Wesley Crusher

28
Jun
2013

Progress Report – June 2013

June 2013 I was hopping!

June 2013 Posted Works

On Ad Astra, I continued adding Barking up the Muse Tree | Janet Gershen-Siegel | jespah | Quill | June 2013 Everybody Knows This is Nowhere.

In response to my own weekly free write about secrets, I posted Overture, a Wesley Crusher story which will serve as a prequel to the upcoming Barnstorming series. I posted The Sweetest Universe, which pulled in elements from the Multiverse II collaboration (see below) and the HG Wells universe. Plus I also added Consider the Lilies of the Field, an In Between Days story that takes place after Fortune. I also added a dream story taking place between Together and Temper, Equilibrium.

The collaboration story, Another Piece of the Action, was posted. This was written with the bluesman, who created a cover for it. It was the sole entry in the collaboration challenge so, by default, it was the winner (hey, we’ll take the win). We both decided to donate our winnings to Ad Astra.

I also contributed to the Multiverse II, which was great, great fun and allowed me to add some depth to HG Wells characters Branch Borodin, Levi Cavendish, and Otra D’Angelo. How will it end? I have no idea. It’s like the best game of D & D, bar none.

Drabbles

On The Delphic Expanse, their drabble game was revived and so I wrote an E2 tidbit about  Lili, Jay and Joss, called Marbles, an E2 story about Jay and Lili (a drabble version of Penicillin, actually) called Cough, and another E2 tale about Sekar Khan and Hoshi, called Quartermaster. I also added an HG Wells prequel, Briefing. The Drabble game and E2 are fine playgrounds, but they are keeping me from working on other things.

On Fanfiction.net, I finished spinning out Conversations with Heroes. The story received my best reception on Fanfiction.net so far, clocking in with 9 reviews and over 900 reads. While other stories had higher read counts, no others were reviewed as much or read as quickly as this one. I added To Wish, To Want, To Desire and We Meet Again.

Milestones

Individual Read Counts

For individual read counts, the following stories have 10,000 or more on one URL –

All of these were accomplished on Ad Astra.

The following stories have between 5,000 and 9,999 reads on one URL –

Again, these numbers are all coming from Ad Astra. More than a Will to Live is the closest to 10,000 of this group.

Combined Read Counts

The following had combined read counts of 10,000 or more, in addition to the three above which accomplished that feat on just one URL –

  • Fortune
  • Intolerance

More Accomplishments

Apart from the two others at over 5,000 reads for just one URL, the following combine to 5,000 – 9,999 reads when all postings’ URLs are taken into consideration –

WIP Corner

The bluesman and I completed our collaborative piece. I worked a bit on The All Stars but there is still quite a bit more to do. I did loads of work on Multiverse II.

Prep Work

Issuu changed their formatting and it is now considerably more difficult to search for materials which are M- and MA-rated – and that means not only Reversal and Intolerance, but also the Adult Anthology. Hence this creates a question as to whether it would be a good idea to post the second Anthology on Issuu at all. Issuu also seems to have eliminated most free metrics; hence I will need to do some work to determine where to post the second Anthology.

One possible landing site is Deviant Art. The first Anthology is already there, and M. D. Bruffy is happy to post the second Anthology there as well. I’d like to see if there are any other decent places to put that work. In particular, I am looking for where I can post it with a two-page flipping book type of interface, as Issuu has that and it looks very good.

I spent more time on the overall timeline, trying to make it a bit less daunting to read, and adding more visual interest.

This Month’s Productivity Killers

There were some family issues (I won’t go into them here), and they were rather distracting. I was also laid off from my freelancing job. Inspiration was sometimes difficult to come by.

Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, Progress, 0 comments
07
May
2013

Review – Day of the Dead

Review – Day of the Dead

Background

Day of the Dead. More than just a holiday, it also references the horrors of a particularly infamous period is history. On Ad Astra, there was a prompt about the burdens of command.

Barking up the Muse Tree | Janet Gershen-Siegel | jespah | Day of the Dead |

I had been kicking around an idea about Tripp Tucker being caught in a temporal interphase (which is canon in Star Trek) and liberating the Dachau concentration camp. Hence I decided to put that together with the prompt.

