Dominion, although a portion is told in Wider Than the Sargasso Sea.

The Five Stages of Grief

Denial

Keeping away the soldiers tasked with informing her of the death seems her only logical move. Of course that doesn’t bring Michael back; it just prolongs the moment of learning of his death.

Anger

On Andoria for a memorial service, Gina loses patience with just about everyone.

Bargaining

To get across the idea of bargaining, I had her haggle with a Ferengi merchant. Still on Andoria, and still run ragged, she gets redbat at a decent price. This is particularly after a security officer intervenes.

Depression

Returning to Proxima, smells and rudeness overcome Gina Nolan. But it all comes to a head when she sees the destroyed tree in her front yard. A symbol of her and Michael’s love, it was killed when a military shuttle landed on it and its inhabitants told her of her husband’s death. It’s all too much for her, and she spirals downwards.

Acceptance

She spends her first Christmas after Michael’s death with her parents. She takes them to a crossing of streets now named Michael Nolan Square. A dedication plaque reads, “This square is dedicated to Xenobotanist Michael G. Nolan, born July first, 2341. Nolan died on October tenth, 2375, at his lab in Beijing, when the Breen attacked Earth. He left a wife and a daughter.”

Aftermath

Healing

Five years after the attack, someone pulls Gina Nolan along to look at artwork. Whose artwork? Her daughter’s. The children at Decker Elementary have all drawn something about the Breen attack. While there, they spot a lost child. She’s a little Klingon girl who is a bit older than Gina’s daughter, Gabrielle. The girl, Freela, is crying for her father. When they are back together, there is a ribbon award for the best drawing in the first grade. It goes to Freela. Gina suggests ice cream, and Freela’s father, Kittris, agrees.

Ice Cream

As the grownups talk and the girls play, it becomes apparent that there might be a chance for something more than just a pleasant afternoon.

Rituals

Ten years later, a milestone in Kittriss’s family is an occasion for Gina Nolan and Gabby to again try to fit in.

Good-bye

Five years afterwards, Gina is part of an interview for a commemoration of the attack. She remembers Michael, but not with sadness.

The Next Generation

In Wider Than the Sargasso Sea, much of the action shifts to Gabrielle. But Gina is still there, still fighting, and is a part of a large crowd protesting Breen moving into their neighborhood and, as that story begins, yells, “Breen, go home!”

Relationships

Michael Nolan

I never show him alive, although I might write a flashback at some point. Their marriage was a decent one, but they worked on different planets, and that could not have been easy.

Kittriss

Originally, shared grief draws them together. But then it becomes something more. Together, they raise their daughters – and I often (albeit not actually in my fan fiction) refer to them as “The Klingon Brady Bunch”.

Mirror Universe

Mirror Gina Nolan

Mirror Gina Nolan

In the Mirror Universe, Gina is a Captain’s Woman, to Alexander Bashir (In The Point is Probably Moot he’s the captain of the ISS Molotov). But she does have a taste for Klingon men, and meets Kittress under very different circumstances, in Smash Your Dominion.

Quote

“It wasn’t meant to be fair, and that’s not just because of the Breen. It’s, in general. (so) It’s never meant to be fair. It’s death, and while I think it holds account books, I also don’t kid myself. (so) It’s not a simple equation. It’s not like we gathered all the bad people together, and then told the Breen to have at it. (so) It’s not that. And it’s not God taking the most righteous or that kind of bull, either. It was just a bunch of people who drew the unlucky card that day. If I didn’t have my teaching job here, I would have been living in Beijing, too. And then Gabrielle and I would be gone, too.”

Upshot

I think the Sargasso Sea story mainly wrapped up this story line. But I don’t know. Gina Nolan often surprises me, and she may yet do so again.

Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, Hall of Mirrors, Portrait, 16 comments

Portrait of a Character – Gabrielle Nolan

Portrait of a Character – Gabrielle Nolan

Gabrielle Nolan comes from real events.

Origins

Gabby started off as almost a plot device. I had been working on a series of ficlets surrounding the Breen attack on Earth, and I was analogizing them to the Five Stages of Grief. The Breen attack also felt a lot like 9/11, so I wanted to tell the story from the perspective of a pregnant widow. Gabrielle is not the widow (Gina is); she’s the daughter. So she doesn’t show up until the sixth stage, which is healing.

While I wanted to move the story beyond grief, I also wrote the healing aspect in order to introduce Gabby. This was done as the response to a weekly free write prompt about art. When I saw the prompt, the first thing I thought of was art therapy, and I immediately got the image of a child’s red-colored rounded scrawl into my head, and that would not go away.

Art Therapy

As a part of the commemoration of the fifth anniversary of the Breen attack, Gabby’s school has its students draw, paint or sculpt their impressions of that day. Gabrielle isn’t the only bereft child, as she learns. For Gabby, it’s a day to make a friend, as it is for her  mother, Gina. A part of healing is, I feel, to go outside yourself, and see that others might be in the same boat as you. Art brings it all together, as Gabby’s piece and another piece bring them close to people with a similar bereavement.

Quote

“It’s a tomato.”

(when asked about the red scrawl on her drawing).

Appearance

Gabby is shown as both a child and a teenager. For her time as a small child, I see MacKenzie Foy.

Portrait of a Character – Gabrielle Nolan

As a teenager, I don’t really have a visual for her yet. She’s a child of the twenty-fourth century, and a child of tragedy. So she is much like any of the children of 9/11 victims, whether they extant or in utero on 9/11/01. As a teenager, she is a lot like a typical human teenager. She’s engrossed in her PADD, bored with slow-moving adult things, and intent on fixing up her friends with each other, a little like Jane Austen’s Emma.

In her eyes, her mother sees her lost father, Michael Nolan, much as I expect 9/11 widows see their husbands in the eyes of their children.

Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, Portrait, 5 comments