A part of it is the visual appeal. There is no question that they are a pretty presentation on any plate. But then I started putting them into all sorts of places in my fiction.
They just have the right sort of appeal as a food that many people enjoy and can relate to. Everybody knows what a blueberry looks like, and what it tastes like. It is a way for space adventures to gain some down to Earth appeal.
Lili gets this information out of Jay when she first meets him during the events of Harvest. As a result, blueberries figure thematically throughout the time they know one another. With Dave, she learns of his preference during The Way to a Man’s Heart. By making Dave a blueberry pie, it reminds her of Jay.
During the E2 stories, Lili is constantly putting the blueberry jam jar in front of Jay. He sometimes notices, sometimes he doesn’t. This detail thereby serves as a subtle reminder of how much she likes him. She is paying attention, even to that. In addition, in Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, she feeds him his last meal before he goes to rescue Hoshi (and, in Star Trek: Enterprise canon, he’s killed). The last thing he eats is a handful of blueberries that Lili gives him, right before she hugs him and tells him to be careful.
Tristan Curtis has problems in all timelines and universes, it seems.
Origins
Tristan originally arrived in Temper (I named him Craig, and then I wanted that first name for Craig Willets), and in the Mirror Universe, as a garden-variety bad guy.
I like this smart, likable comedic actor who can also play sensitive. Also, I think it’d be a kick to see him in a not so nice role.
Further, I like the idea of someone who seems harmless to be a Security crewman and, inevitably, a pretty awful guy in some scenarios.
Personality
Prickly and a bit off, Tristan is quite the outsider. In the E2 stories, he is out of the genetics sweepstakes in the first kick back in time. He and Daniel Chang take out their frustrations in some horrible ways, particularly in The Three of Us. Because Tristan is something of a follower, it’s entirely possible that he was just following what Dan or Gary Hodgkins was doing. In Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, he understands what a horrible person he was. Given a chance to do better, he takes it.
In the prime timeline, he plays cards with Malcolm, Hoshi, and Sophie Creighton, in Cobbled Together, and hits on Sophie. In Shell Shock, he’s one of the accused. Much of the time, he works with Gary Hodgkins, and the two are friends.
Relationships
Sandra Sloane
During the second kick back in time, Sandra is somewhat bereft, as Brooks Haynem has died young. Because Tristan is looking for a better life for himself, he goes after Sandra, although she is often a rather mean person. They have a daughter who they name Penny (which is of course a shout-out to Galecki’s series, The Big Bang Theory). However, before Sandra’s death, they separate. After her death, it’s unclear whether Tristan gets into another relationship, although he probably does not, given the dearth of women on board.
In the alternate timelines set up in Temper, they die when José Torres crashes the ISS Luna into Malcolm‘s ship, the USS Bluebird. When the prime timeline is restored, they are executed for failing to prevent Chip Masterson from escaping to the surface of Lafa II with Lucy Stone and his children with the Empress, Takara and Takeo.
Quote
“We’re gonna die down here, Mayweather. Don’t shoot! We’re done here.”
Upshot
Even gentle-looking people can be monsters. They can be deadly, and they can be abusive. Tristan shows that. He has few chances, in my fiction, to be a good guy. I don’t think I’ll change that. I like him wicked.
Miva is more important than I originally planned her to be.
Origins
Miva, a Calafan, started off as the criminal, Baden’s, nighttime lover, in Reversal in my Star Trek fan fiction. She was a doctor, although I did not have a handle on the type of doctor she would be. By the time of Together, I needed for Lili to have an obstetrician, so that decided her specialty. Her name, a reference to Steven Culp‘s character on JAG (Clayton Webb), means clay.
I like the actress’s looks but also that she ages (as we all do) yet doesn’t seem to be afraid to show at least a limited version of that in public.
Personality
Friendly and gregarious, Miva is a pleasant, positive person to be around. She’s also got a heavy Lafa V accent, which sounds a lot like an Irish brogue.
She and Lili become fast friends and she even stands up for Lili and Doug at their wedding, in A Kind of Blue. By the time of Fortune, she’s looking for a new nighttime lover, and sets her sights on Jonathan Archer. In A Hazy Shade, they’re an old married couple.