Tying In

The idea about Dachau was to tie into Milena Chelenska, who is Richard Daniels‘s love interest. For her, there would be a bit of a back story, as Tripp would deal with the problems that come along with witnessing just so much horror.

Furthermore, there would be a tie into Wesley Crusher, as I liked the little family and backstory I had created for him in Crackerjack and wanted to revisit some of that as well.

The backdrop to it would be Halloween, and then the Day of the Dead.

Plot

As Halloween rolls around – and this is the last Halloween of Tucker’s life, although of course he doesn’t know that – Tripp arranges with Chip Masterson to have a number of classic horror films shown. On the actual day, they show John Carpenter’s Halloween.

But before that, the NX-01 goes about some of its regular business. And the reader should be seeing that life is going on, and they are all moving forward with their lives.

Malcolm is on Lafa II with Lili, for Declan‘s birth, and Aidan MacKenzie is running Tactical in his stead. Travis has just met Ellen Warren. Jonathan is talking about his new ship, the Zefram Cochrane. Lucy Stone, the new Science Ensign, is catching the eye of both Andy Miller and Chip Masterson, even though Chip is married to the pregnant Deborah Haddon. In short, everyone is going somewhere. But Tripp Tucker is living in the past.

Movie Night

For Movie Night, he can’t ask either T’Pol or Hoshi to join him, as they are both exes of his. These are references to the Star Trek: Enterprise canon relationship with T’Pol and the fanfiction relationship in Together. But he sees MACO Corporal Amanda Cole, and begins to flirt with her rather openly. Phlox is also present, and they talk about the picture.

But then Commander Tucker vanishes.

Meanwhile – well, meanwhile in the story, but not in history – Wesley Crusher is considering the aftermath of a static warp bubble experiment where his mother, Beverly, could have lost her life. But he’s lost the warp bubble, and doesn’t know where it went.

Coincidence?

Review – Day of the Dead

Nope, it’s just another temporal-spatial-somatic interphase, much as happened in Concord.

So, where does Tucker end up? Why, he’s in the Forty-Second Infantry Division, and it’s April 29th of 1945. They are about to liberate the Dachau concentration camp.

The remainder of the story deals with Tucker’s displacement, getting him back, and how both the NX-01 and the Enterprise-D work to solve their own, respective, problems.

Music

As the plot unfolds, classic spooky music shows up, and each chapter begins and ends with lyrics as follows –

Story Postings

Rating

The story is rated K+.

Upshot

I added a number of questions about command and promotions, as characters flirt with garnering more responsibility, and how they will deal with such things. In addition, the changes made during the story have the potential to affect the principals for years to come. The burdens of memory and the horrors of war intersect, as Tucker discards his love of horror, and Wesley thinks outside of his own personal bubble, and they both think and act outside themselves.

This story won the challenge; it was my second win (after Paving Stones Made From Good Intentions). I am immensely proud of it, and have featured it in the second Adult Trek Anthology.

Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, In Between Days series, Interphases series, Review, 25 comments
05
Apr
2013

Review – A Long, Long Time Ago

A Long, Long Time Ago

Background

A Long, Long Time Ago always had a great expectations quality to it. Since I enjoyed working on and fleshing out Richard Daniels, one of many canon Star Trek: Enterprise characters who didn’t even have a first name, I decided to give him some depth. I first brought him into my fanfiction in Temper, and I liked him so much that I decided he should really have his own series. Hence I named that series Times of the HG Wells, after his new time ship.

Origins and Originality

Richard Daniels

Canon Star Trek character Richard Daniels

And at the same time, though, I already had a time travel series in draft form. However, that set of stories actually revolved around a few disparate pieces.

