#people that didn’t follow me originally for Star Trek. hi i also post about Star Trek

[brookbee]

why did I make this

[ichayalovesyou]

THE BIG VULCAN BIOLOGY POST (aka Vulcan is a Hell Planet)

DISCLAIMER: I am not a biologist, astrophysicist, neurologist, animal psychologist or literally anything that would qualify me to talk about this with 100% confidence. This is the result of dozens of headcanons and obsessive deep dive research. I don’t want this post to be three miles long, so after I address the planetary stuff I will oblige y’all with a Read More.

Adsfasdkfjhaslkdfh I’ve been working on this post for almost a month SO HERE WE GO!

First of all, Vulcan (aka T’Khasi) is a HELL PLANET, which is part of the reason they’re so badass, I say this for the following reasons:

No moon(s) (natural satellites)

Sodium (Salt) is so rare on the planet that Vulcan’s oceans are freshwater

It’s a “Super-Earth” (as in big chonkin’ planet of similar composition to earth in the “goldilocks region”)

Let’s do this.

“Vulcan has no moon Ms. Uhura.”

-Spock, The Man Trap

Tons of things change about our planet if there was no moon:

Much darker nights (no moonlight)

Much lower sea levels since there is no gravity from the moon to pull it upward.

Lower and weaker tides because the water is pulled by the sun instead of the moon, and it depends on how large the Vulcan solar system’s sun is for how big the waves are.

Stronger winds from faster planet rotation.

Depending on whether the axis of the planet would straighten or tilt further without the moon’s pull, combined with the faster rotation would lead to more severe seasons (strong tilt) or no seasons at all (no tilt)

The first factor may lead to Vulcan eyes being very catlike even if they aren’t nocturnal (I think they’re crepesucular but we’ll get into that later). Which given the likely nature of their blood and their herbivorous eating habits they probably aren’t. The sky would still be so dark that our human eyes couldn’t even see our hands in front of us, being blind when the sun goes down could be a death sentence. Alternatively, if they didn’t develop strong night vision that may be one of the reasons why they have such strong senses of hearing.

The stronger winds, faster rotation, and stronger (or nonexistent) seasons come from the lack of resistance and friction that stronger tides and the moon’s pull create on our planet. I suspect that Vulcan is larger, or at least denser than Earth, but I’ve been informed that according to the TMP novelization that it does rotate faster. I also think that Vulcan’s tilt is on the more extreme end to get the hostile extremes like storms and heat that we see on Vulcan.

If you look at this image of Vulcan, water covers way less of the planet’s surface than Earth. I don’t think this is necessarily because Vulcan has less water, but that it isn’t spread as far because of the lack of moon, and the fact that the oceans are freshwater, I’ll get into that shortly.

“My ancestors spawned from a different ocean than yours.”

-Spock, The Man Trap

In the Star Trek: The Original Series (third) pilot The Man Trap, there is a creature that kills its victims by draining their bodies completely of salt. Spock encounters the creature but does not die, implying his (and Vulcans overall) body contains little to no salt. His justification is that his species did not evolve from a salinized ocean.

What does it mean to have oceans with no salt?

This has to mean that sodium is a very rare mineral on Vulcan, as the reason our oceans are so salinized is due to erosion of minerals by rainfall, carried from river to ocean. Salt in the ocean is also generated by submarine volcanic activity, which means either that the volcanoes on Vulcan (which we definitely know exist) somehow don’t produce salt, or the vast majority of the submarine volcanoes have been inactive for millions if not billions of years. The active volcanoes on Vulcan must be very far inland and/or Vulcan has almost no rivers, which given how hot the planet is, wouldn’t actually be too much of a stretch of the imagination.

Which means every single lifeform on T’Khasi, including Vulcans, evolved biosystems that exist without (or with very little) salt content. Any salt that exists would likely be deep beneath the planet’s surface, and within volcanoes.

No saltwater has a ton of consequences:

Plants (like underwater algae) are rarer and may not photosynthesize the same way Earth plants do, meaning less oxygen and more carbon dioxide, which means more greenhouse effect, which means higher temperatures.

The lack of salt would also mean less diverse plant life (at least as humans know it) and given the lack of visible rivers and vast swaths of desert on Vulcan, we can safely say vegetation must be hardier and infrequent.

Lower sea levels as the oceans would have lower density due to lack of salt.

Little to no water convection, which salt is crucial for on Earth. Which means warm ocean water doesn’t move to cold regions and vice versa. Creating extremes, the equator being obscenely hot, and polar waters freezing at the poles more extensively.

Lack of convection means more frequent and stronger storms like hurricanes.

If you thought the lack of a moon made Vulcan inhospitable, compound it with the low sodium factor and you’ve got a planet of even more severe extremes than before. The heat, and the decrease of plant diversity definitely explain why the vast majority of Vulcan is rocky desert, even being near the water poses more extreme dangers than it would on earth due to the increased frequency of hurricanes.

“Mr. Spock is much stronger than an ordinary human being.”

-Kirk, This Side of Paradise

I am almost 100% sure that Vulcan is either bigger or denser than Earth. Which would explain why Vulcans are so much stronger than Humans and other species that exist on similar gravity worlds.

Effects of a high-gravity planet or “Super-Earth” include:

Everything is shorter or has very strong foundations, plants, animals, structures, and people.

More “Armageddon” class asteroids would hit the planet (like the one that killed the dinosaurs and created the Gulf of Mexico)

Larger liquid mantle under the planet’s surface, higher pressure under the surface as well.

Weaker magnetic field due to lack of convection in the planet’s core (not to be confused with the mantle interacting with the planet’s crust). Which means a weaker atmosphere, lower magnetism in surface metals, and increased vulnerability to solar flares.

More volcanically and seismically active due the the increase in the mantle’s size and generated heat, more earthquakes, and more volcanic eruptions.

