Hoshi

Jan

2013

Progress Report – January 2013

January 2013 was busy.

January 2013 Posted Works

The month started off with the holidays winding down and a new quarter starting. Both of these meant more regular work.

The Trek United Adult Trek Anthology was posted! It was terrific fun to write and edit, and everyone was wonderful to work with. We will do it again for 2013. It garnered over 80 impressions on the first day alone!

On Ad Astra, I answered my own challenge about family with A Gathering, which takes place in the JJ Abrams-Eriecho universe. That isn’t even a series yet, although it probably should be by now.

Plus I added a new little Daranaean story about Inta II, called Confidence. I added a prime universe-mirror universe story about Aidan and Susan, called The Pivot Point. The Puzzle and The Pivot Point were added to In Between Days context.

So I then began what I’ve been referring to as the E² stories with the first of four books, Reflections Down a Corridor. I added a short story (in response to a prompt about Trek technology) with a Richard Daniels Times of the HG Wells prequel story, Marvels, about his encounter with Irene of Castile. So I also placed that story into HG Wells context. I answered the politics challenge with Voice of the Common Man.

On Fanfiction.net, I added Broken Seal, The Puzzle, Tumult, Ceremonial, Achieving Peace, Shell Shock and There’s Something About Hoshi.

On Archer’s Angels, I added More, More, More! and There’s Something About Hoshi.

Milestones

The read total numbers for Reversal and Together continue climbing. Intolerance exceeded 10,000 overall reads on January 7th. Temper has fewer overall reads but has received more attention at Ad Astra than Intolerance has. Oddly enough, the opposite is true at Trek United. Temper will be the next one to hit 10,000 overall reads, but that will take a bit longer, possibly a few more months if current trends hold.

The two Issuu documents with the most reads (both with over 1,000 and climbing) are Freak School (located within HFO 1.0) and Freak School 2 – Report Card (located within HFO 2.0). These are somewhat understandable as they are earlier releases and neither is rated MA, which means that readers do not need to register (or log in with Facebook Connect) to view the documents. The MA rating on Issuu is a true hindrance to read counts.

I won the Trek BBS “Wish Fulfillment” challenge with The Further Adventures of Porthos – The Stilton Fulfillment. The prize is to add my story to their archive and select the next challenge topic (but I can’t participate in it). I selected ethnicity and culture.

WIP Corner

I am continuing to work on and research the Barnstorming series. This is the sports series I have been kicking around. Plus I also created a story for the current Ad Astra prompt, which is about politics.

Prep Work

I prepared Twitter fodder for the entire calendar year. This helps when I’ve got nothing new to tweet about; it’s already there. This blog also feeds directly to Twitter. Hence it adds a new entry every Tuesday and every Friday, so long as I update the blog, of course.

This Month’s Productivity Killers

This month contained not one, but two trips to see my family. While I can type on the laptop (including on the train), the noise and the conditions aren’t exactly conducive to creativity.

Nov

2012

Progress Report – November 2012

November 2012 Posted Works

November 2012 was a good, productive month.

On Fanfiction.net, I posted An Announcement, Apple, A Kind of Blue, Local Flavor, Before the Fall, Brown, Gainful and The Tribe. I also added If You Can’t Stand the Heat. I changed the protagonist’s name from Paul Miller to Will Slocum (this is how that story will be from now on).

On Ad Astra, in response to their Burdens of Command challenge, I posted Day of the Dead as a Halloween story, and it won! I also linked to it on The Delphic Expanse. I added a number of stories to the In Between Days collection. These included A Single Step, Achieving Peace, Ceremonial, Day of the Dead, Detroit Rock City, Half, The High Cost of Dissidence and Throwing Rocks at Looking Glass Houses. In response to a prompt about gatherings, I added The Tribe. Also, I began working on a story for the family prompt (my own prompt!) called A Gathering.