Yet the thrust of it was that time travel had just started, and it was messy and it had, perhaps, destroyed the universe (it was all original although I admit some difficulty in staying away from technology and other items a little too close to Trek to be coincidental). All except for a small isolated place that was outside of time. In that set of stories, time travelers were grabbed from history itself, depending on not only their skill sets but also whether they could be plucked from wherever they were without destroying the timeline (the idea of plucking people out of thin air and just dropping them somewhere shows up in The Puzzle). These stories all had interwoven lyrics from songs about time (the first one was the Rolling Stones‘ Time is on My Side).

Mining the Older Stories

The older set of stories contained some characters who end up in the HG Wells series. And the time travelers include hipster HD Avery (originally grabbed from 1966), and Sheilagh Bernstein (initially plucked from the present time; when I was writing those older stories, that was the late 1990s). I also included Marisol Castillo (she came from Moorish Spain and did not have a surname, so I added Castillo as she was from Castile) and Gregory Shaw (only mentioned briefly in the HG Wells series; he came from the 1840s).

Furthermore, I added Thomas Grant (originally a Confederate soldier from the Battle of Shiloh) and Polly Porter (originally from our future). And finally, I added Alice Trent (only a few small mentions in the HG Wells series; from the 1700s) and Daniel Beauchaine (a soldier in the French and Indian War).

Background Personnel

Background people also came from the older series, including Kevin O’Connor (the Chief Engineer; in the original set of stories he was not part-alien but he did have a deceased wife, Josie, just as that character does in the HG Wells series) and Otra (the alien who could see temporal alternatives). I also added Crystal Sherwood (the Quartermaster was originally a historian) and Levi Cavendish (in the older set of stories, he was the project lead and dating Otra. In the HG Wells series, he became a brilliant but difficult engineer with ADHD and a bunch of other neurological issues).

Milena Chelenska was always a doctor; in the first series, she was also a time traveler. In the HG Wells series, she’s Richard’s love interest. However, in both instances, she’s a concentration camp survivor, from the year 1968. Helen Walker also existed, but she was Tom’s ex; it wasn’t until the HG Wells series that she became something else.

Other Characters

In addition, some people from that older series never made it to the HG Wells series but who ended up elsewhere in my fan fiction – Lakeisha Warren (she was a person who worked on plucking people from history; she actually shows up in the Wesley Crusher story, Imprecision as his love interest). Plus Leonora Digiorno (first called Leonora with no last name, originally a plague survivor plucked from the Dark Ages and given the surname of Wilson to honor her late Uncle William).

Older Storylines

Furthermore, I had ideas for various stories which then became books or parts of books. The concept of a failed Italian vacation in 1960, and the shooting at Kent State in 1970, already existed in draft form. And the mission to ensure Prague Spring’s end in 1968 also existed, as did a very, very rough idea of a mission to ensure the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986.

Because so much of the bones of the series already existed, I could easily chart out the main story arcs for the series. However, I had to get it going, and I already had this story in draft form, tentatively titling it The Day the Music Lived.

And so A Long, Long Time Ago was born.

Plot

The story opens with Richard and his girlfriend, Tina April (who he meets in Temper). Things are starting to go sour and the bloom is off the rose. Rick is too secretive, and Tina wants him to get closer to her. But he just can’t tell her too much. Making matters worse for her is the fact that he is so inured to pain that he is virtually incapable of loving her or anyone else. And he likes it that way.

He gets a call to head to the Temporal Integrity Commission, which is conducting group interviews for some new positions. Rick is not a part of the interviewing. Rather, he gets the call because there’s been a hiccup in time, and he must go fix it. And, as the job candidates are sent home, one of their shuttles crashes, and there’s a fatality. And we’re off to the races.

Historical Figures

Real people exist within in the story. Of course, the three doomed musicians loom large. I wrote all of the dialog, plus JP the horndog represents my own interpretation. The other real people include Waylon Jennings, who played guitar on the tour, and Bob Hale, a local disc jockey who reportedly drove the three musicians to the small airfield in Clear Lake. Of course there’s no evidence of anyone going along on the ride – that part’s all me. Everyone comes across pretty well, except for JP being a bit of a lecher.

