cruisedirector

[cruisedirector]

I was organizing Star Trek photos on Facebook in an album when I realized that I never wrote anything about the legendary fan writer Claire Gabriel, who was my friend in fandom intermittently for decades.

I met her because of her original series fan novels 'Simple Gifts' and 'The Porcelain of Twilight', which my longtime friend Vertigo had loaned me. Ironically, it was Claire's interpretation of a particular aspect of Vulcan society ringing entirely wrong to me that inspired me to write to her in 1988-89, back before the internet when we were reading paper zines with the authors' home addresses sometimes printed in the back. Claire thought that Vulcans would be opposed to terminating pregnancies in all instances, even to save the mother if the fetus would otherwise survive, because it was logical to preserve new life; I thought that was the most illogical thing I'd ever heard, and I told her so. She was very nice about it and we agreed to disagree!

It was a bit gutsy of me to write to her because Claire was already very famous among Star Trek fans as the author of the short story "Ni Var", published in the Bantam Books anthology 'Star Trek: The New Voyages'. Leonard Nimoy wrote the introduction to this story for the collection. I didn't know until Claire and I started corresponding, first about 'Simple Gifts' and then about her other writing, that the version of "Ni Var" in the Marshak-and-Culbreath anthology had been heavily edited, and Claire had a different, earlier version from a zine that she felt was more faithful to the characters. She sent it to me, we corresponded for several months about Star Trek and writing, then I moved to Chicago and -- as often happened in those chaotic days of mail forwarding -- we lost track of each other and didn't communicate for half a decade.

When Star Trek: Voyager premiered in 1995, it impacted nearly every aspect of my life. Within a few months, I was running a fan club, organizing a Usenet board, putting together an internet mailing list that in those days required ccing a lot of people, eventually getting a professional reviewing job...and I was writing and editing fan fiction, both for the fan club and for what we assumed would be zines but eventually wound up on web pages. I got an email from Claire under her professional name and it took a minute for the penny to drop, but then I realized who she was. She hadn't known she was writing to me, either, since I was using two different pseudonyms on the internet at the time -- one for my reviews and professional writing, one for fan-related activities and fanfic.

We were then in touch several times a day for several years, often ecstatically discussing television episodes. It started out being all about Voyager -- she wanted to know where the Janeway/Chakotay fans were, and it will shock none of you to know that I could answer that question -- but ended up covering most aspects of our lives, as well as other fandoms (notably La Femme Nikita, in which she wrote a novella that was at one time hosted on one of my web sites, like her Voyager fan fiction). Claire was a fantastic editor and always very generous with her time to younger writers.

I met her in person when I was passing through the city where she lived. We had a meal at a McDonalds so that my kids could play in the ball pit while we had a conversation. We followed each other on various journaling platforms, and later on, we friended each other on Facebook and chatted there about mostly fannish things while we were in different places in our lives.

At some point, Claire's Facebook page disappeared. I thought at first that maybe she'd blocked me over something political; we never agreed on some pretty big issues like the one that led me to write to her in the '80s in the first place. Then I discovered from a mutual friend -- another fannish legend, Kathleen Dailey of 'Unspoken Truth: The Romulan Commander's Story', to whom Claire had introduced me, along with Jacqueline Lichtenberg and other science fiction authors I had known of since childhood -- that Claire had passed away in May 2024 at the age of 91. We hadn't been in regular touch for a few years at that point, but I was still sad and am sad still. When I came across things I wrote when we lost BeccaO and lauawill and Sorbet, I wanted to remember Claire here, where I know other people who knew her.

[cruisedirector]

Spirk-comission

Spock had come to take the Admiral home from his late work

[cruisedirector]

aye, aye, captain!

[cruisedirector]

Yes I am this shallow

In Seldon's Shadow FOUNDATION (2021–)

[cruisedirector]

During the height of the pandemic in 2020, when IKEA announced that the company would stop publishing its iconic furniture catalog, Stephen Colbert made a joke on his at-home Late Show about how the only thing ever published that had more readers than the IKEA catalog was Harry Potter and the Unbuildable Ektorp. Dementordelta and I found that prompt very inspiring.

[cruisedirector]

I really appreciate how much this man loves jewelry

New pictures of Chris for BOSS Bottled campaign. 📸: ELLE Man.

[cruisedirector]

instagram: @mirelakaurinovic @architects_labnote

[cruisedirector]

Hi Mr. Gaiman! A question suddenly popped into my mind, and it's not making me sleep at all! In the Good Omens TV show, you added the final twist about the bodyswap. But is it really a bodyswap? How come when they shake hands to swap back, we see an external change? If the outward apparence is the one that changes, wouldn't that indicate that Aziraphale simply took Crowley's appearance, and Crowley took Aziraphale's? Because if Crowley and Aziraphale truly swapped bodies, the real change would be just internal and not visible to the eye, so swapping back wouldn't be truly visible. Does this make sense? Am I overthinking stuff? (I probably am)

It wasn't a body swap. It was an appearance swap.