Would have to have a smaller sun but be closer in orbit to it than earth.

Extremely deep oceans, potentially with water under so much pressure at the bottom that it becomes solid like ice. Luckily Vulcan is not an ocean world, because the pressure would block the planet’s core from interacting with the atmosphere, which would prevent life as we know it from happening.

There is plenty of evidence for this on so many levels. We never see any plant life similar to trees on Vulcan. Nor animals significantly larger than Vulcans, the ones that are bigger are much more muscular. Vulcan’s sky is more red than blue because of the lack of oxygen molecules for the light from the sun to filter as blue. I actually headcanon that Spock is unusually tall for a Vulcan because of his human heritage (Leonard Nimoy was around 6ft tall) , and may have had heart and muscle problems in his teens and early adulthood while on Vulcan.

Perhaps Vulcans are the result of many more extinction level events than we are, contributing to their hardiness. Perhaps they are, evolutionarily, not too much older than we are, and had more incentive to develop extraterrestrial technology than we have, so that they could repel Armageddon Class meteors and defend their planet against Solar Flares? Space travel being born out of self-preservation rather than curiosity. Which would absolutely account for their attitudes in the beginning of Star Trek: Enterprise.

It could be that Vulcans still maintain a semi-nomadic lifestyle even today because their planet is so incredibly volatile. Unsentimental and utilitarian in anything less than the most sacred of architecture long before they adopted the teachings of Surak. Their own survival more valuable than any structure that would inevitably be damaged or destroyed by their planet’s harsh environment.

In summary, Vulcan is a Nightmare Planet because:

So, so many much natural disasters, like, so many, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, hurricanes, twisters, just, so many more than Earth.

Water is relegated to specific locations in the world rather than spread across it due to lack of flow and lower sea levels.

Extreme temperature changes, intense heat, intense cold, hard to breathe, stronger gravity.

Due to the planet’s hostility, there is a smaller diversity of life than we have here on earth, which means fewer and hardier food sources that, like Vulcans, are very difficult to kill.

So… How do they handle it? What features have they developed to adapt and thrive in such an inhospitable place?

First thing is first, lets talk about

BLOOD

“My hemoglobin is based on copper, not iron.”

-Spock, Obsession

Funny thing is Spock, it’s not hemoglobin at all! It’s hemocyanin! In fact, there are earth animals that have it, among them Horseshoe Crabs, crustaceans, mollusks and spiders!

Hemocyanin is blue when it hasn’t been exposed to oxygen, and blue-green when it has, according to some sources on Vulcans their blood is orangey red when unexposed to air and that’s why they have pink lips and so on, but we can brush that off as chemical variation within their hemocyanin. Better yet, maybe it’s trendy for Vulcans to wear pink lipstick nowadays, ‘cause Surak knows how horny Humans and Vulcans are for each other XD! Anyway!

Hemocyanin does quite a few things that our blood can’t, it’s uniquely built for high pressure, low oxygen environments, as well as endure temperature extremes like cold (not unlike nights on their planet). Not only that, but it coagulates and clots WAY faster than our blood. Which means wounds seal themselves off from harmful bacteria and stop bleeding much faster than hemoglobin. Pair that with the Vulcan ability to enter a healing torpor, no wonder Spock keeps surviving environments and wounds that would definitely have killed a human.

Now, the animals I listed don’t have veins, which for us carry oxygen around via hemoglobin, so it’s possible that the same difference that causes Vulcan blood to be a coppery orange-red beneath the skin, is the same reason they have veins. Allowing them to look more like us and lack the exoskeletons and deep ocean delving that their earth blood cousins have.

“The ship’s temperature is increasingly uncomfortable for me. I’ve adjusted the environment in my quarters to 125 degrees.”

-(Elderly) Spock, The Deadly Years

Oh goodie, the Vulcan blood temperature discourse has arrived, the age old question, are Vulcans warm-blooded or cold-blooded? The answer to this question is

YES

I am firmly in the small (but hopefully growing) camp Vulcans Are Heterothermic. Among the earth animals we know to be heterothermic are bumblebees, several species of bats, the opah fish, and the arctic ground squirrel. Of all these animals, despite the opposite temperature intensity of Vulcan’s environment, I’m basing how Vulcans function on the last one, the arctic squirrel.

Which means they can deliberately control their body temperature in accordance to the needs of their survival. I imagine, just as arctic ground squirrels can drop their body below zero as needed (entering what is called a “daily torpor”) Vulcans can do the same. In turn, they could possibly skyrocket their bodies to temperatures that would be a lethal fever for humans. Which makes both McCoy’s “nonexistent Vulcan metabolism” comments in various episodes, as well as describing his blood as “ice water” make sense. As well as Spock being able to handle the heightened body temperature caused by Henoch in “Return to Tomorrow”. It also explains why Spock was in far better shape than Bones in the freezing temperatures of the planet from “All Our Yesterdays”.

However, like arctic squirrel newborns, they start out as ectothermic (cold-blooded) which lends itself to the Vulcan infants needing even more skin to skin to survive than humans theory by @acesexualspock. Being born cold blooded would prevent them from immediately dying the second they were exposed to the dangerous extremes of Vulcan’s heat. I also think they slowly lose the ability to control their metabolic rate as they grow older, slowing down dramatically as they age, which is why Spock gets increasingly colder as he ages rapidly in “The Deadly Years”.

“The brightness of the Vulcan sun has caused the development of an inner eyelid.”

-Spock, Operation: Annihilate

I wanna thank @tribbleland for inspiring this part in particular.