On Archer’s Angels, I added Pat the Bunny, an HG Wells story which will also fit the Hall of Mirrors. I also added Before the Fall, an In Between Days prequel story in response to a prompt about the seven deadly sins (the story was about pride).

My Daranaean series, Emergence, was finally issued by Trek United Publishing!

Emergence

Milestones

Day of the Dead won the Ad Astra challenge! It was featured for a month and I choose the next challenge subject. I selected family as a prompt.

Together hit the 10,000 read count milestone on Ad Astra on the 19th. Intolerance continues to approach the overall 10,000 read count milestone, with well over 9,000 so far. For stories with only one placement, Hold Your Dominion is the current champ, with over 2,500 reads.

WIP Corner

I finished the last of the four E² stories, lining them up with canon and Star Trek fan fiction. I began thinking about a new series, to probably take place in a post-Nemesis scenario. However, it will have a lot of old friends include canon characters Martin Madden and Wesley Crusher.

Prep Work

Because the new Ad Astra challenge was set for two months, and the holidays were coming and I was done with the HG Wells series, I worked on some one-offs. These were mainly from a lot earlier in my writing days, to get them to better dovetail with fanfiction. I edited and created covers for The Puzzle, There’s Something About Hoshi, If You Can’t Stand the Heat, More, More, More! and The Adventures of Porthos. I also interwove them into my fanfiction, giving them dates (e. g. Hoshi had to happen fairly late during the In Between Days period as Jay Hayes‘s replacement, Bud Dawson, is in it. Heat had to happen early as it references Naomi Curtis and a bunch of helpers for Chef Slocum, and Shelby replaces Naomi as Lili replaces all of Chef’s earlier assistants.).

This Month’s Productivity Killers

I finished writing the E² stories, and spinning out The Times of the HG Wells. This made for a double dose of difficult feelings. Both of these moments were a bit trying, and for dissimilar reasons. The E² stories in particular deal with Jay Hayes‘s death. Hence ending those stories feels a little bit like the character’s death all over again. The end of the Wells stories brings with it a bit of sadness (even though it’s an overall rather happy ending). That’s because those characters aren’t so easy to revisit. Both of these have made it a bit hard to start a new series, yet I am determined.

Furthermore, as ever, I continue to look for work. The holidays are undoubtedly also going to turn into productivity killers.

Nov

2012

Review – There’s Something About Hoshi

What about Hoshi?

Background

So back in 2005, I wrote an initial five Star Trek: Enterprise fan fiction stories. I centered them all around the five senses. More, More, More was about hearing. The Puzzle (which was a more complex and ambitious tale) was about sight. The Adventures of Porthos took on smell. And If You Can’t Stand the Heat was about taste.

Hence There’s Something About Hoshi was about touch and, by extension, feelings.

Plot

The story begins with Hoshi Sato being courted by Ted Stone. But he’s a somewhat inept suitor, and keeps missing his marks. He tries to be romantic but can’t quite get it right. Hoshi fears she is settling, and references the canon E² episode where she settled for “old what’s his name” (Sekar Khan, the Quartermaster).

The Enterprise is contacted by an unknown species, the Arisians. They notice her on the Bridge and their communications are inept enough that everyone can hear one of them mentioning his astonishment that there is a woman. They create a pretext for Hoshi to come to the surface. She agrees even though everyone that the Enterprise sees on Aris seems to be male.

MACOs

Hoshi (Linda Park) dressed for the evening

A pair of MACOs accompany Hoshi, and it becomes clear that they are a gay couple. Friends of hers, they compliment her on her choice of attire for the evening. It’s confirmed that Frank Todd will be one of the MACOs going to the surface (Frank also shows up in Shell Shock and in the E² stories), as will his boss, Major Dawson (Dawson is also a part of Shell Shock and is the replacement for Jay Hayes).