Music

Barking Up the Muse Tree | jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | A Long, Long Time Ago

A Long, Long Time Ago

In order to start the series off with a bang, I needed to set the scene. The idea of using music is not a new one (I did it with Crackerjack, for starters). And the music evoked not only the time and place but also a lot about the people involved. The first mission is about music; it’s to February third of 1959, known as the day the music died. E. g. it’s the date that the plane carrying the Big Bopper (JP Richardson), Ritchie Valens (Ricky Ricardo Valenzuela) and Buddy Holly (Charles Holley) crashed in a field in Clear Lake, Iowa.

  • Don McLean’s American Pie – the song not only fits the scenario perfectly, it also helps to kick off the series. From its first words (which are the title of this story and also evoke the significant differential in time between the event and Richard’s life in the deep future) to its lyrics about the sixties and its turmoil, there was no other way to start this series.

    Review – A Long, Long Time Ago

    Buddy Holly

  • Frankie Ford’s Sea Cruise – I liked the song not only for the time period but also because it would be a very real concern for artists. The song (for real) was originally a recording by Huey “Piano” Smith.

 

However, Ford dubbed it over, as he had a more energetic vocal. Plus he was white. Valens learns, during the story, to be sure to get credit and to watch the moneymen, to assure that he doesn’t lose his rights.

The Music of the Dead

  • Ritchie Valens’ Donna – Whenever I spin out these stories, I also place a link to an era-appropriate song. And all three of the performers have multiple songs listed (e. g. Holly’s Rave On!  and the Bopper’s Big Bopper’s Wedding also made the cut), but only Valens has his lyrics interwoven with the story line.
Review – A Long, Long Time Ago

Ritchie Valens

  • Patsy Cline’s Walkin’ After Midnight – This song is not only date-appropriate but it can also impart a country air. Furthermore, it is the kind of music that Waylon Jennings might want to play and sing along with. Cline was better known for Crazy, but I love this one. Plus it’s got a good guitar accompaniment.
  • Bobby Darin’s Mack the Knife – This song a little less poppy and a little more mature-sounding. Mack the Knife seems a pretty odd song anyway, and it speaks of death – the same pall that hangs over the story.
    Review – A Long, Long Time Ago

    The Big Bopper

    Furthermore, the tastes of the time varied. So you could conceivably hear all of these songs (except for McLean’s) played on AM Radio during the same hour.

  • The Skyliners’ Since I Don’t Have You – for the ending, I wanted a bittersweet love song. This would represent the kind of song that people play when they’re lonely.

Story Postings

Rating

The story is rated K+.

Upshot

So for a series opener in particular, I think the story works well. And I like how it kicks things off. Because this series differs from In Between Days, not everything can be mined for more stories like that one. Still, the beginning feels auspicious to me.

Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, Review, Times of the HG Wells series, 24 comments
30
Nov
2012

Progress Report – November 2012

November 2012 Posted Works

November 2012 was a good, productive month. Barking up the Muse Tree | Janet Gershen-Siegel | jespah | Quill | November 2012

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!

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

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.

Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, Progress, 0 comments
30
Oct
2012

Progress Report – October 2012

Progress Report – October 2012

October 2012 was a very creative time.

Posted Works

Barking up the Muse Tree | Janet Gershen-Siegel | jespah | Quill | October 2012

It was another highly productive month. The Mirror Universe contextual collection, Hall of Mirrors, saw the following additions – The High Cost of Dissidence, Paving Stones Made from Good Intentions, First Born, Reversal, Brown, Coveted Commodity, Temper and Fortune.

I also answered a prompt about rituals with the Times of the HG Wells prequel, Candy. Also, I spun out Shake Your Body, the penultimate HG Wells book. I responded to the “hold on” prompt with Souvenirs, an HG Wells story taking place right after Spring Thaw. Then I added Detroit Rock City and A Single Step to In Between Days context. In response to the Burdens of Command challenge, I wrote Day of the Dead, to be posted on Halloween itself.

I had not added anything whatsoever to The Delphic Expanse in a long time, so I decided to float a drabble about Tripp and T’Pol and her pregnancy with Lorian, so I answered a year-old prompt for the word “free”, and wrote Free.

