#I'll copy this to Dreamwidth at some point

[chacusha]

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Prophecy and Change (2003) ed. Marco Palmieri

I bought this book because of @ysalamiri-queen's recommendation of its Quodo short story, which is indeed great. This is a collection of short stories published shortly after DS9 ended, all set within canon (missing scenes/episodes) except for the one by Andrew J. Robinson at the end which seems to be a post-canon follow-up to A Stitch in Time. Here are my thoughts on the stories (mild spoilers for the general content of the book/premises of the individual stories):

"Ha'mara" by Kevin G. Summers: This is a Sisko & Kira story set shortly after the events of "Emissary." I liked this one! It's a good opener to the book not just because it occurs so early in the timeline but because it touches on so many of the themes that DS9 will eventually be about: religion and faith, Sisko's odd role as the Emissary, post-colonial Bajor, Bajor's (non-)entrance into the Federation, etc. I thought it was both a good and odd fit into the timeline: Good because it fleshes out when exactly did people generally know Sisko was the Emissary -- this is a bit vague in DS9 season 1. We know Opaka and Sisko know but outside of that, we never really get how that was communicated to the wider Bajoran public and what the reaction was, so it was nice seeing that here (throughout season 1 I don't think anyone calls Sisko by the title of Emissary but over the course of the show it's obvious he's generally seen as filling that role). Anyway, that's a bit of canon I thought was missing and could be filled in. The story is also a bit of an odd fit because it does some serious relationship development between Sisko and Kira very early in season 1. I'm a bit torn whether I think that fits their dynamic in canon or jumps the gun a bit on their relationship development. In any case, though, I enjoyed this story and its themes. I liked getting to see more of Opaka, too, before she disappears.

"The Orb of Opportunity" by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels: Oh man, the main thing I remember from this story is that it seemed like it was written by a Kai Winn fanboy. Now, I love Kai Winn and Nog (who are the main characters of this story) and I love that someone wrote a story focusing on them, but in this story I felt they played up Winn's bravery, revolutionary spirit, and moral compass a bit too much in a way that she no longer felt like Winn. No doubt she is capable of having all of those characteristics and I appreciate getting to see the nobler side of Winn, but she is ultimately meant to be a total snake and I want to see Kai Winn being a total snake. Making Kai Winn instrumental to Nog's decision to join Starfleet is so funny to me but also just NO. Anyway, I liked the story here and appreciated the Nog and Winn focus and the bizarrely positive take on Winn was an experience in and of itself. I like it, but I don't think it's canon.

"Broken Oaths" by Keith R.A. DeCandido: This is a Bashir & O'Brien story that says it's set after "Our Man Bashir" but I think it's more accurately a coda for "Hippocratic Oath". Basically, the plot is "Bashir and O'Brien talk their anger/feelings out about O'Brien disobeying direct orders in order to destroy Bashir's ketracel white research to save his life." Which I suppose is a kind of thing that would put a damper on one's friendship, and generally I like fanfic of the form "Characters actually talk about all the fucked up stuff that happened in canon" but I guess I didn't particularly feel I needed these two to talk out this issue and it felt a bit "stating the obvious out loud" at points (like, "Maybe the reason I was so mad was because [self-analysis]!", you know?). I did appreciate the humor of the stereotypical plot of two characters' whole friend group scheming in order to get them to kiss and make up (with Dax, Worf, Garak, and Quark being the scheming friends here).

"...Loved I Not Honor More" by Christopher L. Bennett: This is the Quodo story featuring Grilka set sometime after her second appearance ("Looking for par'Mach..."), and it's great. I feel like the author had a really good handle on Quark and Odo's dynamic which is ostensibly antagonistic but actually very tender and intimate underneath, and not explicitly romantic but still with those ~vibes~. So like, if you want another story involving these two that's very close to/in line with canon, this does that really well. Also, we get another story involving Grilka and Klingon noble house drama, which is always great. Even though Quark and Odo's canonical love interests come up in this story, somehow it's about Odo telling Quark that he's a Ferengi and that's enough and he never has to be something he's not, and UGH THESE TWO. How do they manage to be so rom-com sappy when they're not even a couple? I'm dying.

"Three Sides to Every Story" by Terri Osborne: Oh man, I have a lot of thoughts on this one. This is a Jake/Ziyal (pre-ship) story, where Jake and Ziyal get to know each other during the Dominion occupation arc and then Jake has to deal with her death. I've heard of Jake/Ziyal as a relatively popular "Ziyal survives AU" pairing so I wasn't surprised to see it here, but I haven't actually read any fic for that pairing so I guess I'm not intrinsically interested in it. Reading this story made me wonder if Jake/Ziyal is actually a soft NOTP for me, or if I just really didn't like the way it was done in this story. I didn't find Jake and Ziyal's attraction to each other convincing (more tell than show), their characterization felt flat to me, and I felt the setup of the story made Ziyal's death more about the tragedy of Jake's connection to her, which is a tough sell as Jake's connection to her is only really established in this story, so the emotional resonance of the story is heavily reliant on having set that up well, which I already felt this story didn't. Anyway, I like the idea of looking at Ziyal's death through a different lens than in the show, and Jake as an artist who doesn't know Ziyal well could have been an excellent choice but I felt making that lens romantic (especially given all the weird forced-romantic stuff with Garak in the show which is thankfully not present here) kind of wasted the potential of Ziyal's character to have some meaning other than potential love interest and daughter, which is already there in the show. Even fleshing out an antagonistic relationship with Damar would have been more interesting IMO (Damar does interact with Ziyal but I also felt those interactions felt flat/didn't have a good grasp on Damar's character either). Anyway, sorry this is so negative -- it's one of those cases where I have a lot to say because I can actually see the reasoning/potential/good ideas here but just got a bit let down by the execution.