A visit to the planet confirms that everyone is male. Milit, an Arisian, tells the landing party (in addition to Hoshi, Corporal Todd and Major Dawson, Travis Mayweather, Jonathan Archer and Malcolm Reed are present) that, long ago, the men of his species researched how to decrease gestation until eventually they could accomplish all of it without women. Once accomplished, they allowed all of the women to die out and only cloned males. Hoshi realizes, uncomfortably, that she is the only woman on the entire planet.

Pretext

Hieroglyphics at mesa pintada

Then she asks to see hieroglyphics, which were the pretext for getting her to the surface. So Todd and an Arisian, Lio, accompany her to where the hieroglyphics supposedly are. Todd and Hoshi are overcome and her hormones are extracted via syringe. However, Lio and his cohorts also inject her and Corporal Todd with something else.

By the time Hoshi returns to the ship, she is suddenly irresistible to all of the men on board (and a few women as well), but not Corporal Todd as his preference doesn’t go that way. Harassed and scared, even the captain gets in on bothering her, leering at her on the Bridge as various other male crew members make all sorts of passes at her until the Arisians can make things right again.

Story Postings

Rating

The story has a K rating.

Upshot

I played the story for humor. While it’s still funny, seven years of hindsight give me another perspective. In a lot of ways, it’s kind of creepy, the way that everyone is throwing themselves at her. The character was in very real danger of sexual assault. If I were writing the story today, I would probably amp up the fear more, and downplay more of the humor.

Sep

2012

Recurrent Themes – Femmes Fatales

Femme fatales can really make a story take off.

A lot of my Star Trek fanfiction writing contains recurrent themes, characters and situations. Here is an effort to put some of that together and make some sense of it all.

Background for Femmes Fatales

Femme fatales are a fairly classic archetype. It’s the bad girl, the sexy girl and, often, the dangerous one.

Appearances

Empress Hoshi Sato

The Empress is, of course, canon. But the second mirror universe Enterprise story ends with the beginning of her power grab. It doesn’t tell you whether she was successful and, if she was, what happened next.

Empress Hoshi

In Reversal, the Empress’s power is well-established and has been consolidated. Doug offhandedly tells Lili that the Empress took about a year or so to get it all together and, in the meantime, had a child as well. That child turns out to be Jun Daniels Sato.

But the Empress is dissatisfied (and sexually voracious). She is looking for younger siblings for Jun. She understands Machiavelli enough to know that she needs a multitude of potential successors in order to keep herself in power (and healthy) as long as possible. Plus she needs to keep producing heirs as long as possible for, if a faction prefers her youngest child, that faction might just wait until the youngest one’s age of majority before becoming a physical threat to her. It’s a chance, but she’s got to take it.

Pamela Hudson

The second femme fatale I wrote was Pamela.

Pamela Hudson

Pamela is as intelligent as Hoshi (if not more so) but, ultimately, she turns out to not be ruthless. Instead, her motivations are her own damaged past and her hopes for the future. For Pamela, finding love brings her full circle and gives her what she truly needs. She is able to hang up the femme fatale act and enjoy life.

Marisol Castillo

Marisol, on the other hand, is not motivated by anything positive whatsoever. As a much more classic femme fatale, Marisol is downright hazardous.

Marisol Castillo

She is an assassin and a blackmailer, and treats Borin Yarin badly enough that she pays the ultimate price for her ruthlessness.

Upshot

Two of my main femme fatales are doctors. Perhaps there is something to that, the feeling that, when other characters are vulnerable, a femme fatale can do the most damage. The trick, I feel, is to write the archetype without writing a cliché.

Aug

2012

Review – Coveted Commodity

Coveted commodity?

Background

I originally wrote Coveted Commodity as a response to a Trek BBS challenge about a new day dawning. I decided to put a mirror universe spin on it, and so I went with the mirror Travis making a turning point type of decision in his life.

Story Highlights

Mirror Travis

The tale begins with Travis Mayweather sitting in Sick Bay, waiting for … something. The Derellian bat makes another appearance; its loud shriek causes Travis to unsheathe his sidearm, “ready to shoot that damned bat”. But who or what is Travis waiting for?