I want to offer a special congratulations to furries people who let their love for anthro-cats bleed into their love for Vulcans, turns out Vulcans are very catlike! Like our feline Terran friends, Vulcans have what is called a Nicitating Membrane. It’s functions that would serve Vulcans well in their desert home include spreading moisture across the eye, protect the eye from small water and small debris (like sand for example), as well as protecting the eye from ultraviolet radiation, which is more or less what Spock said in that episode. Other animals that have Nicitating Membranes aside from felines is actually the majority of the animal kingdom, and primates (like us) are the exception and not the rule. I also subscribe to the idea that Vulcans have other desert dweller features like thick hair and eyelashes, sealable nostrils, big feet, a crepuscular sleep cycle (avoiding extreme midnight and midday temperatures), and a tough as nails digestive system!

As an added bonus fact since this section is pretty short: It makes purrfect sense for Vulcans to purr! In cats purring is an emotional regulator when they are angry or scared (Vulcans are ALL about regulating their emotions) as well as purring when they are happy. It is also a mechanism for healing themselves, their kittens, and their owners, the frequency at which cats purr (25-140 Hz) cover the same frequencies that are therapeutic for bone growth and fracture healing, pain relief, swelling reduction, wound healing, muscle growth and repair, tendon repair, and mobility of joints. I’m over here getting emotional about the mental image of like, Spock or Tuvok or smth sitting next to a wounded crewmember and just like, purring with a completely straight face and that is soft and just a little funny and I am emotionally compromised.

“And are it’s natives predatory?” “Not generally, but there have been exceptions.”

-Spock to Trelaine, The Squire of Gothos

Surprise! This isn’t just going to be about Vulcan dietary needs, it’s gonna be about animal behaviors and self-domestication as well! I was trying to think of herbivores that are capable of eating meat, and then this idea hit me like a bomb going of in my head-

Vulcans are like Hippos!

I don’t mean I think they used to be hippo-like (visually anyway) somewhere along the evolutionary line. I mean that they were probably big, extremely aggressive, pack roaming herbivores that are able to eat carrion when food is scarce. Have you ever seen a video of a group of Hippos smashing an alligator to smithereens? They kill more humans than any solitary predator on the African continent! What about a murder of crows killing a cat that injured one of them, or a group of bison saving a calf from a lion?! Herbivores can be insanely aggressive while still being social, plant-eating animals.

With that in mind, let’s talk about self-domestication! This is something that we humans (and to an extent, cats too) did way back in our biology according to some studies, we bred out aggression and bred in cooperativeness and curiosity. Cats, while partially domesticated by us, started looking for mates that were more sociable so that their offspring could exist closer to humans (and their food) as well as to tolerate other cats. While I do think Vulcans self-domesticated to a degree, I do not think they were able to do so nearly to the same extent as humans or our deliberately domesticated companions. Vulcan is a harsh, violent, and unforgiving planet, even more so than Earth, if Vulcans were naturally as friendly and curious as we Humans are now, they would not have survived as a species.

I believe this is why their emotions are so primal and strong, and things like Pon Farr and their unusually high wariness of the new and unexpected still exist so strongly. How do they live together in such high numbers and develop a functional society? They developed other means of coping as a work-around the impracticality of decreasing aggression!

“Call it a deep understanding of the way things happen to Vulcans.”

-Spock, The Immunity Syndrome

So, how do you have a species as aggressive, unforgiving, and frighteningly strong as Vulcans keep from completely destroying itself (aside from Surak’s teachings)? You take the empathy that humans already have, turn it up to 11, and tack on every evolutionary possibility to increase it. We already know how the Earth comparisons for Vulcan empathy: the extreme vitality of touch for the survival and emotional stability, cats purring to heal each other and themselves (and regulate emotions), nonverbal communication, the ancestral instincts of an infant animal being able to walk days after its born. What if we had all of these traits in remarkable spades, Vulcans certainly seem to! (Be prepared, the science starts getting a little squidgy because there are no real world comparisons and neurology research is very jargon heavy)

Electricity is a fundamental part of the biology of nearly all living things, it allows synapses to fire, regulates our internal organs, and gives us our senses of touch and movement. Skin to skin is so incredibly vital to the survival of infants, and the emotional stability for adults, that needing any more touch could be impractical and counterintuitive. So what if we got more from less? What if our sense of touch, and the acuteness of being able to read the emotions of others from body language and touch manifested as a form of what looks like from an outsider’s perspective, telepathy!

Now what if the radius of the sensation of touch could be extended much farther, say being able to sense someone to the same intensity I described in the last paragraph, like, through a wall or from across a room? What if you could connect to other lifeforms with the same ability like a chain circuit that could connect a whole species together in one giant circuitboard? I just described what Vulcans call the kwar’ma’khon, the telepathic energy that connects all Vulcans to each other!

Imagine having this same intense telepathic connection to someone for an extended period of time, like a t’hy’la or Bond Mate. What if you had a relatively easy to master non-lethal attack against other members of your species, that comes to you easily due to your intrinsic understanding of nerves and touch, like the Vulcan Nerve Pinch. In turn, what if, through the intensity of this connection you could transfer everything you knew and saw and felt to another person in the event of your death. That way, if you survived the harshness of your world without dying violently or unexpectedly, you could deliberately pass on that knowledge and those instincts to your next of kin, like the Katra. (thanks @distractedducky @spacedancer1701 & @find-me-in-outer-space)

Now, that’s A LOT of empathy on top of A LOT of aggression, if you don’t have a work around for any of these, as a species you’d be rendered a complete emotional wreck pretty much 24/7 (or whatever the time cycles for Vulcan are). Which is where @ineffablebuddies theory that Vulcans can control, or at least mitigate their incredibly strong emotional reactions the same way they control their nervous system and metabolic rate. Which is how they are able to be touch telepathic, able to enter a torpor at will, and be heterothermic in the first place. The only reason Vulcans come off as unemotional to us is because we simply do not see and feel the way that they can. Unlike us, because of their ability to control their own internal chemistry, if they follow Surak’s teachings and/or Syrranite ideology, they can take that emotional regulation to the extreme.

