Lili

15
Mar
2013

Review – Penicillin

Review – Pencillin

Penicillin? Yes, of the Jewish variety.

Background

I wanted a bit of a dovetail story, where characters would behave in a manner that would prefigure the future. Furthermore, I wanted to give Jay Hayes a bit more personality. I actually had a bit of a cold and so I seized upon that idea, and wrote about what he’d be like if he had a small cold.

For Jay, who feels he needs to be in top condition all the time, a cold is a cause for secrecy. But he’s found out. A cough, and the problem is betrayed to the only other person in the hall. Fortunately for Jay, that person is Lili O’Day.

Lili promises a little Jewish penicillin to cure what ails Jay. But she extracts a promise out of him – in exchange for making chicken soup and keeping quiet about things, Jay must do one thing for her. He’s got to smile more.

The story is recalled by them at the end of the E2 stories, and, in Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, Lili remembers the event after Jay’s death.

Story Postings

Rating

The story has a K rating.

Upshot

It’s a compact little tale, but I think it packs a bit of a punch.

Lili’s Chicken Soup with Matzoh Balls Recipe

Lili's Chicken Soup with Matzoh Balls Penicillin

Lili’s Chicken Soup with Matzoh Balls

Unless she’s baking, Lili doesn’t use regular measurements, so these are more like judgment calls.

Chicken Soup

In a slow cooker, add the following –

  • 2 cups low sodium chicken broth (if substituting water, make sure to add a dash of kosher salt)
  • 2 pounds of chicken meat, boneless. Breast meat has less fat; thigh meat has more flavor. Roughly cut the meat; it doesn’t have to be perfect cubes.
  • A half a pound of carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
  • And a half a pound of celery, roughly chopped
  • A half a pound of onions, roughly chopped (Vidalias are best; white onions are fine)
  • If the slow cooker isn’t full to about an inch from the top, add plain water until it is. If you don’t have room, reduce the proportions of meat and vegetables

Cook on low slow cooker setting for a minimum of four hours.

Matzoh Balls

Combine the following in a bowl –

  • 1 Tablespoon of olive oil
  • also 1 cup of salt-free matzoh meal
  • 2 eggs or one cup of room temperature egg beaters or the equivalent
  • 1 Tablespoon of water

So if the mixture is too crumbly and dry, add more oil and water, in more or less even proportions. If it seems too loose, add a little more matzoh meal. Then mix together well. Cover and place into a refrigerator for 15 minutes.

While the mixture is cooling, heat up a small pot of salty water. Bring it to a boil and then allow to simmer. When the mixture’s time in the refrigerator is up, wet your hands and grab a handful of the mixture. A ping pong ball size is good. Shape into a ball and drop into the salted water. Bring the water back up to a boil and cook for 15 minutes, without covering.

Combining the Ingredients

Once the slow cooker is done, combine a serving (2 of the ping pong ball-sized matzoh balls and a cup of the soup) and heat them together in a microwave for 2 minutes on high. Make sure to store the matzoh balls and the soup separately, as otherwise the matzoh balls will absorb all of the liquid.

Garnish with parsley, or even curry, if you like. Serve with bread!

Posted by jespah in In Between Days series, Recipe, Review, 10 comments
05
Mar
2013

Review – Together

The Plot

Barking up the Muse Tree | Jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | Together

Together

Together begins with Doug and Lili happy. It’s a direct sequel to Reversal, and they are living their dream. The first chapter makes it abundantly clear that they are where they need to be. There are little bumps in the road, but that’s life. So far, so good.

By the time we get to the second chapter, we learn that Jenny‘s wedding will be soon. Malcolm can bring a date, so he sends a note to Pamela, inviting her. Therefore, the astute reader should also understand that this is also a direct sequel to Intolerance.

Since there are no stories without conflict, and since a relationship such as Lili and Doug’s should undergo testing, the events are set into motion. And the main event is a massive kidnapping of humans.

Coupling

The kidnapping is a chance to introduce two new original species, the Imvari and the Witannen. Furthermore, a third original species, the Zetal, get a mention but they are not seen.

Melissa & Doug

Melissa & Doug (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Ten humans are removed from the NX-01 (Lili and Doug are aboard as they are hitching a ride to Jenny and Frank‘s wedding). Because the Witannen want them to interbreed, the group consists of five men and five women, and there is a separation into couples, namely –

  • Lili and Malcolm – the idea is to play off Malcolm’s earlier attraction to Lili and also counterpoint her issues with Doug.
  • Doug and Melissa – here, Doug’s frustrations with Lili are balanced with Melissa’s bisexuality, e. g. this is an area where Leonora cannot fulfill what her partner needs.
  • Jonathan and Deborah – for him, it’s a chance to have someone to protect. For her, it’s the fulfillment of a long-term crush.
  • Tripp and Hoshi – this combination plays off their friendship and also is an answer to endless Star Trek: Enterprise fan fiction about Tucker and T’Pol.
  • Jennifer and Travis – for her, it’s appalling as she is about to be married. For him, he’s with the hottest woman on the ship. But she is so horribly damaged that it’s no fun for them at all.