Relationships
Baden
Miva is only shown with him at the end of his life, as he dies in a crossfire when Doug, Lili, both versions of Jennifer and both versions of Tripp defeat Polloria, in Reversal. She gives him some depth and, I feel, makes him at least a bit of a sympathetic character, certainly less evil than Polloria.
Darywev
Miva’s first husband is never seen. She refers to him when she first meets (and hits on) Jonathan, in Fortune. The Calafan view of love and loyalty is somewhat troubling to Jonathan, but he does join her, at least that evening, for a dream. As to what happens, I leave that to the reader’s imagination.
Jonathan Archer
Upon Darywev’s death, Jonathan thinks he should stay away as that would be more respectful, but Miva insists on having him close by. He does move slowly and cautiously, and waits a good year before making his move. During the time of Flight of the Bluebird, he’s still a single man, pursued by the tabloids.
Mirror Universe
Mirror Miva (Julianne Moore)
In the Mirror Universe, Miva is the mirror Baden’s nighttime lover, and she is also a doctor. However, during the temporal dislocations in Temper, she becomes a slave of the Terran Empire, and works as a field hand, picking tomatoes at a farm on Mimas.
Once the prime timeline is restored, it is presumed that the mirror Miva is restored to whatever her earlier life was really like. As a physician, she would probably have a better life than most women. And as a non-human, so long as the Terran Empire remained distant, she could potentially get better treatment than most human women with her level of education and wealth.
Quote
“Allow me to explain what is going on here, although we all know what is happening. I just feel it might help to get the message across to you both. Your endowment is greater than most human males. Your wife is the same size or smaller than most human females, despite having had one child already. In order to accommodate your dimensions, your wife has had an operation to clear space. Otherwise, your parts do not fit, and you can injure her – which has happened in the past. For both of her pregnancies, I have reversed the operation so that your children could develop properly. You were all right with Jeremiah, and you waited. Why are you unable to wait when it comes to your second child?”
Upshot
I’d like to showcase her marriage to Jonathan Archer some more, and not just in the very twilight of their lives. Readers will see her again.
Eriecho needed a benefactor in Star Trek fanfiction, a person who could care for her as a child. Her first caregiver is Saddik, who essentially becomes her adoptive father. Like Eriecho, Saddik is a product of the Kelvin timeline, where Vulcan is no more.
He is a falsely accused prisoner at Canamar, with no hope of release until the destruction of Vulcan spurs the Federation to look for Vulcans anywhere they may be in the galaxy. This ends up including prisons.
Portrayal
Saddik (image of Mandy Patinkin is for educational purposes only)
For a character whose name comes from the Hebrew word for righteous, but is actually an ex-convict, this actor fits well.
This photo manipulation was done by the terrific ArtItUp! on the STPMA.
Personality
When the reader first sees Saddik, he’s wondering what to do about Pon Farr, as H’Shema is dead and the only other female at Canamar is Eriecho. It feels odd to him (as it should to the reader), but he’s going to have some very real needs. He doesn’t want to fulfill Pon Farr with her, but he recognizes that he might not have much choice when the time comes. But they escape from this fate when the two Vulcans are released from prison and brought to one of the many sanctuaries set up for Vulcans by the Federation. The idea is to protect people who have essentially, overnight, become a sentient endangered species.
Saddik takes it all in stride. Things are far better than they had been at Canamar, so he’s not one to complain. All he really wants is to have his own mate and for Eriecho to have one as well. But he won’t complain about the sanctuary. His life has improved in the extreme. He’s not about to upset the apple cart.
Relationships
H’Shema
This elderly Suliban woman was the only other female in Canamar Prison, and helped to care for Eriecho. The three of them lived as an approximation of a family unit, and H’Shema assisted Saddik during his bouts of Pon Farr. Did they love each other? Eriecho clearly loved H’Shema like a mother. I’m not so sure about how Saddik felt about H’Shema, although he was certainly grateful for her existence, her compassion and her resourcefulness. In Release, he does mourn her a bit, in his own way.
Valeris
In Recessive, as Eriecho is bonding with Sollastek, Saddik looks around at the various single women at the sanctuary. He’s interested in all of them, but the one who really catches his eye is this much younger Pon Farr comforter who has recently been transferred from another sanctuary. As a fellow misfit, she and Saddik have that in common. So as that story ends, the two of them are only beginning to get to know one another.