I also had not contributed anything to Trek United in months, so I added Voracious and Harvest.

Fanfiction.net

Progress Report – October 2012

On Fanfiction.net, I added The High Cost of Dissidence, Onions, Penicillin, Letters from Home, First Born, Throwing Rocks at Looking Glass Houses, Detroit Rock City and Concord.

Concord and Letters from Home got particularly good receptions, so I decided to see if I can post there every Monday and Thursday (I had been posting only on Mondays), schedule permitting.

On Star Trek Logs, because there was a Vulcan/Romulan week, I added Achieving Peace. I also spun out Concord there, as that story had gotten raves on Fanfiction.net. It was also well-received there.
Plus I added stories to the Archer’s Angels board, where they created an official fan fiction forum, Alien Encounter and The Black Widow. Hence I added both of these because of Halloween. Then I added A Single Step, and started a challenge there, called A Thousand Words. My response was an In Between Days extreme prequel story called Detroit Rock City.
For the Trek BBS Nightmares challenge, I added a Wesley Crusher story, Imprecision.

Milestones

On October 15th, Reversal on Ad Astra rang up 10,000 views, the most I have ever had on any given story. That story has been out there since August of 2011, which is part of the reason for the high numbers. I am particularly pleased that there are over 260 views for each chapter, telling me that a lot of people hung in with it until the end.

For overall totals (e. g. adding up view totals for everywhere a story is posted online, Reversal is still the big winner, with over 15,000 views. Next highest is Together with over 12,000 views and then Intolerance with over 8,000 overall views. These are all understandable, as I originally wrote them back in 2010. More interesting is that Take Back the Night has an overall total approaching 4,000 views, and that story is only from late 2011 and is only on Ad Astra.

WIP Corner

I continued working on the E2 stories when I could. My plan is to begin spinning them out in January, so I am trying to get a full draft of the fourth story done before then.

Prep Work

I created an HTML version of He Stays a Stranger, in anticipation of spinning it out in November. I created a somewhat bowdlerized version of Fortune for eventual posting on Fanfiction.net.

This Month’s Productivity Killers

I worked on the Trek United Adult Trek Anthology. Plus I also attended five job interviews – more than I had for several months, combined. I am doing a lot of the distribution of work in anticipation of going back to work soon. Furthermore, I continued working on the Adult Anthology, and made a great deal of progress with it.

Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, Progress, 0 comments
16
Mar
2012

Review – Crackerjack

Crackerjack Story Origins

Crackerjack was originally a gift for a younger fan who wasn’t really old enough to be reading my racier material. This fan likes Star Trek: The Next Generation, so I set the story in that universe, but I didn’t want to be on the Enterprise, and I didn’t want to be dealing with too many of the characters.

As a story written for a young person, I wanted a young character, so I hit upon the idea of grabbing Wesley Crusher. He has often – completely legitimately – been criticized as being a “Mary Sue” type of character. This is a character who is impossibly good, impossibly smart, impossibly lucky, etc. It’s a parody of a true character. I wanted Wes to be a bit different.

I also wanted Geordi, as the story was to be about prejudging. Partly that was due to racism, and partly due to his obvious infirmity, blindness. As a pair, I felt they could work together, too, and would believably want to help each other. The title refers, not only to the treat served at ballgames, but also to “an exceptionally good person or thing”. The reader is left to determine just who really is crackerjack.

The Plot

Barking Up The Muse Tree | jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | Ted Williams Hits a Home Run | Crackerjack

Ted Williams Hits a Home Run

The story begins with an old man asking his grandchildren if they ever heard of the time he watched Ted Williams hit a homerun. They clamor for a story and he obliges.

His tale begins with the two friends returning from a ceremony on the Kreetassan home world, when they suddenly run into a strange cosmic phenomenon. The phenomenon throws them back in time, to Earth. Because the shuttle they are in is damaged, they are forced to make an emergency landing. Duke Ellington is playing on the radio, and there’s a reference to fighting in the Middle East, and to British residents needing to go to bomb shelters.

They need supplies in order to get back, so they will need to head into civilization.