This is not to mention the other couples in the story, from before, during and after the captivity. Plus, what happens with Pamela? Stay tuned.

Music Together

Music drives the story as characters come together and break apart throughout. Every major character has his or her own song, and couples share songs, too.

The story isn’t a musical, per se, but there is so much pertinent music that it practically could be.

Themes

Hence the story, in some ways, ended up an exploration of not only relationships but also of our mores as a society. What do we accept from people? Also, what do we expect them to do when the chips are down? People in the story make good decisions, and they make some terrible ones as well. Fallout does not stop just because you wish it all away, and the fights are harsh because it’s the people who love you – and know you better than anyone – who can truly hurt you if they really want to.

Story Postings

Rating

I put the rating at T, with the racier version on Ad Astra at M.

Upshot

The story goes in a bunch of different directions, and it was to tie up loose ends up and then create any number of others in order to generate more plot ideas, including the idea for Temper, a story that really doesn’t work without Together as its foundation. Furthermore, any number of other overall plot elements don’t work, or can’t work as well without it.

In many ways, it is a centerpiece story, and many other tales hang off it, either as sequels or as prequels or in conjunction with it. Aside from Reversal, people read this story more than the others, and for good reason. This is because it helps the reader to understand so much more of my overall story line. Plus, I think it’s just a good, complex tale.

I’m very proud of this one.

Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, In Between Days series, Review, 98 comments
19
Feb
2013

Review – Local Flavor

Background

Local Flavor solves a few problems for me.

First of all, the Trek BBS held a Star Trek fanfiction challenge called “Out of Uniform“. So the idea was to show people not in typical starship settings. I seized upon the opportunity to show Lili and Doug first moving to Lafa II. Hence this is the morning after the end of Reversal; Local Flavor is the very beginning of “happily ever after”.

Plot

Review – Local Flavor

Happily Ever After – Kinsale (Photo credit: Sonia Luna)

Travis flies Doug and Lili to the surface. Also, he makes a point of telling Lili that Captain Archer and Malcolm both expressed regrets at not being able to personally see her off. For the captain, it’s because he was busy with other duties. However for Malcolm, it’s because he’s beginning to realize that he cares for her. But he can’t say anything; she’s off to marry someone else. As he confides to her in Together, her life is just zooming along and away from him, and he can’t do anything to stop it.

Upon landing, they are picked up by Treve, who drives them to their new apartment, which is later seen in A Kind of Blue and The Gift. On the way, Doug asks about changing his surname. Treve reiterates that Calafans don’t have last names, so the only people on Lafa II who would care are him and Lili. Doug ends up simply declaring his new surname to be Beckett.

Barking Up the Muse Tree | jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | Local Flavor

Local Flavor

They see the apartment and then the action moves to an open-air market, where a number of Calafan delicacies are to be had, including linfep, tofflin and elekai. Even prako (procul) show up, but they are too expensive, as they have been brought to the market by Eska hunters, from Archer’s Planet (in my fan fiction, during the E2 stories, that world is called Amity). Plus the idea of the Calafans always being on the make comes out, as does Doug’s temper. Even some of the alien gesturing is explained, and the cake made at the end has a blueberry filling. Because that is a shoutout to my portrayal of Jay Hayes as loving blueberries.

Story Postings

Rating

The story is rated K.

Upshot

A lot happens in a short amount of time. Doug and Lili are exposed to Calafan society through a fire hose. And the reader, in some ways, gets that same sort of treatment. In some ways, this story is like another “elevator pitch” tale (like The Light). This is because it serves as an introduction to a lot of disparate aspects of my universe.

You can find me on .

Posted by jespah in In Between Days series, Review, 6 comments
25
Jan
2013

Inspiration – Marriage

Inspiration – Marriage

Marriage matters.

Background

I’m a married woman. And I have been so for over two decades. It was natural, to me, for my marriage to creep into my writing a bit.

Proposals

Oh, the marriage proposal! It’s an occasion for romance and solemnity, but sometimes some silliness as well. In A Kind of Blue, Lili‘s unexpected pregnancy means that Doug drops to one knee when he drops the testing stick – and then he pops the question. In Truth, Bron works hard to convince Sophra’s parents that he will provide for her and love her, and that he won’t physically hurt her, seeing as he’s a Gorn and she’s a Cardassian.