"The Devil You Know" by Heather Jarman: This is a Jadzia-centric story set in season 6 after the Romulans join the war against the Dominion and intersecting with the events of "Time's Orphan." This one is an old-fashioned moral dilemma of a wartime Federation where the character goes too far and has to deal with the fallout of that. It felt like a DS9 plot, but at the same time, I felt this took Jadzia's character in too dark a direction (it felt like it relied on emotional outbursts to show/justify why a character makes decisions that don't really line up with that character's values/normal way of functioning); also, it is just depressing but I kind of appreciated the depiction of helpless grief here. Also, Jadzia should totally get her own Romulan woman to have ridiculous chemistry with (Subcommander T'Rul in this case) following the Romulan entrance to the war, just like Kira does (with Kimara Cretak), so I approve. Overall a kind of depressing/bleak story especially for Jadzia (kinda seems out of line with her character) but I enjoyed the plot and thought it did interesting things with her character, even though I don't particularly think Jadzia would react to stress in quite this way.

"Foundlings" by Jeffrey Lang: This is an Odo & Thrax mystery set between season 6 and 7 when Cardassia is increasingly not flourishing under the Dominion. Thrax comes to Odo with a case of a shuttle accident that left all its passengers dead. I'm not sure I really dig the Thrax characterization here but hey, he's a very minor character so... free real estate! I appreciate the author bringing a one-episode character (he doesn't quite appear in one episode, even...) back. Fun mystery with nice Odo character work (and interesting stuff involving Odo vs. Thrax and Odo's relationship to the Dominion vs. Thrax's relationship to Cardassia). But I really could have done without all the Kirodo parts, ngl. 😂

"Chiaroscuro" by Geoffrey Thorne: An Ezri-centric story. This one was weird. Once it started getting into the Jadzia-designed, Dante's Inferno-themed labyrinth, I started wondering if the author already had a non-Star Trek sci-fi story that they had already written, which they quickly adapted here, because the aesthetic and themes seemed so off from Jadzia/Ezri/Trills/Star Trek in general, with a kind of weak rationale for why Jadzia a Trill would theme a maze around a human notion of hell and punishment... But at the same time, the story outside the maze itself does so much to tie in Ezri's previous lives and how Ezri differs from Jadzia that it had to be the case that at least a lot of this story was specifically written with Ezri/Star Trek in mind. But yeah, this one was pretty wild (even the premise of Jadzia wiping memory of the event seemed kind of designed to be like a concession that this story fits awkwardly in canon). I liked seeing Ezri and Jadzia's past work and past hosts get some fleshing out but not sure what I think about this story as a whole.

"Face Value" by Una McCormack: This is a story that fleshes out Kira & Damar & Garak's relationship when they are fomenting rebellion (and are stranded) on Cardassia. Not much happens plotwise in this story but there's a lot of character work, and I like the interactions between these characters and wish we'd gotten more than was in the show (so I appreciate getting more here), and I liked the writing.

"The Calling" by Andrew J. Robinson: This is set after A Stitch in Time and the stage play "The Dream Box" and features Garak struggling to unify a broken, fragmented Cardassia post-canon. As I still haven't read ASIT (it's very hard to get a copy of), I didn't get much out of this one. Like, there was an attempt to fill the reader on all the important terms, concepts, and characters but the whole story just didn't make sense without having that previous background and investment in what happens after the events of the previous stuff. I'll revisit this later once I've read the earlier works.

Overall, a really fun collection of stories. I liked the variety, getting to see the whole cast here, and getting to read stories pretty in line with canon. And yes, the Quodo one was my favorite, although there were a couple of other stories here where the writing was just as good and it told an interesting story.

[thatswhatsushesaid]

i have written off and on about doing something like this (normally when i am at my limit with tumblr's shitty search functionality) but this morning while procrastinating on some work items i decided to take the plunge and begin my meta migration* project 👀 so hopefully this time next year, i will be able to happily say that all of my mdzs meta can be easily searched and queried, even if it won't have all the functionality of a shiny relational database.

tadaaaa

okay yeah it's not pretty and i've only copied over about 6 pieces but whatever, the point is to figure out the best means of making my meta searchable and sortable with a tagging system that actually makes sense. and that's what i'm working on right now. i'll figure out the aesthetics later. maybe. if i feel like it.

also just as a quick heads-up, you may see a little footer on some of my meta posts here saying something like "this post has been added to my meta archive" along with a link. i'm doing that so i can easily keep track of the posts i have copied over vs the posts that are still waiting to receive the dreamwidth treatment.