The exposition brings it together, that he is waiting on Empress Hoshi. She is pregnant with his child. And there are complications.

For people in the mirror universe, particularly men, signs of weakness are not only degrading, they’re downright dangerous. Hence what is happening to Travis’s son could not only harm the child at that time and later, it could also harm Travis’s own standing.

Plus, this is not the Empress’s first child. That honor is reserved for Jun Daniels Sato. This is, instead, Hoshi’s sixth.

Travis begins the story indifferent as to outcomes. But he becomes mightily interested once it becomes clear that the fetus has issues. Furthermore, Doctor Morgan gives him a choice – allow the surgery (the fetus has a hole in his heart that must be repaired in utero), but also allow the doctor to kill off Hoshi. The doctor’s tempting offer is a corker – end Hoshi’s reign of terror, but also kill off your own son; kill off your son due to inaction on your part; or allow the surgery and allow Hoshi to live.

Travis’s Choice

Travis chooses the latter option. His new day dawning is that he decides he wants to be a father. This is in keeping with the way I have written mirror universe men. The way I write them, they are violent but they are also good fathers. They want their children to survive, and will do anything to assure that (including violence). Hence Travis’s sole option is to permit the surgery but not allow the doctor to kill (or fail to resuscitate) Hoshi on the table.

In Temper, it is revealed that the choice works for the child (Izo) but Travis is not allowed to enjoy the fruits of his choice. Time is somewhat incoherent in Temper, but the events occur after the surgery and, in the alternate timelines and in the restored proper timeline, Travis meets his end.

Story Postings

Rating

Although the story does have some adult elements (Hoshi is a woman with children from multiple fathers), the rating is K.

Upshot

I think execution was pretty good on this one. Once again, much like in First Born, a mirror child’s life hangs in the balance, and the father must make the right choice so that the child may survive.

Aug

2012

Portrait of a Character – Hoshi Sato

Origins

Hoshi Sato

This is a canon character, of course. Hoshi Sato (her name, literally, means “at home in the stars”) is the Communications Officer on the NX-01, with the rank of Ensign, which she retains throughout the entire run of the series. Also according to canon, she eventually rises to the rank of Lieutenant Commander. This is a rank that I, semi-incorrectly, use interchangeably with the rank of Lieutenant. She also marries a man named Takashi Kimura. In the canon E² story, she names her two children Toru and Yoshiko. I go with those as being the names of her prime timeline children as well.

Hoshi is also, in canon, extremely intelligent (probably a linguistic genius) but, at least in the first two seasons in particular, is a bit insecure. She is the most likely to jump if the ship is under attack or bumped. She is also likely to doubt her own obvious abilities.

Portrayal

As in canon, this character is portrayed by actress Linda Park.

Personality

In addition to her canon quirks, I tend to write her as still being a bit more tentative, even after the Xindi War. In There’s Something About Hoshi, she is encouraged by the captain to stretch a bit. However, the reaction there proves to be far too much for her, and she balks a bit.

In Together, she reveals a playful and sexy side but, in the end, chooses career over romance, failing to realize that Tripp is truly passionate about her.

Hoshi on the Bluebird

She’s also caring. As Malcolm‘s First Officer on the Bluebird, she’s comforting when he receives the news in Equinox. She also defiantly says she will take the fall if there’s any real flak from the diverting of the ship to Lafa II instead of heading straight to the Klingon Neutral Zone, as planned. However, she plans her retirement at a young age, as she is seeing her children grow up without her, and fears she is missing out.

Relationships

As I write her, she has four main relationships, including her canon marriage, which I acknowledge in Equinox, Flight of the Bluebird, A Hazy Shade and There’s Something Else About Hoshi.

Sekar Khan

In the E² scenario, she ends up, in both iterations, with the Quartermaster, Chandrasekar Khan. In canon, there is no name for her husband, so there is room to be creative in this area. Sekar is gentle and giving, but also keeps her from some of the worst of what’s out there. While he is no warrior, he intercepts problems and does his best to make her life easier.