Ceremonies

Inspiration – Marriage

Worf and Jadzia‘s wedding

The E2 stories in particular show tons of weddings. Captain Archer is nearly always the officiant, and so he has to learn all sorts of ceremonies.

He conducts a Jewish wedding for Karin Bernstein and Josh Rosen, and for Shelby Pike (she’s a convert to Judaism) and Andrew Miller, during both kick backs, and conducts a Muslim ceremony for Azar Hamidi and Maryam Haroun both times as well.

Because Chandrasekar Khan is Hindu and Hoshi Sato is a lapsed Buddhist, he may have conducted some sort of combined ceremony for them as well, but neither version is shown. He also conducts a Vulcan ceremony for Tripp and T’Pol, but that is only shown for the first kick back in time and not the second.

Inspiration – Marriage

Miles and Keiko’s wedding

Cultural traditions or at least something from the Bible (often the Old Testament, and that’s only because I’m more familiar with it) are also inserted into a lot of these ceremonies. For Karin and Josh, for example, it’s the story of Ruth.

Calafan Style

In A Kind of Blue, Lili and Doug marry in the more or less traditional Calafan style. This includes not only the two of them standing up and saying vows, but their required attendants. Treve and Miva aren’t exactly Best Man and Maid of Honor. Rather, they serve to symbolize the openness of those marriages.

Inspiration – Marriage

Rom and Leeta’s wedding

In Together, when they decide to open up their marriage to Malcolm and Melissa (and, by extension, Leonora), they copy the Calafan style of doing things. That is, there is a primary daytime male-female twosome union, and a pair of nighttime lovers. One for him, one for her. This arrangement, and the Calafan tradition, can happen because of the psionic properties of the entire Lafa System. With shared dreaming that can often become steamy, married couples can have a second relationship. Hence they almost “cheat” but with far fewer consequences.

For the Calafans, the cheating aspect was eliminated by keeping the Mirror Universe Calafans on their own side of the proverbial pond. But when the Mirror teenaged High Priestess Yimar decides to throw open the door permanently (it was opened a crack in order to let Doug through to the Prime Universe), things get a bit stickier. The Calafan people initially adapt because interbreeding is impossible between Mirror and Prime Universe Calafans (although it’s possible between Mirror and Prime Universe humans). However, by the time of Richard and Eleanor Daniels‘s births, interbreeding is possible (they are both part-human from both universes, part-Vulcan, and part-Calafan from both universes). I have not yet explored how the Calafan people handle the end of this final barrier between the two universes.

Daranaean Style

Barking up the Muse Tree | Jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | Seppa | Marriage

Seppa

For Daranaeans, marriage is a commercial affair, as wives from three separate castes are purchased by their husbands. Divorce does not exist; wives are merely sold to others if found wanting. Or third caste females end up as the subjects of medical experimentation.

Seppa’s life changes when Brantus purchases her to be his third caste wife. But they love each other, and are a good match, as he is with his two other wives, Anatha and Raelia, in Flight of the Bluebird.

Seppa’s mother, Inta, dies as a result of domestic abuse, and the secondary wife, Mistra, is very nearly convicted of the murder of her unborn male fetus, in Take Back the Night. It is the Prime Wife, Dratha, who helps to get Mistra exonerated.

And in The Cure is Worse Than the Disease, the secondary wife, Libba, and the third caste wife, Cama, are not treated well at all by the Prime Wife, Thessa. The triangular dynamic works in her favor but against the two of them.

The Bedroom

There are any number of between the sheets moments for these couples. These are part of many of the stories, particularly in Together and Fortune. In You Make Me Want to Scream, Keiko Ishikawa O’Brien reveals that things with Miles are very, very good. Married people having a good time are also all over the E2 stories. This includes two instances of characters (one male, one female) losing their virginity.

Everyday Life

There’s more to marriage than weddings and sex. There are homes and families. In Pacing and The Gift, Doug works on making a home for Lili. That home is being added to in Temper. In Fortune, Malcolm realizes he needs to do something similar. However, because he has less of a mechanical inclination and isn’t around as much, he doesn’t help build the home. Whereas Doug helps build his own house, a small plot point in Together.

Children aren’t a part of every single marriage, but when they are, they are of course a huge part of any couple’s (or group’s) life.  Tumult covers some of the ways that children can change the dynamic. And older children, as in An Announcement, can change it again.