(BIG EXHALE) Congratulations on getting through this insanely long post! I hope you enjoyed it, if you want sources on any of my non-tumblr post research just let me know in the notes. LLAP! 💚🖖🏻💚

[boldlyvoid]

Amethyst you so much

Summary: Spencer has had a crush on Y/N since she started working at the bau. She only ever works the night shift after a case, handling all the aftermath gracefully. one night, Spencer stays back and they strike up a conversation about rocks, causing their feelings to dig a little deeper.

Warnings: pure fluff, weed mention, hurt/comfort, grief and mourning

Word Count: 6.4K

Read on Ao3

Late nights at the office had become his thing since Gideon left.

He couldn’t bring himself to go home some nights without a game of chess, a cup of coffee, and the ambiance of the post case staff working. He would’ve had no idea about what goes on after they close a case if he didn’t stay behind most nights.

The phone rings almost every 10 minutes, and it’s always answered by the sweetest voice. The fax machine never turns off, and the most beautiful girl in the world is always running around placing papers in different places.

He’s been smitten with her since she started here, 2 years ago. Never seeing much of her since she was switched to the night shift, always wanting to just watch her from afar, never speaking to her unless he needed to.

“Yes, again we are so sorry for the door,” he can hear her voice from the back corner of the room. “Agent Morgan will be paying for that out of his paycheck, don’t worry, Mr. Kennings. We’ll be sure to remember your hotel when we’re in the area again. The FBI has a very generous budget for overnight cases. Of course, you have a good night too.”

She hung the phone up harshly and let out a deep sigh. He turned around to see her face in her arms, resting against the desk. She looked done, completely fed up. He would be too.

She looked up then, noticing that he was making eye contact with her. She awkwardly smiled and waved at him, “sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry,” Spencer replied. “We asked for the key, I should have stopped him from kicking it in.”

She laughed then, walking over to his desk so she didn’t have to yell across the room. She sat on the corner of his desk lightly, “why do you stay every night?”

“Oh, um,” he wasn’t prepared for this. She had never talked to him before. She was barely able to even look at him when she used to place papers on his desk 2 years ago, now she was on his desk.

“I don’t like to bring the work home with me, it’s better to destress here before I go to my apartment,” he answered, half honestly.

She nodded slightly, “I get it. Luckily I go home in the mornings so the sun helps me feel better.”

“Going home in the dark isn’t fun,” she lightly smiled up at her.

“Do you want a coffee or anything?” She asked softly, “seeing as I am still your assistant as long as you’re here?”

He laughed lightly, “I would, but I’d like to join you in the staff room for it?”

“Okay,” she stood, straightening out her shirt as he stood as well.

He held the doors open for her, letting her walk out first, still smiling as she waited in the hall for him. Never being anything less than 1 foot from him for some reason, and he didn’t mind in the slightest.

“Do you like your job?” He asked lightly.

“Oh yeah,” she laughed. “It’s like customer service on crack. Have you ever had to explain to someone why you can’t pay for the cracked foundation after Agent Morgan’s ransacked a place?”

“I honestly never thought of who has to deal with the aftermath,” he awkwardly admitted to her. “I’m so sorry.”

She couldn’t stop laughing as they entered the kitchen, “it’s fine. I never have to apologize on your behalf, it’s everyone else who seems to be reckless. Sometimes I feel like it would be better if I came along to babysit.”

“That would be helpful,” he smiled softly as she entered the staff room.

He watched as she took a new coffee filter out of the cupboard. Emptying the coffee pot with ease, rinsing everything before adding the water and scooping in the grounds. He was mesmerized by how fast she was able to do it, then again it was sort of her job.

“What mug would you like?” She turned to him with a smile that made his heart skip a beat.

“Um, the purple one, if it’s there?”

“You really like purple, huh?” She teased him, standing on her tippy-toes to reach the mug for him.

She placed it on the counter before grabbing a white mug, it had a bumblebee on it, “bee happy” written along the top. It was perfect for her.

“Purple is a stress-reducing colour,” she explained. “When I was a kid my parents painted my room purple so that I’d sleep better.”

“I’ve always been drawn to it.”

She leaned against the counter while the coffee pot started to percolate, “Probably because of your anxiety, coffee doesn’t help that.”

“It’s in my DNA to be like this,” he tried to joke, knowing he succeeded when her smile crept back onto her face.

He was on a mission to keep seeing it.

“For someone who spends a lot of time with dead bodies, creepy places and bad people, you sure are a mousy little thing aren’t you?” She teased him.

“I also love Halloween, go figure.” He’s not sure where the confidence came from, being able to make light-hearted jokes like this was only easy with the team.

Which she technically was a part of. He’s seen her almost every single day for 3 years, slowly being able to get comfortable enough for this very moment.

“What else are you into, outside of here?” She asked honestly, making his heart swell as no one else had ever asked him before.

“Lots of things,” he sighed. “I love to read, I’ll read anything. But mostly I enjoy far-off worlds. Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, Doctor Who, Sherlock mostly.”

“No supernatural?” She gasped. “Sacrilege, honestly. What kind of nerd are you if you don't support supperwholock?”

“That's the show with the monster hunting brothers right?” He tried to recall it to his mind.

She nodded with a pressed-lipped smile, “it’s bad but in a way where I can’t stop watching every Thursday, they just introduced an angel who is pretty gay. Star Trek is cool too, I guess, I was raised by Trekkies.”

“My mom was into Doctor Who.”

“Mamma’s boy,” she teased him slightly, returning her focus to the coffee as she poured the now finished brew into their mugs. “She was nice when she came in that one time, I made her a very sweet coffee just like yours.”