* yes i know this isn't a real migration project because the original material is not going to be leaving tumblr, whatever, i enjoy the alliteration.

[quinndominion]

Thought I was going to make another rant-y ramble about scene staging, but I figured it out before I finished typing.

Anyway...Terrific fun seeing your scenes come to life exactly the way you envisioned them. Terribly frustrating when it feels like you've forgotten how to do basic stuff, elicit some very basic poses - like, hold your hand out, sir! No, more. Out thataway. Please?

Look, see, like this, Sylvia Marie did it, why can't you? (which, of course, means why can't I...remember how to do such a little thing?)

But this is why I always like to keep SimPE open while playing. (Standard warning, you know what your computer can and can't handle, blah, blah, blah. And if you don't load it first, obviously, and fully load in the game files, you won't be able to do a damn thing with it while the game is using them and you, of course, can't edit cc files that are in use. But if, like me, you've got multiple cc setups and test hoods and wip stuff it comes in handy when you're too lazy to quit the game just to check something.) I double-checked my 'undies ad' posebox and turns out I did, actually, make that overlay. Oops. But, frustration allayed!

Wrong hand, anyway. But that wasn't the point.

Serviceable as is, I guess.

But it looks even more awkward from this angle and that's the one where you can see what he can't see yet as he's looking for his daughter.

Ooh, maybe Adele's prop box, sans prop? I'll check! Too many newer poseboxes, I'm forgetting the virtues of the golden oldies! Otherwise, I have found something that should work but it means exiting and reloading the game. And she may or may not hold her pose on reload.

The positioning itself I can recreate easily enough, but she is well off her lot (get it..."well" *snerk*) and therein lies the hassle. I'd have to learn new tricks (all over again) to make that a simpler process. And, uh, no. I need, literally, 3-5 more pics. Then all I've got to do is finish the write-up and wrestle with the html formatting. So, tomorrow maybe, or more likely the day after since it's Christmas.

Apparently, some things have changed in the past few years, but not DW's post editor - which I hate, love everything else, no plans to shop around for a new home, but hate the tiny post creation window that you can't expand in visual edit mode - you know, the one you need to see, it's in the name - but can drag out in html mode, like being able to see the alphanumeric wall-o-text in a bigger window is at all useful to me! They render all visual line breaks exclusively with code now so even if you space it out to be able to see what you're doing with the html, if you click over to visual mode to see that it looks right and click back, they've smushed it back into one big block of text. Why...oh, why? That's not really the new hassle, but I'm tired of rambling. Suffice it to say that my workaround no longer works straight copy-paste. Even when I remember to add all the extra <br /> breaks. Still have to fiddle with it in their tiny post window where they nevertheless render the pictures full-size so I can only see half of what I'm doing without side-scrolling back and forth. Okay, now rant really over.

How do I know this? Well, I celebrated my bday last Monday by actually posting a chapter. No linky, I'll get to that...eventually, but it's there on my Dreamwidth if you wanna read it. Or you can wait til I'm finished wrangling with the rest of Act One and feel like making proper posts with links and stuff. Doubt anyone's read this far into a ramble post to warrant adding links anyway. 😃😃😃

[necromoonstar]

well with the news recently posted I'm really happy I already was setting up that whole list thing and copying my posts for later. probably now need to make an area for my records on planning how to I want to set things up for trying out new sites and following where everyone else goes

I'm not panicking but I like being prepared, so I'll try to see what I can do. Mostly I'm worried about how easy or hard it'll be to get used to a whole new social landscape. I've noticed different sites have such different cultures and tumblrs was very natural for me

when people post all over about how people find tumblr's hard or awkward it makes me wonder just how badly I'll fit going to other places.

I already have the issues of trying to get out of the 70s and 80s and now I gotta get a whole new everything sorted if I want to try to keep around these cool people I found and to make new friends and share my art journey

I'll see if I can join bluesky, that's at least I know many artists I follow are there so that'll be nice.

I'll try dreamwidth but I really don't understand how it's a social site or what to do with it. It feels like long form only personal isolated blogs but ??? people talk like it isn't so I wonder what I'm missing or not understanding.

At this point I'm going to make a pinterest since I hear there's some fandom folk there and it can be a nice site?

I don't know where else to go or what to try. I don't mind the whole redundancies thing I just don't know what's considered a good idea to invest time and effort into trying to set up and learn.

Anyone with more knowledge of online spaces got advice I'm all ears. Mostly this lack of experience is why I'm glad there are people already trying to plan out what to do. maybe that'll include some advice packages for trying to translate this culture to a new space. either way it'll be moving with people expecting you to be used to a different social culture and be more understanding about it