Later Years, to Death and Beyond

Marriages with longevity mean that people experience each other’s inevitable declines. In A Single Step, Zefram Cochrane and Lily Sloan Cochrane quite literally depart at death, as do Doug, Lili and Malcolm in Fortune. In Candy, Kevin O’Connor is the main caregiver for Josie (Jhasi), his critically ill wife. To honor their marriage, he takes her to renew their wedding vows. Jonathan and Miva are shown in later years in A Hazy Shade.

Gina Nolan deals with her husband, Michael’s, early death at the hands of the Breen in Hold Your Dominion. Her second marriage, to the Klingon Kittris, is shown in Wider than the Sargasso Sea.

Divorce

The E2 stories contain a few calls for divorce. Plus the captain conducts one during the first kick back in time , between Mara Brodsky and Robert Slater. The cause is adultery – hers – as there is a child who clearly is not Robert’s. And he turns out to be the son of Star Trek: Enterprise canon character Walter Woods, who she later marries. In the second kick back in time, this is avoided when Mara and Walter marry. Therefore Robert, instead, marries Ingrid Nyqvist. In Together, Lili and Doug fight bitterly and consider divorce, but ultimately decide against it, particularly to protect not only their love but also their son, Joss.

Upshot

People don’t just ride off into the sunset. And I prefer it that way. They have lives and arguments and privacy violations and sicknesses and sorrows. But they also have kindness, sexiness, togetherness and some pretty profound joys. It doesn’t have to be in the context of marriage, and sometimes it isn’t. But for the characters who do wed, I hope I’ve done their unions some justice.

Posted by jespah in Inspiration-Mechanics, 0 comments
18
Jan
2013

Review – Demotion

Review – Demotion

Demotion sets up two separate story lines.

Background

This is a story to nicely bridge between Star Trek: Enterprise canon and the beginning of both E2 kick backs in time. There was a prompt about going AWOL, so there was the opportunity. I decided to dovetail with the canon Hatchery episode.

Heroes and Villains

Review – Demotion

Corporal’s insignia

There have been so many slash stories written about Major Hayes, it’s not funny. But I have never seen him as gay, so I wanted to riff on that a bit. So I wanted see what it would be like for Hayes to be mistakenly confronted with homosexuality. Furthermore, I wanted the person doing the confronting to be nasty about it. It wouldn’t be a little question, gently asked. Instead, it would be accusatory. It would be like an inquisition. In short, I wanted it to be like Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Review – Demotion

The story opens with Corporal Daniel Chang combing his hair and otherwise getting ready for an assignation with Sandra Sloane. He’s guarding T’Pol, and he’s fine with that. But then Hayes tells him to guard her again. But Chang decides he has had enough. Ignoring Hayes’s orders, he instead goes to Sandra’s quarters. He is close to the door but hasn’t hit the chime or knocked yet.

Review – Demotion

Private’s Insignia

Hayes, nearby, calls him by name and tells him to report to the galley for KP duty as a punishment. Lili and Jennifer are walking by, and they see what’s happening, so they turn to go a different way. They come back quickly, though. It’s when they hear the sound of fabric being torn.

Story Postings

Rating

The story has a K rating.

Upshot

So it’s a quick story, with fewer than 800 words. But I feel it nicely makes my point I had to establish Chang and Sloane as problem children before either kick back in time. I think Demotion does that.

Posted by jespah in In Between Days series, Review, 12 comments
08
Jan
2013

Recurrent Themes – Performing Artists

Recurrent Themes – Performing Artists

Performing artists in Star Trek? Sure.

Background

The performing arts are canon. In Barking up the Muse Tree | Janet Gershen-Siegel | jespah | DNA | Performing ArtistsStar Trek: TOS and TNG, members of the crew put on plays and the like in amateur productions, or characters go to shows. In VOY, characters might see a show on the holodeck, or even participate.

Then in the E2 stories, there’s nothing different and exciting to do a lot of the time outside of work, so the characters think up some entertainments.

Singing

In the E2 stories, the characters play a baseball game. As a means of opening the game, and to fill in the Seventh Inning stretch, Captain Archer finds a singer. Meredith Porter is an Engineering crewman and an older woman, almost as old as Lili. For the game, she sings America the Beautiful and Take Me Out to the Ballgame.

In the Romulan War story, Soldiers’ Marriage Project, a performance is not seen, but it is referenced – pop sensation Kurt Fong and soprano Rosumund Taylor sing Ain’t No Mountain High Enough. Fong shows up again, or, rather, the team responsible for answering his fan mail, in Gainful.