He reached for the sugar then, poring a generous amount into his mug with a grin, “how much do you like?”

“the same amount,” she couldn’t help but laugh. “I hate the taste of coffee, but it keeps me awake.”

He poured the sugar into her mug as she places a spoon in each. Allowing him to stir his own before picking it up finally. Holding the warm ceramic in his hands, it was almost as warm as the feeling in his chest when he looked at her.

He’s felt it for a long time. He’s been caught staring at her by Derek, JJ even tried to get him to give her his number. Which she already had for when she calls him into work in the middle of the night. They knew he had a crush, he did too. He just didn’t know what to do about it.

“Come to my desk, I want to show you something?” She asked softly, avoiding eye contact as she walked towards the door.

He followed, like a lost puppy, all the way back to her desk. It was always neat, he always looked at it when he made his way up the stairs to the briefing room. He could even see it from where he sat at the table sometimes. Always wanting to see her leave in the mornings.

She had a collection of rocks that always changed, he loved the blue one the most but it wasn’t there currently. She had all new ones since the last time he looked.

“Here,” she hands him one. It’s brown and gold, the colours moving and shifting as he turns it with his fingers. The gold running through it like a beautiful wave.

“what’s this for?”

“It’s a Tiger’s eye, for good luck and happiness,” she smiled. “Keep it at your desk and maybe it’ll be easier for you to relax when you come back?”

The butterflies in his chest were swirling then as she looked up at him with pleading eyes. Wanting him to take it, wanting him to feel better. Caring for him.

“Thank you,” he barely whispers, clearing his throat softly. “It’s very nice of you.”

“You’re always nice to me, so,” she shrugged.

They sat down then, he dragged his chair from his desk over to hers. Sitting in close as she explained all the meanings to her rocks. He listened carefully, getting to examine each one as she spoke.

“This one is Jade, it’s for balancing emotions and allowing compassion so I don’t scream at everyone on the phone,” she laughed as she placed one in his hands. Her fingers brushing his palm softly.

It was a beautiful green stone with a thin white line running through it, separating into 3 directions as he flipped it over, “it’s beautiful.”

“I know some people don’t believe in this stuff,” she started to get embarrassed as she placed them all back on the shelf. “But I’ve always thought; if the moon, which is just a rock, can control the water, and humans are 70% water, then who’s to tell me the moon cycles don’t control my emotions and these smaller rocks can’t help problem areas?”

“You’re not wrong,” he shook his head softly as he thought her words over. “People depended on the stars and planets for guidance originally, as well as rocks and herbs for healing, just because it’s outdated doesn’t mean it doesn’t work?”

“Thank you,” she smiled. “No one has ever agreed with me that easily.”

“Anytime you want to talk, I’ll just be over there,” he pointed at his desk. “And I’m a phone call away?” He swallowed sharply at his boldness, trying to stay calm as he awaited her answer.

“I do have your number,” she smiled, reaching out to place her hand on his. “But you should go home, I’m sure you’re chilled out now.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, staring at her hand as they touched. He lightly wrapped his hand around hers, holding it slightly, running his thumb over her knuckles. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“And every day after,” she whispered, tilting her head as she smiled at him.

This was going to be interesting.

—

Penelope was always dragging him out. She would take him shopping, to dinner, to the movies. She was like his big sister, dedicated to making sure he wasn’t always cooped up or trying to retreat into a fantasy life.

She kept him busy.

She had 4 bags in her hands as they walked down the street, peering into the store windows to see what else she could possibly be interested in taking home for someone. That’s when they passed the natural health store.

He stopped in his tracks, seeing all the different rocks on the wall accompanies by little cards that described how they could help. He opened the door and rushed inside before Penelope even noticed he stopped following her.

“Good afternoon!” The shop owner called out to him. “How can I assist you today?”

“Um, the girl I like has a rock collection,” he says softly, knowing Penelope is behind him listening. “Crystals more specifically, I’d like to get her some?”

“Well, you came to the right place,” the man beams, escorting him to the wall of rocks. “What is she like?”

“Wonderful,” the words are carried out of his mouth on a sigh as he thinks about her. “She’s confident and nice, and caring. She’s always positive and just so lovely.”

“I’ve got you,” the man starts picking rocks off the wall and placing them in his hands.

Spencer follows him to the desk where he lays down a handful of rocks, Penelope is shockingly quiet as she stands beside him, staring at the collection. She’ll be full of questions later, all of which he is terrified of.

“This is a rose quartz, pretty basic love, beauty, anti-depression stone,” he pushes the pink and a green rock towards him. “Serpentine is for new adventures, observation and insight. I have a feeling you’re up for an adventure with her?”

Spencer nodded enthusiastically, “I like that one. It would be better to get her some rare ones, some that have to do with friendship, new beginnings, or opportunities?” He tried to explain his feelings as best as he could. Not knowing if he sounded dumb for a change.

The man smiled wide, “here,” he dipped below the counter and dug out a box. “Chrysocolla is literally for new beginnings, love and opportunity.”

He hands Spencer a vitreous, raw blue stone with small green marks running all through it, it’s beautiful like her. “This is perfect.”

“I’ll throw in a Kiwi Jasper as well, it’s for being by someone's side, support and trust. As well as a Ruby in Zoisite it symbolizes finding the joy in life with someone,” he hands Spencer two equally beautiful stones, prepping a bag and wrappings for all of them.

Spencer lays out the 5 stones he picked out, watching him wrap them with care before placing them in a bag. He rings everything up, Spencer pays and before he’s even out the door Penelope is pouncing on him for answers.

“Who?!”

He can't help but blush and stutter, trying to brush past her and continue walking down the street. “You can’t hide forever Spencer, who is she?”

“How do you know it’s a she?”