Takashi Kimura

Hoshi’s canon husband is never on screen. I have really only written them as long-term marrieds, and never at the start of their courting. That could potentially develop into a later project.

Ted Stone

In There’s Something About Hoshi, she laments about having settled during the E² situation. For her, Ted seems to be another form of settling. This is because she sees him as being almost, but not quite, romantic. It’s as if he keeps missing his marks. When she is injected with a compound intended to make her irresistible, he is one of the few men who does not bother her, and is the only one of those who is heterosexual. He explains that the compound didn’t seem to work on him, as he was already there.

Tripp Tucker

Later Hoshi

They are forcibly paired up in Together, but they are the only couple who, truly, start off in a non-hostile manner. Instead, they vow to “make the most of it”. The dance – literally – between them moves from fooling around to, eventually, a declaration of love on Tripp’s part, which Hoshi does not reciprocate. Unknowingly and unintentionally, she breaks his heart in her efforts to stay on the ship and remain able to work with everyone, including him and, presumably, T’Pol, his ex.

She is thoroughly unaware that he is still interested, even as they are heading into the time of the canon These Are the Voyages episode. Instead, she agrees to a date with José Torres. However, she might have a little residual jealousy, as I depict in Broken Seal. An anomaly hit briefly impairs her judgment, and she stages an elaborate prank against Commander Tucker. But it’s possible that some of that stems from Tucker’s attempt to reconcile with T’Pol, an attempt that, in keeping with canon, fails.

Theme Music

In Together, she has a theme of her own, Bette Midler’s Do You Wanna Dance? and one which she shares with Tripp, Joe Jackson’s Kinda Kute.

Mirror Universe

Because I write so much about the Empress Hoshi Sato, her mirror counterpart gets a separate blog post.

Quote

“Well, I suppose if I had a dinosaur, I’d sleep better, too.”

Upshot

The quintessential young career woman, Hoshi Sato, in some ways, was not taken far enough in the series, I feel. In part this is because this character lost screen time, in favor of Tucker and T’Pol. But there were ways that the character could have stretched more. I hope to get a chance to write some more about Hoshi, and stretch her in my own way.

Jun

2012

Review – Harvest

Harvest is one of those stories which starts off as minimal. But then context gives it meaning.

Background

Lili has to, at some point, join the NX-01. She is more or less drafted during the Star Trek: Enterprise canon Xindi war. She is to replace steward Preston Jennings. Lili also replaces an unnamed sous-chef and an equally unnamed pastry chef. Non-combat personnel really need to go.

I had already showed her being drafted in Voracious. Hence this would be a scene that would take place not too much later.

There were hints about this story, too, in He Stays a Stranger, where a far more mature Malcolm and Lili, in a shared dream, recall their first meeting –

[They] saw the day they had first met, a day near the start of the Xindi War, when Captain Jonathan Archer had brought a new sous-chef onto the NX-01 and introduced her to the senior staff as she served a Harvest Salad, her specialty from her old restaurant, Voracious. They shook hands and looked in each other’s eyes then, too, and Malcolm remembered he had thought that her eyes and hair were pretty and she had a lovely smile, and Lili remembered that she had thought he seemed very intelligent and well-mannered, not to mention a little cute.

The Set Up

Harvest Salad

For a new sous-chef on a starship, her first day had to involve making a meal. I also made sure to have the meal coincide with Major Jay Hayes‘s first day as well. That way, there could be the canon tension between him and Reed as an underlying part of the story.

Tripp Tucker‘s very recent bereavement was also part of the tale. As Lili is a chef, I also wanted to give a canon shout out to Hoshi‘s canon experimentation with cooking in the Singularity episode.

The meal is a Harvest Salad, one of Lili’s specialties.

The Meal

The captain and the senior staff wait as the chef and the new sous-chef are a bit late. Hence the captain makes use of the time to introduce the new MACO CO, as it’s also his first day. So there’s already a bit of tension between Hayes and Reed by the time Chef Slocum and Lili walk in.