Lili also sings, but she’s not a professional. In Together, she sings O Pato to Joss. Then in Temper, she sings Arroz con Leche to Tommy. In Fortune, she sings La Petite Poule Grise to Declan. And in the E2 stories, she sings Maria Elena to, of course, Maria Elena, and reprises Arroz con Leche, but sings it to the infant Valleri Rostov.

Dancing

Aside from Shelby Pike, who had been a ballerina before she joined Starfleet, no one else is a professional. However, in Together, it’s revealed that Jennifer and Frank are particularly good. In Fortune, Malcolm gives Lili dancing lessons as a wedding gift.

In the E2 stories, people dance all the time, either at weddings or at various parties. Because Jenny is paired with Aidan, the pairing isn’t quite as good, evoking the fact that she’s not with the right person. Aidan’s no dancer. He mainly just facilitates her movements. First dates and early explorations of feelings are also expressed through dance, particularly between lonely male crew members and Ikaaran women in both of the kickbacks in time.

Acting

In Wider than the Sargasso Sea, aspiring actress Gabrielle Nolan is forced to star opposite aspiring actor and archenemy Desh, who is a Breen. They act as Jane Eyre and Rochester, respectively, in a production of Jane Eyre.

Actress Alyssa McKenna is mentioned in Soldiers’ Marriage Project, but she isn’t acting. Instead, she’s serving food for a charity.

Playing a Musical Instrument

In the E2 stories, Rex Ryan entertains everyone by playing guitar. He has a somewhat limited repertoire and mainly plays songs like This Land is Your Land. However, when he gets together with Meredith, and when she is pregnant with his child, they team up. He plays and she sings Danny’s Song (although in both kickbacks, they name their son Nicholas).

Philip Digiorno is a professional violinist. In An Announcement, he’s shown as a young man, and practices a mazurka while Leonora and Alex, his two younger siblings, listen in.

Historical professional musicians are seen in the HG Wells stories on several occasions, and time traveler HD Avery is tasked with fixing a lot of musical missions, most of which have to do with assuring a musician’s death. However, he also works to assure that the Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon album is released. Other professional musicians seen in the series include Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper (JP Richardson), members of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain. Cobain and the members of Lynyrd Skynyrd have no lines, however.

Stand Up Comedy

While no one is an actual professional, Chip Masterson dreams of his moment of performing stand up in a little comedy club on Risa, where the audience is mainly composed of appreciative Orion slave girls.

Upshot

Where the characters go, sometimes entertainment follows in their wake. I know I’ll show more plays, songs and dances as more stories are written.

Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, Themes, 0 comments
21
Dec
2012

Inspiration – Exercise

How does Exercise fit in with Creation?

For the past five years, I have become much more of an exercise devotée. I had needed to lose a lot of weight and, through exercise in part, I was able to accomplish that. Hence working out has become a part of my life.

A lot of that comes in the form Naomi Watts walking exerciseof walking. And by walking around, I see things that I otherwise would not.

And that can sometimes bring on some unexpected inspiration.

Walkabout

For Boris Yarin, I grabbed his name from the Toyota Yaris. I have no particular affection for this car. It just so happened to be a name plate that I saw over and over again for a while there.

Daranaeans are mainly inspired by various dogs I’ve met in my travels.

Exercise also tends to help in terms of working out dialog. I can “hear” it in my head as I walk, and I am away from the keyboard (which means I am away from things like Facebook as well). Plus there’s music. For Pamela Hudson in particular, that character was so defined by her theme music that I received inspiration whenever I listened to Amy Winehouse’s You Know I’m No Good. I mainly listen to music when I am walking, and I would listen to that song over and over again as I was writing Intolerance and then, later, Together, as Pamela has a cameo in that book, too. It was, in many ways, like taking dictation.

Races

I don’t just walk. Sometimes, I run, and it’s was once in the context of 5K races (I ran between 9 and 12 every year until I hurt my knee). Because I was busy dealing with my pacing and timing, I usually could not work out dialog, etc.

However, the sheer act of racing has proven inspirational. I wanted one of the Digiorno-Madden-Beckett offspring to have a weight problem. So I settled on Neil Digiorno-Madden. Neil is the only one of the prime universe/prime timeline children to become a chef (Joss Reed-Hayes also becomes a chef and he even succeeds Lili and Will Slocum in that area, but he is from the first E2 temporal kick-back and is not a part of the prime timeline). Hence there can often be weight issues when you are tasting food all day long.

I also wanted Neil to be doing something about it, so he ran a 5K in Fortune. Eventually just that little story was told, in The Medal.

Upshot

I truly believe that working out and getting away from the keyboard have both helped a great deal in terms of keeping writer’s block at bay. Keep putting one foot in front of the other, and one word in front of the next and you’ll get somewhere eventually!