Mirror Universe
Mirror Saddik
There aren’t any impediments to Saddik existing in the Mirror Universe (or even in the prime timeline, for that matter).
He would very likely not be a prisoner and would probably live a more or less normal Vulcan life. In fact, he could very well be one of the few of my characters whose lives would be better in the Mirror Universe than in the prime universe.
Quote
“She is my daughter.”
Upshot
So for a character who starts off as a bit of a horny Vulcan, he turned into someone who could be Eriecho’s true father. He cares for her and listens to her problems, and helps to shield her from the worst of the disapproving glares and statements of the Vulcan matrons who also live at the sanctuary. He’s had to step up again and again, and he has, even if he’s a little skeptical of his own abilities.
Witannen were a fun creation. Back when I was writing a non-Star Trek time travel series, I had an idea for an alien who would be helping the group.
She would be a member of the first species ever to make contact with humans, and her name would be Otra (she didn’t get a last name until later), and she would be the girlfriend of the leader of the group, the rather non-charismatic Levi Cavendish. She was supposed to be a bit out of proportion to humans, in that she’d have longer legs than we normally do. Otra would also be a light lavender color.
Things have changed
About the only thing she really had which transferred over to what became the Witannen (Wit-ah-nin) is that her hair would be replaced with green vines that would move independently of her. She would be unable to control the vines, and they would be in some sort of a symbiotic relationship with her. The species did not have a name, but their first contact had been preceded by an odd form of prepping the Earth for their arrival – they had sent broadcasts for a good year beforehand, including a popular soap opera. Hence when the aliens arrived in that older series, they were more or less known to humans, and were famous.
Then the species was added to my Star Trek fan fiction, and it got even more interesting.
What Happened to the Witannen
Otra, a half-Wittanen. Drawing by SL Walker.
When I began writing Together, I wanted a villain who would be more of a business person than an actual evil being. Ferengi had already been seen in canon Enterprise, so I felt that would be a bit much, to have a second encounter with the Ferengi, without that name being known in the Starfleet database.
Hence they were out. I remembered my strange alien, so I performed some modifications on her.
First, the character in Together would not be Otra at all, who I reserved for a time travel series, Times of the HG Wells. But I really liked the idea of having the character be female, so I created Quellata (Kell-uh-tuh) instead. Quellata would be full-blooded, whereas Otra would be half-human, and so she would get a surname.
Differentiation
To differentiate between the full and half, I decided that full-blooded Witannen would have little vestigial wings. It isn’t until Multiverse II that it becomes clear that Otra just has long lines on her back, where her wings would have been.
The wings would be vestigial, far too small to propel anyone. Hence Quellata would be grounded, and the wings would be more decorative than anything else. This also made it possible for her to wear more or less recognizable clothing.
The proportions were also corrected for human sizes, so that a human actor could conceivably ‘play’ a Witannen. I also dropped the idea of a light lavender complexion, preferring to make them a little less alien in exchange for making them an easier species to picture an actor or actress playing.
Characteristics
A bit brittle, with a superiority complex, Witannen are from the Delta Quadrant. They have good reason to feel good about themselves, as they’ve had Warp Drive for centuries. This makes it easier to look down at Johnny-come-lately species like humans. Quellata refers to her human captives as slime molds, but then again, she’s nasty to everyone.
Their language divides into formal and conversational, both written and oral. Witannen writing is unknown, but their speech is a click language, much like Khoisan and Xhosa on Earth. Their species name does not have a plural, e. g. one Witannen, two Witannen. I’m not sure if I’ll give them any plurals.
Like humans and Vulcans, they are monogamous. And like Vulcans, their pregnancies last longer than ours do.
Business
A lot of them have heads for business. Apart from Quellata, Otra’s own mother, Chefra, also works in the commercial realm, as a dealer in star ship parts. Otra herself is more of a philosopher and missions specialist. An opera singer, a male named Paj Terris, is briefly mentioned in the HG Wells stories. The only other Witannen I have written so far is Adeel, a female athlete in the upcoming Barnstorming series.
