Star Trek

23
May
2014

Portrait of a Character – Phlox

Portrait of a Character – Phlox

Phlox is a great character.

Origins

This Star Trek: Enterprise canon character is one of two alien members of the NX-01‘s crew (the other is the Vulcan, T’Pol). The Denobulan species is a creation specifically for ENT.

Portrayal

As in canon, Phlox is played by John Billingsley.

Portrait of a Character - PhloxThe actor is well-cast and it’s hard to think of anyone else in the role. Much like Leonard Nimoy and Vulcans, Billingsley essential defines what it means to be a Denobulan.

Personality

Personable, cheerful, and kind, Phlox is also, at times, a bit baffled by humans. For starters, at the beginning of the series, he can’t quite figure out the idea behind pets.

Relationships

Feezal

Portrait of a Character - Phlox

Feezal

This canon relationship is with his second wife, of three. There are no canon names for other two. I’ve never written her except in the context of Phlox missing her after the Enterprise goes back in time, during E2.

Amanda Cole

Also canon, in the E2 episode, Phlox and Amanda get together, a scene that I show in both Entanglements and Everybody Knows This is Nowhere.

Mirror Universe

This character exists in canon.

Mirror Phlox

Mirror Phlox

At the end of the pair of canon ENT Mirror Universe episodes, his fate is unknown. But I figure his days are numbered. Hence, in Throwing Rocks at Looking Glass Houses, I have Empress Hoshi order his death. When Beth Cutler is given two syringes, one with the proven fast nerve toxin, tricoulamine, and the other with replicated orange juice, the Science technician knows that both shots will kill whoever receives them. But she hesitates until Hoshi tells her that she’ll be next if she takes any longer. The choice is to inject either Phlox, or Ian Reed, Malcolm‘s counterpart. With a small sympathy to her fellow Terran, Beth gives Ian the proven fast killing agent. Therefore Phlox, unfortunately, suffers at the end.

Quote

“Your mating rituals do fascinate me. Always a complicated minuet of sorts. Mind if I observe?”

Upshot

I don’t write Phlox that much, except in the context of E2 stories and Intolerance. Part of that is to pave the way for other physician characters, such as Blair Claymore, Pamela Hudson, and Cyril Morgan. It’s also because, until Reflections Down a Corridor, I wasn’t really all that comfortable writing him. He’s absent from a lot of my main timeline, and nearly all of my Mirror Universe timeline. Will he return? Yes, although many storylines shut him out completely.

Posted by jespah in Hall of Mirrors, In Between Days series, Portrait, 49 comments
20
May
2014

Review – The Best Things Come in Pairs

Review – The Best Things Come in Pairs

Pairs? Yes.

Background

They can refer to playing cards and couples, and this little story touches on both as a play on words and for a little bit of humor. In response to a Star Trek fan fiction prompt about losing, I wanted to write a story about a losing poker hand that, instead, ends up being a winner. Hence the plot.

Plot

Review – The Best Things Come in Pairs

It is maybe a year after the end of Fortune, and Treve takes Pamela home after a date. They have been going out for a good year. She has been a bit pushy about getting physical, but he has been pulling back. As of the time of Saturn Rise, they have exchanged ‘I love yous’.

This is the first time that Treve has actually gone into Pamela’s new apartment on Lafa II. She has immigrated there, partly to be near her elderly uncle, Doctor Cyril Morgan, and partly to be near Treve.

So they are a little drunk, and there are playing cards on the table. Hence Pamela suggests a game of strip poker. Since Treve has no real idea of how to play, she feigns losing and, as a result, gets her man. Treve certainly does not object to this!

Story Postings

Rating

The story has a K rating.

Upshot

So this little short story is meant to be a little silly, maybe, and a little amusing. Plus it segues rather neatly into Complications. A touch of happy ending mixed with some humor? Then sign me up.

Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, In Between Days series, Review, 8 comments
29
Apr
2014

Progress Report – April 2014

Progress Report – April 2014

April 2014 saw a lot of expansion.

Posted Works

First of all, on Wattpad, I began to introduce that readership to In Between Days, and posted a set of prequels I called Before Days. I added Concord and then began to post Conversations With Heroes.Barking up the Muse Tree | Janet Gershen-Siegel | jespah | Quill | April 2014

On the G & T Show Forums, I finished posting Intolerance. I then posted The Cure is Worse Than the Disease.

In addition, on Fanfiction.net, I posted Confidence and then hit the E2 time period and began to post Reflections Down a Corridor. I imported Confidence to Fictionpad.

Plus I added Coffee as a drabble, to Ad Astra. In response to my own prompt about innocence, I posted a story about Skrol and Tr’Dorna, Losin’ It.

Milestones

Revved Up made it to over 14,700 reads! With over 165 comments, it is now my most-reviewed story, ever. Shake Your Body, Reflections Down a Corridor and Crackerjack all exceeded 5,000 reads on one URL. A Long, Long Time Ago exceeded 10,000 combined reads. Intolerance exceeded 20,000 combined reads!

See the Stats page for individual read and review counts.

WIP Corner

I wrote some more of The Obolonk Murders, a wholly original story, and transcribed quite a bit of it into Word.

Prep Work

I finished optimizing all of the posts and pages of this blog. This was somewhat slow going as there are a lot of posts! I was also rewriting, interlinking more, updating images, retagging, and otherwise improving the older posts as much as possible.

Also, I improved the look of the site, trying new things, adding images, changing keywords, and otherwise attempting to optimize it.

I have started to move the as-yet unreleased posts to HootSuite rather than SocialOomph as there are more tracking options on the former.