Posted by jespah in Inspiration-Mechanics, 1 comment
16
Nov
2012

Inspiration – Life Events

Life Events

Life events shape our existence.

Background

I don’t write Star Trek fanfiction in a vacuum. Like anyone else, life gets in the way, it meanders around or my writing does, and the two collide. For what is writing without a connection to real life events?

Dating, Love, Wedding and Marriage

My own marriage and wedding are a bit of fiction fodder, Vulcan wedding life eventsI admit it, and back into dating, too, of course. These are major life events, and the lead up to them as well. A Kind of Blue absolutely evokes the excitement of my own wedding (I was not pregnant) and also a little bit of the uncertainty about the future. You wonder if everything is going to be all right. So far, so good.

Dating in a lot of ways informs Reversal, as Lili first goes on a disastrous blind date with Brian Delacroix (as Jenny Crossman pushes away a grabby Aidan MacKenzie) and then goes on a number of memorable (literal) dream dates with Doug. Her E2 experiences with Jay Hayes and Malcolm Reed are also very date-centric.

Birth of Nephews

I have no children of my own, Human-Vulcan hybrid baby life eventsso my nephews stand in for the kids I write about. Stories such as Tumult give life to the sense of waiting around – seemingly forever – in hospital rooms. Small children are seen there, and in Together, Temper, and Fortune, among other places, including The Facts.

Life at Work

I’ve had any number of work experiences, Striking union workers life eventsmuch like anyone of my age does. In particular, the HG Wells stories evoke work and working conditions. I’ve had bosses like Carmen Calavicci. She’s a bit brassy but she gets the job done. In A Long, Long Time Ago, potential employees are put through a group interviewing process – and I have been through such interviews, too. As the series progresses and the time travelers learn to work together, that also evokes various work experiences. People do not immediately have chemistry. Sometimes you need to really try in order to make things work.

Justice and Mercy

I’ve practiced law Tribunal life events(that was a long, long time ago!), and so I’ve seen trials and I’ve been behind the scenes. I wanted Shell Shock to bring a lot of that knowledge to the fore. A pair of trials are also conducted in the E2 stories. I wanted very much for the concept of people trying to do the right thing, even if they don’t necessarily have the means or knowledge with which to do so, to be understood by the reader.

Medical Care and Crises

I have seen people who were very sickSick Bay life events and, truly, dying. Of course I don’t just witness such things and take notes for my writing or anything. I am not outside of the moment. But these things do happen, and they are, indeed, remembered. In the E2 stories, and in Shell Shock, characters emerge from comas. In the former, I overtly included the emergence. However, in the latter, I only show the aftermath.

Death

For experiences of death, and characters’ reactions thereto, I tend to rely rather heavily on Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. Her five stages of grief. In particular, these informed the Hold Your Dominion/Gina Nolan stories. Mourning is a part of Fortune, but also in Equinox, A Hazy Shade and Remembrance.

Upshot

For Star Trek to be Star Trek, there are any number of ships, aliens and whiz-bang effects. But, more importantly, there are people. And those people tend to have experiences that are a lot like our own, or at least their experiences should be similar to ours. Otherwise, it’s just a lot of ships whooshing by and a lot of explosions, and not much else. Fine in the moment, but not memorable, and certainly nothing that has survived for over four and a half decades. It’s the stories about people that survive. By placing my own experiences into my writing, I am hoping, if not for immortal stories, then at least for tales with more depth. I hope I’ve achieved a small measure of that.

Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, Inspiration-Mechanics, 0 comments
09
Nov
2012

Recurrent Themes – Medical Personnel

Recurrent Themes – Medical Personnel

Medical Personnel are a must.

Background

Barking up the Muse Tree | Janet Gershen-Siegel | jespah | DNA | Medical Personnel

Physicians, of course, are Star Trek canon and are absolutely necessary in space. After all, you can’t just grab the nearest ambulance and hotfoot it to a hospital. You have got to have a doctor on board.

I have created quite a few medical characters as I’ve been writing. I think my somewhat ambivalent feelings about medicine often come into play.

Medical Personnel Appearances

There are so many medical personnel; here they are listed by series.

In Between Days

Baden

Baden is a Calafan doctor seen in Reversal, and is a part of the conspiracy.

Blair Claymore

In Intolerance, Blair comes across as more sympathetic than any of the other visiting physicians who in the Immunology rotation. By the time of Fortune, she is Malcolm‘s CMO on the USS Bluebird. In the Mirror Universe, she is some sort of technician and is no doctor.