Lili is nervous meeting new people and starting a new job. She fusses over the placement of the flatware. Then she forgets she’s still holding a teacup when she comes over for introductions. She drops it twice – once, when Phlox grins at her too widely. The second time is when she and Malcolm are chatting.

Because the salad contains various fruits and nuts, it can symbolize some of the disparate elements that are coming together. Lili spends some of this time asking various senior staffers what some of their favorite foods are. And she promises to give them portions with extras of their favorites. Malcolm’s canon love of pineapple, and Tripp’s canon love of pecan pie, both come out. Jay Hayes reveals a preference for blueberries. However, I don’t show Captain Archer’s preference for strawberries until Protocols.

Story Postings

Rating

The story is rated K.

Upshot

I like how it turned out; plus people liked it. The idea of Lili giving the senior staff a little taste (quite literally) of home, and promising to provide a little bit of comfort right at the start of the canon Star Trek: Enterprise Xindi war was an irresistible premise.

Jun

2012

Review – Reversal

Reversal, a Fanfiction Revival

Reversal got its name on a lark. I hadn’t written Star Trek: Enterprise fanfiction in quite a while.

So I was, in all honesty, spinning it out from nothing. I had nearly no plan for the story, no outline and at first I wasn’t even saving it to Word. And so, when I was saving the first post, the topic had to have a name. On an impulse, I named it Reversal.

And the title proved to be perfect.

Origins

Reversal

I had a dream. No, not like Martin Luther King!

It was a rather earthy dream, truth be told. And it was about a character on Enterprise. And I woke up, thinking – there’s a story there.

From such beginnings, I developed an idea. The septum between the Prime Universe and the Mirror would be thinner at one particular point in the galaxy. This was in parallel to the reality of the Earth’s crust. It is not uniform. Hence I wanted the separation to not be of uniform thickness/difficulty in crossing.

Bare Bones Story Line

The idea was for it to be possible to cross the boundary between the Prime Universe and the mirror through the dream state. The concept was that, for a certain species, the connections would be normal. And then, as the NX-01 Enterprise on our side, and the ISS Defiant on the other, enter that same system, the psionically charged atmosphere would cause two people to simultaneously start to pick up on that same wavelength. But for them, it would be a romance.

It starts off with a bang. The first line is – It didn’t hurt. I love this opening line, as the reader should immediately be thinking – what? What didn’t hurt? Was it supposed to? And then the story moves along from there. The first dream is a coupling dream, where a fantasy plays out in what seems to be a normal Freudian fashion. People kiss, their clothes fly away and of course more happens. It’s pitch black. They remain silent, although they can hear each other breathing. But then the heroine – Lili O’Day – breaks the spell by incoherently calling out loud.

And so we’re off to the races, for the next two scenes shift from her and her roommate in our universe to her fellow and his roommate – a woman – in the mirror. We know Lili’s name, but not the guy’s. He’s just referred to – and rather pejoratively at that – as the old man. His name is kept out of the first few chapters as he is a counterpart to a canon character.

Clues abound and some come from the characters’ speaking whereas others come from Lili talking in her sleep or references from the twin surfaces. Something is going on, in both universes. There is more happening than just the dreams.

Symbolism

From the beginning, I wanted the story to have symbolic meanings. For the title, the first half of the word, rêve, is French for dream. This also works as the second half symbolizes waking life. Plus there is the word itself and its connotations of reinvention and retrograde changes.

Oranges

Other symbols abound. After the first dream, Lili – who is the sous-chef on the Enterprise – is ordered to make every meal with oranges for one day. When she goes to sleep that night, she reeks of oranges, and it’s the first word that her fellow says to her. So, not only can he smell her, but there is also what oranges kind of mean. They are of course different from apples (and apples connote temptation and the fall from purity). Oranges, I felt would symbolize sunshine and happiness, and warmth and light.