“You literally said so?” She looks at him like he’s an idiot. “Come on? I won't tell anyone!”

“Y/N.”

The gears are turning in Penelope's head as she tries to place a face to the name, knowing she’s seen her somewhere, “From the office?”

He nods softly, “the one Derek bullies me for staring at?” He clues her in more as they walk.

“He also bullies her for staring at you,” she adds with a smile. “She’s going to love those, when are you going to give them to her?”

“I was thinking about just leaving one on her desk every day? Maybe with a note for why I picked it?” He really wants to woo her, she’s too special to just flirt with.

“She’s going to love that.”

—

Sure enough, he walked into work every day for the next week, placing a rock on a sticky note on her desk. He was never around when she was able to see it, only knowing she got it when he'd arrive at work the next morning with a note reading 'thank you ♥︎ ' on top of his files.

He thinks about her all weekend, planning how he'll give her the last rock as he takes the elevator up that morning. Only to see her sitting at her desk, phone pressed to her ear as she tried to talk someone out of suing the FBI, she looked absolutely miserable. Just a casual Monday morning for her, almost at the end of her shift.

He rushed over to his desk, putting all his stuff down to dig one of the rocks from his satchel. Picking the Kiwi Jasper for today, he grabbed a pen and a sticky note and wrote her a little note.

“Always here if you need to talk, -Spencer ♥︎”

He walked over to her desk, she was still talking so she didn’t notice him until he was right there, she looked up at him with a thankful smile.

“Yes sir,” she answered the person talking to her. “Can I call you back after I speak to the chief? thanks.” She hung up on him, turning all her attention to Spencer.

“I know you know it's been me leaving these, but I brought you in another one,” he says softly, placing the rock in her hand and sticking the note to the shelf where it would end up.

“oh my gosh, Spencer?” She placed her free hand on her heart as she looked at the rock.

“You looked upset?”

She stands and pulls him into a hug, he can feel all the eyes on him as he holds her back, letting his chin rest on her shoulder as she squeezes him.

“Thank you,” she whispered as she pulled back, awkwardly smiling at him as she also noticed everyone staring.

“Always,” he smiled back, hand still resting on her arm. “Um, I have a case I need to get to.”

“Of course, good luck,” she smiled.

He pulls the tiger's eye out of his shirt pocket, showing her that he still had it, “kinda hard not to have good luck with this.”

She bit back a smile, her eyes gleaming as she took a deep breath through her nose. Releasing the same feelings he was keeping inside, allowing both their butterflies to swarm out together.

—

He loved when they had cases in Virginia. Being able to stay in the bullpen and work was relaxing, it was easier to think where he felt safe.

He was working on the geo profile all alone, a huge map stretched across a clear case board as he laid a yardstick across it. Drawing a thick red line with marker over it, in his own little world as he worked away.

He doesn’t realize she’s standing there too until she’s lightly pressing her hand on his back.

“Hey,” she whispers softly. “It’s 10 pm, thought you’d like a coffee?” She places the purple mug on his desk with her purse, turning her attention back to what he’s doing.

“Thank you, I’m almost done here,” he says softly, finishing the red triangle he was making on the map.

“I’ve always found it fascinating how you do this,” she complimented him. “You’re so careful.”

“Like baking, it’s an exact science,” he smiled softly.

It made her giggle slightly, placing her hand back on his back as she moved in closer to look. He wanted her to stay there forever, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to focus. He tried his best to steady his hand as he finished the line.

Putting the yardstick back down and turning to her, she doesn’t move her hand, instead, softly moving to rest on his arm as she stands close to him. “How are you?”

He feels nervous for some reason, it’s not like she hasn’t been this close to him before. It’s just that she’s close and she smells wonderful and he wonders if her lips would be a better wake-up call than the coffee she brought.

He realizes he’s staring at her lips when he licks his own, “I’m good,” he furrows his brow and clears his throat with a nod.

She smirks at him, “how come you’re the only one still here? Hotch said it could wait till tomorrow?”

“I was waiting for you,” he admits, “but I got carried away setting this up, I never heard you come in?”

“Cause I didn’t,” she scrunches her nose slightly as she straightens her stance. “I saw you working hard and went right to get you a coffee.”

“You’re wonderful,” he blushes as the words slip out, trying his best to keep eye contact when all he wants to do is kiss her.

She pats his arm slightly as she backs up a little, grabbing her bag from where she set it on his desk. “I’m going to set up for the night, come talk to me before you leave?”

“Of course,” he says as she walks away, letting out a small sigh as he realizes just how badly he wants her.

He never gets to talk to her before he leaves, she’s on the phone when hotch comes storming in. Saying something about another body and making Reid leave with him. He’s busy for 3 days straight, thinking about her with every free thought he’s able to squeeze in.

He carries the rock from her in his pocket everywhere he goes; in his pants beside his keys, in his bag with his books, in his breast pocket, over his heart, behind a bulletproof vest. Feeling it press against his chest, a part of her keeping him safe where ever he went.

They finish the case with minimal damage, Spencer specifically making sure that Derek leaves all the doors on the hinges for Y/N’s sake, cleaning up any messes they make so she won’t have to hear about it over the phone. They all notice that he’s doing it for her, quietly appreciating the fact that Spencer is happy for a change, that there’s a glimmer of hope in his eyes again.

He arrives back at Quantico 30 minutes before her shift starts. Everyone else is packing up for the day while he sits at his desk, reading to occupy the time before she comes in.

Only she doesn’t.

30 minutes pass and she’s nowhere to be seen, it’s only 9:02 by the time he starts to panic. Wondering if she’s okay, hoping she’s just in the elevator or grabbing a coffee that’s actually good, somewhere outside of the office.

“Reid,” he hears Hotch calling him from his office door. “She just called in, her grandmother passed away last night so she won't be in.”