Pamela Hudson

Pamela makes her first appearance in Intolerance. By the time of Temper, Malcolm tells Lili Pamela (in an alternate timeline) has become the doctor, if not the person, that she was always meant to be. Pamela has more air time in her eventual relationship with the Calafan Treve, in To Wish, To Want, To Desire and The Best Things Come in Pairs.

Bernardine Keating-Fong

Bernie is the lecturer for the Immunology class. Her name helps to amp up some more of the early gender confusion in Intolerance.

Keleth

A Klingon doctor, Keleth is instrumental in fixing what’s wrong in Intolerance. Almost as importantly, he has, perhaps, the most normal and loving relationship in that entire book.

Miva

A Calafan, Miva is Lili‘s obstetrician in Together and Fortune. It is she who tells Lili that sex with Doug during pregnancy is not advisable. And it is Miva who performs the O’Day Reversal again after Lili gives birth to Declan.

Cyril Morgan

A kindly retired orthopedic surgeon, Morgan is Pamela’s uncle and is grandfather to Cindy Morgan. In Fortune, Cindy brings her friend, Jia Sulu, with her to Marie Patrice’s birthday party and therefore, at an extremely young age, Joss meets his future bride.

An Nguyen

Brittle and somewhat condescending, An could use some lessons in bedside manner. He backbites with Pamela but does offer her a place to sleep when Will and Blair commandeer her quarters. As a physician, he treats a Daranaean woman, Libba, in The Cure is Worse Than the Disease.

Will Owen

Will never actually gets to practice. In Together, Pamela reveals he hanged himself a few days after he was expelled, following the events outlined in Intolerance.

Phlox

This Star Trek Enterprise canon physician is the first to prove Doug is real, in Reversal. He finds the cure in Intolerance and treats Lili as an obstetrics patient in Together.

Mark Stone

As the last of the five classmates in the Intolerance Immunology rotation, Mark is a child of wealth and privilege, son of Emily Stone, the new envoy to the Xindi. About the only other thing about him is he is a gay man.

T’Par

A Vulcan doctor, she is instrumental in finding a cure for Doctor Keating-Fong during Intolerance.

Times of the HG Wells

Marisol Castillo

A femme fatale, Marisol gets few chances to practice medicine, although she does provide Sheilagh Bernstein with physical enhancements during Ohio.

Kingston (No First Name)

During You Mixed-Up Siciliano, he is baffled by Christopher Donnelly’s condition, not recognizing that the boy, in 1960, is infected with what would later be identified as the Ebola virus.

Sanchez (No First Name)

He is Malcolm‘s doctor and is never actually seen. Malcolm refers to him in The Point is Probably Moot, as knowing of a traditional Calafan remedy for erectile dysfunction – tofflin root tea.

Boris Yarin

Paranoid, powerful and suspicious, Boris has reason to wonder about Marisol’s intentions. Much like her, he has few chances to practice, although he also works on Sheilagh. In Where the Wind Comes Sweepin’ Down the Plain, his past is referenced, where he treated an injured Klingon rugby player, Kriz, which was how he met his wife, Darragh Stratton.

Yimiva

She is the doctor for the Calafan unit, and performs the autopsy on Anthony Parker. Ebola and stem cell growth accelerator in Parker’s blood reveals he had been an operative for the Perfectionists.

Emergence

An Nguyen

By the time of The Cure is Worse Than the Disease, An is the CMO on Erika Hernandez’s ship, the USS Columbia (NX-02). This is which is where he loses his youthful enthusiasm. This theme is taken up some more in Take Back the Night. An says he would really rather avoid the Daranaeans.

Rechal

First seen during Take Back the Night, Rechal examines the fetus the murdered Inta was carrying. Findingit was a male, Rechal informs Arnis he must conduct an investigation. In Flight of the Bluebird, he is in the Daranaean prison. But he is still helping to try to find a cure for thylacine paramyxovirus.

Trinning

First seen as a teenaged boy in Take Back the Night, and then as a slightly older boy in Temptation, Trinning doesn’t start to practice medicine until Flight of the Bluebird, when he works as a medical researcher with his unofficial assistant, Trava.

Varelle

Another Daranaean doctor, Varelle refuses to treat Libba in The Cure is Worse Than the Disease.

Interphases

Andrew Miller

Andy starts off as a science Ensign. However, in the E2 stories, it becomes obvious very quickly that more medical personnel are a must. Phlox will need help delivering babies. Andrew studies and, eventually, is Doctor Miller.

Pamela Reed-Hayes (Née Reed)

During the first kick back in time, Lili has three children. Pamela is her daughter with Malcolm, and she succeeds Phlox as the ship’s CMO.