Artist’s impression of HD 98800. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Another symbol or rather symbols is the quadruple star system. The largest star is a white giant named Lo, which should make the reader think of the phrase lo and behold. The second-largest star is a yellow medium-size star like the sun. It’s Abic (Ay-bick), a bit like abba, the Hebrew word for father. The third star is a small orange star, Fep. The smallest one is a red dwarf (yes, it’s a shout out to that TV series) called Ub. Hoshi herself explains that there are value judgments behind the names – Lo is for goodness, Abic is secondary, Fep is small and Ub is sinister.

Subject Matter

The five main books in the In Between Days series are each about one of the five main characters (Pamela Hudson is essentially the sixth main character, but she isn’t connected with any book as well as she is with Intolerance). Reversal is, essentially, about Lili. From learning about the fire that killed her parents, to getting to know her as a chef, a lover and a friend, to even peeking at her finances, Lili is all over most of the pages, particularly in the dream sequences and the Prime Universe scenes. This is Lili’s tale.

Music

This story is less musically-driven than others but it does have a few melodic moments. Lili’s theme song is Roy Orbison’s Sweet Dreams Baby. Her fellow’s song is Robbie Williams’s Feel.

Story Postings

Rating

The story is rated T/M although there is a K+/T version on Fanfiction.net.

Upshot

Reversal is not the best story I have ever written. It drags at the end, as I was reluctant to give it up. But it gets the series off splendidly and, truly, almost everything else springs from it in one way or another (albeit sometimes indirectly). I continually mine it for backstory tales of Lili and her fellow and their many supporting cast members, like Chip Masterson, Leonora Digiorno, Melissa Madden, Pamela Hudson, Andrew Miller, Brian Delacroix and Jun Daniels Sato and many others.

It’s just the gift that keeps on giving; it’s so incredibly dense with plot. I am grateful to have such a pond to fish in. Apparently readers have agreed; on various platforms, it has racked up over 500,000 total reads.

Jun

2012

Inspiration – Sexism

Sexism

It may seem like an odd thing to get inspiration from. But I have! Perhaps better words are urgency, or compulsion. And so I write about my experiences of sexism in my life. And then I take them to extremes.

Background

Sexism hates you (Photo credit: rrho)

As a child of the later sixties (I remember 1967, although very little about why it and 1968 and 1969 were truly important) and seventies, I well recall the flap about women calling themselves Ms. Or about whether it was appropriate for my female schoolteachers to wear slacks. Of course no one kept their maiden names then – what are you, nuts?

I practiced law in the 1980s. And I was repeatedly confused for the court reporter. This was despite wearing suits and carrying large briefcases. When I wed in 1992 (and hyphenated my surname), a male friend pulled me aside and asked me, “Are you sure your fiancé will allow that?”

What year is it, anyway?

Storytelling

I first addressed the ultimate price of sexism in a story called There’s Something About Hoshi. The execution was not very good (I was very new to Star Trek fan fiction writing then). I played a lot of it or comedy. However, the essence of the story was, I think, abundantly clear. If you blame women for all of your problems, you might want to get rid of them all. And if you do, be careful what you wish for.

I recently updated the story a bit. This was mainly to accommodate some names that show up in the E² stories. And I realized how telling I think it still is. It was also written, at the time, to address complaints I saw about slash fiction. This is where people objected to it on its face. It was, I felt and still feel, thinly veiled homophobia. This was in contrast to reviewing and appreciating it on its merits. It’s one thing to object to characters undergoing changes beyond recognition (or getting into pairings in ways that make no sense). It’s another thing to think that no one in the Trek Universe will ever, ever love someone of the same gender.

The symbolic slash, used to separate the two names in a romantic pairing, from which slash fiction takes its name. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Of course they will. Hell, in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, they already have. And now they have in Star Trek: Discovery as well.

The Daranaeans

The sexism angle for story-telling truly hit its stride with The Cure is Worse Than the Disease. In that story, it becomes clear that Daranaean women have few rights. Even the top caste (Prime Wives) don’t get too much meaningful education. They are appeased with trinkets.