This Month’s Productivity Killers

Once again, I had a ton of school work at Quinnipiac University.

The semester was winding down and so my class partner and I spent time on our final project as it was about 30% of our final grades.

You can find me on .

Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, Progress, 3 comments
18
Apr
2014

Review – An Announcement

Review – An Announcement

An announcement to the family – a big one.

Background

Barking Up The Muse Tree | jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | Norri| Red | An Announcement

Norri (Red)

This was a Star Trek fanfiction prompt about family. Rather than have Leonora come out, I decided to instead have her announce that she had met someone special. That person is Melissa Madden. Leonora is, of course, happy.

Plot

Barking Up The Muse Tree | jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | Catherine Bell as Melissa Madden (image is for educational purposes only) | An Announcement

Catherine Bell as Melissa Madden (image is for educational purposes only)

In Fortune, I had rather vaguely established how the two women had met (and then more detail is offered in Red, which was written much later), but not the aftermath.

This was a good chance to show that scene, particularly since I already had a bit of background of Norri’s father disapproving to some extent. While Dino isn’t necessarily homophobic (albeit some people read him that way), the way I see him is that he’s a bit huffy that his little girl is growing up perhaps a bit too fast. After all, her brothers, Alex and Phil, have not yet declared their love for anyone. So this statement of hers changes everything and upends his world a bit.

Hence I feel it is more that Dino is a bit blindsided by the declaration. Belinda, his wife, sets him straight, and the story ends with a promise to have Melissa over, and soon, so that she can meet the family. There is even a brief reference to her brother Phil’s violin playing, another shout out to Fortune.

Story Postings

Rating

The story is Rated K.

Upshot

In particular, to get Norri in front of more readers, I think the little story works pretty well. At some point, I’ll write their first dinner together, I imagine.

Posted by jespah in In Between Days series, Review, 5 comments
15
Apr
2014

Spotlight on Original Nonsentient Species – Perrazin

Spotlight on an Original Nonsentient Species – Perrazin

Perrazin were almost an afterthought originally.

Background

As I wrote the In Between Days series, it became necessary to create nonsentient food animals for the Calafans. Furthermore, I had already established that both Doug and Melissa enjoy hunting, partly for sport, but mainly for food. In Together, I briefly mention perrazin and described them as big, blond buffalo. By the time of Temper, I wanted to start that book with a hunting scene, so it was time to show perrazin.

Origins

Barking up the Muse Tree | jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | Highland cattle | Perrazin

Perrazin (these animals are actually Highland cattle)

When I first came up with the idea, this absolutely was what I was thinking of. These animals are actually Highland Cattle.

Imagine them with tusks and you’ve got perrazin (puh-RAH-zen).

Omnivorous and nasty, perrazin will graze and will eat olowa much of the time. But if the opportunity presents itself, they will also eat linfep. Prickly and unpredictable, they will charge at anything they find strange. And, as Doug says while hunting them with a phase bow, they find a lot of things to be strange.

They graze and hunt in packs, almost like a cross between cattle and wolves. During the hunt, it’s also revealed that they’re rather lazy hunters, preferring that a meal simply fall into their metaphoric laps. When presented with the opportunity, they can also be cannibals, a fact that shocks Melissa.

They also, according to Lili, taste like a cross between beef and pork. She jokes to Naurr, in Dear Naurr, Dear Lili, that she’s practically eating one all by herself during her pregnancy with Joss.

Upshot

Every culture and every society needs animals. Often, in canon, animals were overlooked when planets were explored. It seemed as if most places were animal-free! And that’s just not reality here, and I seriously doubt it would be the case on any planet where we find life.

I feel that there will always be diversity, and there will be animals that maybe don’t look like this, but they might fill similar niches. Viva perrazin!

Posted by jespah in In Between Days series, Spotlight, 6 comments
11
Apr
2014

Review – Half

Review – Half

Half works as a play on words.

In response to an Andorian Week on the Star Trek Logs site, I decided to do a short story on a teenaged Talla. Talla is a canon character, the daughter of Shran and Jhamel.

Plot

Barking Up The Muse Tree | jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | Shran with Talla as a young girl | Half

Shran with Talla as a young girl

In keeping with canon, I decided that the pirates from the abysmal These Are the Voyages episode would be back, and they would again be looking for the Teneebian amethyst. Furthermore, Talla is, in canon, a half-breed, and her pea green-colored skin would give that away immediately. Shran, in canon, often referred to Jonathan Archer as a ‘pink skin’.

I extrapolated this to mean that Andorian society would be accepting of this kind of casual racial prejudice. Therefore, Talla suffers persecution by her classmates, for the color of her skin. In order to try to tell them off, she claims that they still have the amethyst. This gets Shran back into trouble.

Trouble

Barking Up The Muse Tree | jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | Aenar | Shran | Jhamel | Talla | Half

Aenar and Andorian, Shran and Jhamel

Forced back into hiding, Shran bids farewell to his family and seeks refuge on Malcolm‘s ship, the USS Bluebird.

And then Malcolm, along with his crew, including Ethan Shapiro, comes up with a plan to get rid of the pirates, once and for all. Inadvertently, his solution also presents a solution for Shran, Talla, and Jhamel, and the problem of their mixed marriage fitting in, in Andorian society.

The story dovetails well with later Emergence stories, Fortune, and even the E2 timeline.

Story Postings

Rating

The story is Rated K.

Upshot

I meant the story to be a bit of fluff, and that’s about all that it is. I think I accomplished what I set out to do. However, the bar wasn’t exactly set that high.

Posted by jespah in In Between Days series, Review, 10 comments