Barking Up The Muse Tree | jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | Brownstones | Crackerjack

Brownstones

They change their clothes so as to mimic period garb, but the visor sticks out like a sore thumb. A decision is made to outfit Geordi with sunglasses and carry the visor along in a duffle, if needed. They replicate some money and follow a river toward what they figure is the nearest town.

While in town, they sleep out in the open. In the morning, they realize they’ve been sleeping in a familiar place, at the foot of the statue of Lincoln, at the Lincoln Memorial. They’re in Washington, DC.

Charity and Loathing

As Geordi waits, Wesley runs out to look for a place to get breakfast. It rains a bit, but then the rain stops. When Geordi puts his palm up to check if the rain has really stopped, someone presses coins into his hand, thinking he’s a panhandler. Wesley finds a lunch counter and leads Geordi there. When they enter, the proprietor refuses them service and they are directed to a sign on the wall that says, Whites Only.

A newspaper then reveals the date – September 1st, 1941.

How do they get to the ballgame? How do they get back? All can be revealed by reading, of course.

Racism

Star Trek often covers socially difficult subjects such as racism, so I wanted to confront it head-on. The time period, I feel, is a great one, as it is pre-war and pre-Jackie Robinson, but attitudes are starting, slowly, to change. Plus the presence of a Whites Only sign was very logical for the time and place in question.

Geordi, of course, was a logical subject for racism, in particular because his infirmity makes it impossible for him to actually see why people are prejudging him. Wesley works, not only as Geordi’s companion, but also as a wide-eyed observer who doesn’t understand why the people of the time are acting like they are – and why some are kind or even overly protective. The people of the time aren’t just one big mass. Some care, some act but are inept (such as an anonymous person giving Geordi charity), while others are pettily cruel.

Time and Place

One of the ways I set the scenes was with music of the time. Take the A Train shows up, but so do The Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B, Stardust and Frenesi. Each chapter begins with a link to a YouTube video. The music is mostly horn-driven and tends to be from big bands.

The chapters also each begin with a picture. There’s Ted Williams, another is of a streetcar, another is of a row of brownstones, etc. The pictures are all in black and white, not only to evoke the sense of an old black and white film, but also to bring home the idea of racists seeing the world in terms of only black and white.

Furthermore, I wanted to evoke a bit of the old TOS episode, The City on the Edge of Forever, although that one takes place in 1930. One of the backdrops to the story is the prospect of imminent war, where bullets aren’t going to care one whit about the race of the person they strike. In Crackerjack, the bullets are going to be flying at Americans in only a little over three months’ time.

Interphasing

An interphase is a canon construction, and refers to a kind of temporal, spatial or somatic displacement, often without intention. While I handle interphases in other stories, I wanted this one to be more of an engineering problem, rather than a philosophical musing. For Wesley and Geordi, it’s a problem to solve, rather than a reason to question existence.

Framing

Another aspect of the story is framing it as a tale told by an elder. The elder is Wesley, who you never otherwise see as an extreme elder. I wanted it to be his perspective and his long-term hindsight that would shape the narrative. Also, as Wesley learns about racism, he also taught his grandchildren the same lessons, that there are some people who don’t get along with others, and sometimes that’s for the most unfair reasons.

Barking up the muse tree | jespah | Janet Gershen-Siegel | Camera | Crackerjack

Camera

Memory is also key to this story, as it is about Wesley’s memories. But it also covers the memories of the people they meet. Plus there’s the memory of the reader about that time, or about what they’ve learned of that time. Or it’s what they, personally, have experienced of racism, and also of human decency.

But don’t worry about forgetting. Your memory has enough film in it.

Music

The music was great fun to put together.

Story Postings

Rating

The story is rated K.

Upshot

I like this one, but the problems go away rather neatly and easily. If I were writing for an adult, I probably would have thrown in more obstacles. And I might have made the racism harsher than it was. But I like that it’s not quite as hard-edged. I don’t think I needed to really hit people over the head with it.

Posted by jespah in Fan fiction, Interphases series, Review, 28 comments