Take Back the Night amps up the sexism to the extreme, as a third caste female is killed for refusing to take part in sexual relations. This is a thing that, in The Cure, is illegal for her to do.

After a couple of more family-oriented Daranaean stories, I was ready to tackle sexism in that society again, and presented Debate. What’s the debate about? Whether Prime Wives will be granted the right to vote.

Finally, more Daranaean sexism comes full circle, and the reader can see a bit of why at least some of the women stay – in Flight of the Bluebird. In Bluebird, things are less black and white. And I wanted to acknowledge that the men might be a part of the society finally reforming itself.

My plans are to eventually begin to cross over into other canon series. Hence the reader can expect to see the TOS Enterprise encountering Daranaeans in some fashion.

There is also the possibility of tackling sexism at some point in some other context. This is possibly under the guise of time travel.

Upshot

In the tradition of Trek stories begin about contemporary social issues, under the guise of science fiction, I like to comment on any number of societal problems. But it’s sexism that, I think, speaks to me the most.

Apr

2012

Progress Report – April 2012

April 2012 Posted Works

April 2012 was another busy month.

I continued spinning out Reversal on Star Trek Logs.

I added Broken Seal to Trek United, as I hadn’t put anything out there in a while. Also, I updated There’s Something About Hoshi and posted it to Star Trek Logs. In addition, I started spinning out Together on Trek BBS and Ohio on Ad Astra. I also created The Facts on Ad Astra and The Rite on Star Trek Logs as a response to its first-ever prompt (I am running the prompts there, at least for now). Both of the latter two were ficlets brought about in order to flesh out some of the scenes in Fortune.

WIP Corner

I keep writing the E² stories. And I continue to find points to stress or loose ends to tie up and some of those will end up in the fourth book, rather than the third one in that series. I think this will make it a better and more balanced series overall.

Plus I worked a lot on a Daranaean story called Flight of the Bluebird. I didn’t have as coherent a plan for it as I should have, but Kirok of L’Stok wants to put the Daranaean stories onto Issuu. Hence I had to get cracking, so the E² stories were set aside in favor of finishing up Bluebird.

At this point, I also have my response to the Ad Astra prompt about sacrifices. The title is Equinox. It covers several scenes left out of Fortune.

Prep Work

I spent a lot of time making the website a lot more coherent and getting more of the In Between Days stories into correct chronological order.

This Month’s Productivity Killers

Looking for work continues to cramp my writing style, which I suppose is amusing but is also a tad serious. It can be difficult to get inspiration if you’re worried about continuing income.

Ad Astra’s forums were also down for a bit. That’s generally better for productivity for me, but I do miss the interactions, not to mention the prompts.

January 2013 Posted Works

Milestones

WIP Corner

Prep Work

This Month’s Productivity Killers

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November 2012 Posted Works

Milestones

WIP Corner

Prep Work

This Month’s Productivity Killers

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Review – There’s Something About Hoshi

Background

Plot

MACOs

Pretext

Story Postings

Rating

Upshot

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Recurrent Themes – Femmes Fatales

Background for Femmes Fatales

Appearances

Empress Hoshi Sato

Pamela Hudson

Marisol Castillo

Upshot

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Review – Coveted Commodity

Background

Story Highlights

Travis’s Choice

Story Postings

Rating

Upshot

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Portrait of a Character – Hoshi Sato

Origins

Portrayal

Personality

Relationships

Sekar Khan

Takashi Kimura

Ted Stone

Tripp Tucker

Theme Music

Mirror Universe

Quote

Upshot

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Review – Harvest

Background

The Set Up

The Meal

Story Postings

Rating

Upshot

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Reversal, a Fanfiction Revival

Origins

Bare Bones Story Line

Symbolism

Subject Matter

Music

Story Postings

Rating

Upshot

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Sexism

Background

Storytelling