The other main characteristic of Witannen is their symbiotic chavecoi (chah-vuh-COY), which evolved from being vines to being more like flowers. They can change color with mood, a fact that makes them rather inconvenient. A Witannen would make a lousy spy. The chavecoi also drink some water on occasion. Hence a character like Otra will sip tea while her chavecoi will dip into a nearby glass of water. The chavecoi are alarmed by caffeine if they accidentally taste tea or coffee, and they can become drunk if they intake alcohol. Their purpose is survival; in the event of a drought, they can photosynthesize in order to keep their host alive. Further, according to Multiverse II, they can be adversely affected by radiation, but they can be cured (as can their host) by stem cell growth accelerator.
Upshot
I loved creating them, but the best-realized character is Otra, by far. How well-realized will the others ever become? I don’t know, or maybe another character will be created, perhaps another male.
The species will return, particularly as I continue to explore the Otra-Levi dynamic, but I’m not so sure about going beyond that, as of the writing of this blog post.
Yimar has more of a life than I originally planned.
Origins
I wanted a Star Trek fanfiction character who would be kind of compelled to do certain things, even if she didn’t want to. As a child, Yimar fits the bill, particularly in Bribery and then in Reversal, where she’s forced to accept her father’s lover, Polloria, as a family member, even as she and her brother, Treve, despise Polloria and she frets for the fate of her critically ill mother, the Calafan High Priestess, Yipran.
Portrayal
Charlize Theron as Yimar (image is for educational purposes only)
Yimar, as an adult, is played by Charlize Theron. I haven’t decided who plays her as a child or a teenager.
I love this smart, beautiful, Oscar-winning actress who has been through a lot in her life.
Personality
Dutiful and intelligent, Yimar is an obedient child. But the appearance of Polloria is too much for her, and she and Treve quickly figure out the score. Yimar in particular wants to protect their mother, but she’s essentially helpless. After all, she’s just a kid.
When she becomes a teenager, she starts working as a babysitter for first Joss and then Marie Patrice and, eventually, Declan. Her existence and her willingness to work hard make it possible for Lili to return to work as the chef at Reversal. This also makes it possible for Doug to have a career again. Yimar is particularly helpful during the events of Together.
During the alternate timelines in Temper, Yimar takes on the High Priestess role (she doesn’t do this in the prime universe, in the correct timeline), and is also the leader of the Calafan government in exile. When the line is restored, she’s able to resume her regular life.
As an adult in the correct timeline, she marries and has a daughter, Yinora, who is named for Leonora Digiorno. With Yinora in the role of nighttime woman to Neil Digiorno-Madden, Yimar and her family forge a permanent connection to the Beckett-Digiorno-Madden–Reed clan.
Relationships
Brian Delacroix
During Together, Brian and Yimar bond, as she is stuck caring for Joss and he’s sympathetic to her plight. They are also fairly close in age although she’s only sixteen, and he’s twenty-one. Her frank talk about sex does make him nervous, though.
Josh Rosen
In the Mirror Universe, Yimar and Josh meet during the events of He Stays a Stranger. As much older people who are both alone, they find each other attractive. The colony entity known as Branch Borodin confirms that they end up together.
Charlize Theron as MU Yimar (image is for educational purposes only)
In the Mirror Universe, Yimar loses her mother as Polloria’s murderous ways garner some success. But Jennifer Crossman has also named her (Yimar) to be the next High Priestess. Polloria originally believes that she will be able to control Yimar and act as a regent. She sees Yimar as her puppet.
But the headstrong teenager has other plans.
One of the mirror Yimar’s first acts is to permanently throw open the doors between the two universes. Calafans can shuttle back and forth without any further assistance. This serves as a plot point in Temper. It also allows for a mixing of the two closely-related species that had been denied for centuries.
Later, in the HG Wells stories, the reader learns Yimar is behind plans to sell Constitution-class starship plans and parts to the Terran Empire’s enemies. Because this a means of assuring some measures of protection for the Calafan people. As matters resolve with Empress Hoshi, Yimar’s main concern is, as always, for her people. She’s a good ruler, even as her system is subjugated and overrun. Plus she does her best to keep her people safe and well-fed.
Quote
He’s the cleanest human I’ve ever known.
Upshot
I really like this character but I haven’t explored her much as an adult in the prime universe. I’ll have to try to rectify that in the future.
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.
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
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.