The Mirror Universe

Baden

This Calafan doctor shows, in Reversal, that he mainly just follows orders. This is even if they are, ultimately, immoral. Unlike his Prime Universe counterpart, he actually ends up committing murder.

Miva

Seen only briefly in Reversal, the mirror Miva is really only known as the Prime Universe Baden’s nighttime lover. They met when they made psychic contact. She was, instead of meditating, trying to remember the bones of the hand. This is because she was getting ready for her examinations. Seen again in Fortune, Miva helps by setting Lucy Stone‘s broken leg and offers Chip, Tripp and Beth various odd jobs so they can pay her.

Cyril Morgan

Morgan arrives as a replacement for the canon doctor, the Denobulan Phlox.

The Mirror Morgan is ruthless and probably barely competent. In Reversal, Doug says there is a lot of complicated equipment on the Defiant. But Morgan doesn’t seem to know how to use any of it. It is unclear whether he or Phlox kills Ian Reed, and the ambiguity is carried through Paving Stones Made from Good Intentions and Coveted Commodity. It isn’t until Throwing Rocks at Looking Glass Houses where I show just how Morgan got onto the Defiant, and exactly who ordered, and who caused, Ian’s death.

Mark Stone

Some time after Morgan’s death, in The Point is Probably Moot, Mark is the Empress’s new CMO. For him, his homosexuality is something of a lifesaver, for it frees him from being tempted by her wiles. Even so, he spends some of his time fending off the overly aggressive sexual advances of the Empress Hoshi Sato.

Upshot

I seem to write a lot of monstrous medical personnel, but also a number of heroes. For every nasty Marisol Castillo, there is a romantic Keleth. For every paranoid Boris Yarin, there is a sympathetic Blair Claymore. And for each prejudiced Varelle, there is an open-minded Trinning.

Posted by jespah in Emergence series, Fan fiction, Hall of Mirrors, In Between Days series, Interphases series, Themes, Times of the HG Wells series, 0 comments
26
Oct
2012

Portrait of a Character – William Slocum

Portrait of a Character – William Slocum

William Slocum gets no love.

Origins

Portrait of a Character – William Slocum

The character is canon, but rarely seen until the abysmal finale to ENT. He is seen extremely briefly in an episode called The Catwalk and that’s about it, although he’s mentioned a few times. The character has neither a first nor a last name in canon. I selected William Slocum as the first name is homage to Jonathan Frakes’s Will Riker character (in a much older story, If You Can’t Stand the Heat, the character is named Paul Miller, and he has a nascent romance with another abandoned character, Botanist Naomi Curtis). The surname was just one that I liked.

 

Portrayal

As in canon, Chef William Slocum is played by Jonathan Frakes.

Personality

Portrait of a Character – William Slocum

Chef Slocum (Jonathan Frakes)

While I despised TATV (like any good ENT fan, I suppose), I did like the idea of Frakes as Chef. Or, at least, of someone like him. I had always figured that the Chef character would be an older man and, up until the series finale, I had thought of Chef Emeril Lagasse in that role.

In Voracious, he recruits Lili O’Day to come to the NX-01 and work in Food Service. They share some New York style cheesecake which she provides as a professional courtesy. They banter together fairly well, and the feeling should be collegial. In Harvest, he introduces her to the senior staff, including Hoshi Sato, Jay Hayes (it’s also his first day) and Malcolm Reed.

Protocols shows him as being a bit passive-aggressive in his dealings with Lili. And in The Mess, he scolds her a bit when she tries to discard the cast iron skillet, until he figures out why it’s dirty. By the time of Onions, though, Will has shown that he can sometimes be truly insensitive.

In the first three E2 stories (the first of two kicks back in time), Will is somewhat arrogant and pushy. He makes a play for Lili and she rejects him. This stuns Will. So he tells her that no one will love her (he’s wrong, of course). He ends up with Patti Socorro, the only other unclaimed woman, but he’s dissatisfied. By the time of the fourth E2 story, he’s looking for an upgrade. But he remains arrogant, and suffers a terrible end which particularly shocks Lili and, to a lesser extent, Patti.

 

Relationships

Patti Socorro

This is not really a love match despite Will’s best efforts. But Will’s best isn’t much. He simply does not want to try too hard. They never have children, and the Will of the second kick back in time never marries so, for him, both instances of E2 are reproductive dead ends.

Quote

“Now you wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute! For the most part, you’ve done nothing but act like a spoiled brat! It makes me wonder how or why they even bothered to take you in the MACOs!”

Upshot

Perhaps it’s residual resentment about TATV, but I suppose I’ve given this character more than his fair share of bad times and poor decisions.

Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, In Between Days series, Interphases series, Portrait, 20 comments