“Oh,” he furrows his brow, looking at him with confusion. “How did you know?”

“Penelope,” he smiles. “She’s still here too, and she knows where Y/N lives.”

“It wouldn’t be weird to go see if she’s okay?”

Hotch just smiles at him again, “go see her, Reid.”

Getting her address from Penelope felt a little weird, but she writes it on a sticky note for him and he’s out the door before she can even pry into what he’s going to say. Which is good, because he doesn’t know yet.

It’s late, but he stops by the little rock store on his way to her house. Seeing the lights still on and the same man from before behind the counter.

“Welcome back,” he’s overly cheerful for it being so late. “How did she like them?”

“She likes the ones I’ve given her so far,” he smiles, looking over the wall himself this time for the right one.

Scanning past every emotion and affirmation known to man as he looked around, picking out a beautiful pink Rhodonite for healing grief, supposedly acting as a hug from emotional troubles. And a Rainbow Moonstone for inner peace, harmony and strength.

“She’s lost someone recently?” He asks as Spencer places them on the counter.

“Her grandmother,” he says softly. “These are good, right?”

“They’ll be perfect, we also have amethyst bracelets, they’re good for healing and drawing in positive energy,” he points towards the small display of bracelets. Small purple stones separated with small gold beads.

He picks up 2 of them, placing them on the counter as well.

“Is she still just a crush?”

Spencer laughs lightly, “unfortunately.”

“She might be more after this,” he smirks, ringing him up. “I’ll give you a 2 for one deal on everything, I have a feeling you’ll be in a lot.”

Spencer thanks him as he pays, picking out a small purple bag for the rocks and bracelet. Placing one on his own wrist before leaving. Also picking up some cookie dough ice cream and a card at the corner store just beside her apartment. Remembering all the times Penelope, JJ or Emily has mentioned it being the best ice cream for crying.

He takes a very deep breath before knocking on her door, hoping to every god out there that she doesn’t find this incredibly inappropriate and weird.

“Spencer?” He hears her voice before she even opens the door, looking out the peephole at him.

She whips the door open, eyes puffy and swollen as she looks at him in shock. She’s in a big sweater and shorts, tears dripping down her cheeks as she shakes her head at him.

“I thought you could use some cheering up?” He awkwardly smiles, holding the ice cream up for her to see.

She wraps her arms around his middle, burying her face against his coat. Still crying as she holds him, he holds her with his free hand, shushing her as he presses his cheek to her head.

She pulls back with a sniffle, “come in,” she offers with an arm out, ushering him inside the small room as she closes the door.

He takes his shoes off, handing her the ice cream so he can take off his coat and satchel too. “This isn’t weird right?”

“Not at all,” she laughs slightly through the awkwardness. “You don’t know how much it means to me that you care this much.”

“I brought something for you,” he says as he struggles to dig everything out of his pocket.

He hands her the card and the little purple bag, seeing the overwhelming glance grow on her face. Her eyes grew wide as he mouth opened, speechless.

She opened the card first, reading the passage about grief that was already provided. Dealing with grief was something Spencer knew too well, adding something a little special to the bottom of the card.

“To live in hearts we left behind is not to die,” -Thomas Campbell. As long as you remember her, with a smile on your face and love in your heart, she will always be with you ♥︎ Spencer

She wipes her tears with her forearm, placing the card on the counter beside the ice cream before she opens the bag. She pulls out the bracelet first, absolute shock on her face.

“Spencer?” Is all she can say, in a high squeak as she shakes her head at him.

“I didn’t want you to be sad,” he says softly, stepping into her space and placing a hand on her arm. “I love seeing you smile, and I thought this could help.

He takes the bracelet from her grasp and places it over her hand. Resting it on her wrist softly, straightening it out against her sweater as she notices the matching on over his shirt sleeve.

“Oh this is so cute,” she swoons. “thank you, really Spencer.”

“And there are some rocks for grief healing in there too, one is supposedly like an emotional hug which should heal the grief and sorrow, and the other is more for inner peace and harmony,” he rambles away, not wanting her to miss anything.

She pours the rocks from the bag, into her hand, looking them over silently with a smile, “they’ll look great on my desk.”

“The purple looks nice on you too,” he compliments her, watching her eyes drift up to him.

She places the rocks on the counter before wrapping her arms around him once more. This time he’s able to actually hold her back, tight as possible as he rubs his hand over her back.

She smells like home, clean laundry and happiness. She’s soft and warm, he holds her perfectly against his chest, like she was a missing puzzle piece that someone finally found under the table, she fits into his life like she was supposed to be there.

She kisses his cheek softly before she pulls back, causing him to pull her into a real kiss on impulse. Connecting their lips as she sighs into the contact, melting into his grasp as she kisses him back.

Her lips are soft, fitting between his own gently as she breathes him in. Her hands reach up to grip his cheeks, kissing him again and again, placing pecks to his lips and cheeks with her eyes closed as he giggles.

“Thank you,” she whispers against his lips, “for everything.”

“I’d do anything for you,” he whispers back, kissing her one last time before she pulls away.

“I was actually about to smoke some weed on the fire escape and probably cry some more,” she laughs lightly. “would you like to join me?”

“I’ll stick with a bowl of ice cream,” he smiled awkwardly.

“Nice one,” she laughs as she opens the ice cream.

“What?”

“Oh, you didn’t even get the reference you made,” she laughs lightly, “to get high you smoke a bowl, so…”

It makes him smile, “I'm a comedian part-time.”

He makes her laugh again, loving the sound of her giggle replacing the tears. “Why aren’t you this funny at work?”

He thinks about it for a little, watching her scoop the ice cream into two bowls, “it’s a little hard to make jokes when people's lives are on the line, I know everyone else does but I get too focused.”