[cruisedirector]

imagine your bestie pulls you out of retirement just so you could watch him pull this shit again

[cruisedirector]

“dOn’T cAll TaYlOr GaY! iT’s nOt yOuR pLaCe tO lAbEl hEr!”

Deal! 🤝 No more calling Taylor anything she didn’t call herself first.

She’s a friend of Dorothea. She listens to girl in red. She’s a pirate. She’s a cowboy like me. She’s not a “bad girl” but she does “bad things” and they’re “passionate as sin”. She’s a ‘gay Texan’. She’s curious. She isn’t like the other girls. She isn’t boy crazy. She doesn’t chase boys. She doesn’t try to get boys attention. She’s trapped in a golden cage. Her boyfriend’s a jailer. Her boyfriend’s a narcissist. Her boyfriends a playboy. She doesn’t trust them. She hasn’t seen him in a couple of months. She wants HER midnights. All the boys in their expensive cars never took her quite where ‘you’ do. Her love is different and maybe society wouldn’t accept it. She’s so furious that she feels this way. She’s not going home with any men, just to her cats, unless ‘you’ wanna come along. She’ll never love ‘him’ the way she loved ‘you’. She sings about Bettys. She’s close with Cara Delevingne. She’s ✨ magnificently cursed.✨ She’s on the A-Team. She loves cats. She’s the man. She switched sides. Her relationships break the status quo. She doesn’t belong, and neither does her beloved. She likes serenading women and RayTay would be a great couple name. She’s as “happy” as Ruby Rose and Hayley Kiyoko! She wishes she could brag about getting bitches and models and she gets excited about ballerinas, especially ones with shiny aaaaaabs. She’s a New Romantic. She’s KING. 👑 She likes being called daddy. 😉 She doesn’t care if her partner has a di- gap between their teeth. She’s hunted like a witch for who she is. She’s the gold star wearing sheriff of the gay-trailer park on 16th Avenue, and ‘he’ sends her heartbeat skipping right back there. She’s loved in shades of wrong. She’s got her demons and darling, they all look like ‘you’. She thinks meeting women on the internet and taking them home is “cool shit” and she’s “been there too a few times.” She was “out now!” on Lesbian Visibility Day. She really digs that rainbow and blue, purple, pink aesthetic. She performed at Stonewall, and she could build a castle out of all the bricks they threw at her. Her love is calamitous and fills her with insurmountable grief. Everyone thinks that they know her but they know nothing about all this pining. Danger is just around the corner because it lives in her. Her love should be celebrated but it’s tolerated. She changes everything about herself to fit in. She worships a false god in a sexy way. She swears she could hear a hairpin drop. She likes Dickinson, and Killing Eve, and Booksmart, and Tegan & Sarah, and Fletcher, and Lesbian Jesus. She thinks King Princess’s music is ‘nostalgic’. She can’t think straight. She’s a 🐱 🧲. She’s chosen butterflies over one-eyed snakes. She thinks models changing in her trailer is a “literal fantasy” and some women are “so gorgeous” it’s hard to talk to them. She’s in screaming colour with her crooked love. Her love is brave and wild! She can’t even keep a straight face! She’s been hiding in a closet, and she got locked in that closet because she was eating another man’s cookies. She had an illicit affair with someone who wears perfume. She’s sending signals, and while the rumours are terrible and cruel, most of them are true. She’s invisible. Do you see right through her? She doesn’t like people raining on her parade. She’s got a schoolgirl crush. She’s popped a 🍒 or two. She writes from the male perspective. She writes from the wlw perspective. She’s a scarlet letter, but you can trust that hers is better. If you know, you know. It takes one to know one. Gay pride makes her her and she really thinks you should calm down.

In fact just about the only label she hasn’t used is straight. 🤔

[cruisedirector]

❤ ❤ ❤ HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRIGIOCUORE  ❤ ❤ ❤

      Requested with Love from mrsdanieljackson

[cruisedirector]

@bizships I haven’t had her password since I moved The Love Boat to AO3, so someone would need to save all the stories, set up an account in her name (lauawill_fics or something), and repost them there. I can ask her husband if he’s interested/cool with that but one of us is going to have to retrieve and repost the stories.

Lots of Reddit threads on FFN recently having trouble.

Last May there were posts about FFN being abandoned. Anyone have links to those?

[cruisedirector]

I don't remember which of you awesome people sent this to me 20+ years ago but I really want to thank you for the smile this afternoon

[cruisedirector]