“They probably wouldn’t appreciate your jokes even if you did make them,” she says as she handed him a bowl with a spoon. “They’re kind of mean to you, in a family way but it still sucks sometimes to overhear.”

She walks into the living area then, grabbing a few blankets and opening the window to the fire escape. Crawling out to sit on the ledge, waiting for him.

“I don’t mind it,” he says as he finally sits down beside her.

She places the blanket over their laps, both of them sitting criss-cross applesauce as they ate.

“Do you like your job?” She asks him, just like he once asked her.

“Most of the time,” he nodded as he got brain freeze. The cold air, the cold ice cream, everything that was catching up to him as he scrunched his face up at the feeling.

She laughs at him only a bit before she’s also attacked by the brain freeze, holding the vein in her neck as she chokes out another laugh, trying to warm up the blood going to her head so the pain would stop.

They’re both just a mess of giggles together, unable to say any words as they let it all out. She leans her head on his shoulder lightly as they calm down to just soft chuckles. He presses his cheek against her head.

“Thank you, Spencer,” it sounds like she’s crying a bit. “My grandma was a lovely woman, she’d be glad I’m laughing right now.”

He reached out a hand for her to hold over the blanket. She interlocked their fingers softly, both cold from holding their ice cream bowls.

“If she was anything like you, I’m sure she was the most wonderful woman,” he says softly, not intending to make her cry but having a feeling he might.

“Would you be interested in holding me on the couch while I cry?” She asked softly, tears in her eyes as she looked up at him.

“Whatever you need, I’m here for you.”

—

He’s late for work the next morning.

Waking up to the smell of coffee, opening his eyes to a strange view. He’s on a couch he doesn’t recognize in a room he doesn’t know too well.

Then he remembers, they ended up cuddled up on the couch. He wakes up to the memory of her on his chest, crying softly as they listened to some music, he ran his hand over her back while she went through it all, blessed to have his support.

He fell asleep under her at some point, waking up alone with a blanket laid over him. He sat up to see her in the kitchen, pouring coffee into a travel mug.

“Good, you’re awake,” she smiles at him. “Coffee is ready, I uh, I have this button-up shirt from a guy friend, if you wanted to wear that to work today? So they don’t think you stayed here?”

“That’s smart,” he replies as he rubs the sleep out of his eyes.

Getting up, he uses the bathroom, changes and takes that coffee from her. He’s not expecting her to kiss him on the lips at the door, but she sends him off to work like an old housewife.

He doesn’t want to pull away from her, keeping her pressed against him as he leans in for 4 more kisses before she finally pushes him out into the hallway with a laugh, “get to work!”

“Fine,” he sighs, “are you going to be in tonight?”

“Yeah,” she smiles, “funeral is in West Virginia next week, so I’ll be in until then.”

“I’ll see you later?”

She nods slightly with a soft smile, “you’ll be seeing a lot of me soon, Spencer.”

“Good,” he winks at her before heading down the hallway and towards the street entrance.

He sighs as he walks outside, resting his back against the apartment complex door, taking a moment to think about everything that just happened, the night of company and the wonderful send-off.

It was something he could get used to.

He rushes into the briefing room when he arrives at Quantico, sitting down with his coffee and pretending he wasn’t late. Listening carefully to JJ’s presentation of the case as he flips through everything he missed already.

“Wheels up in 30,” he heard Hotch say as he zoned back in. “Nice of you to join us, Reid.”

“I know that travel mug from somewhere,” Derek said as he stared at Spencer, who was taking a sip to avoid the awkwardness.

“Hmm?” He played dumb.

“That’s Y/N’s. She washes it every morning when she leaves to go home, I see her do it every morning,” his eyes open wide. “Holy shit.”

“Isn’t that the same tie and slacks from yesterday?” Emily teased him as well.

“Her grandma died, I brought her ice cream and slept on the couch okay?” He all but yelled, flailing his arms slightly so they’d all back off.

Derek reached his fist out for him to pound it, “good man.”

Then Penelope noticed the bracelet, “did she get you that?”

He sunk his hand into his pocket then, “no.”

“What?” Emily and JJ asked in unison, straining their necks to try and get a good look at what she was talking about.

He nervously held his arm out for them, showing them the purple bracelet resting over the sleeve of his shirt. “I got one for her too, it’s for healing and peace. It’s what she needs right now.”

“Oh, so you love her,” Derek smiles as he teases him. Making everyone else in the room swoon slightly.

“Okay and?”

“Oh my god!” Most of them shout at him, embarrassing him to no end. He was so glad she wasn’t at work this morning or else she would be able to hear this from her desk.

“Did you kiss her?” Rossi pries, asking what everyone else was thinking.

He scrunches his face, pushing his glasses up slightly as he clears his throat, “a few times.”

“Is she your girlfriend?” JJ kept the questions coming.

“Not yet,” he said softly. “Kinda weird to walk into her apartment while she cries to say ‘hey sorry about the death in your family, want to date me?’”

“Yeah,” Emily agrees, shrugging lightly. “At least she knows you like her now, it’s been what? 2 years?”

“2 years, 3 months, 17 days and 43 minutes,” he confirms with a small nod and pressed lips.

“Gross,” Derek teases him.

“The plane is leaving in 10 minutes,” Hotch cut into their fun.

Making them all gather their things and continue the interrogation in the elevator, and eventually on the plane, and in the police precinct. Even Penelope called him in the middle of everything to bug him about her.

The questions were never-ending, everyone wanted to know how they even started talking, who made the first move, how he plans to ask her out. They were relentless, he almost regretted admitting to anything.

They bug him all throughout the day, all the way until they’re arriving back at the BAU late that same night. He almost doesn’t want to go back to the bullpen and see her with all of them, knowing they were going to follow and say something.

She’s waiting in the hall when the elevator doors open, a pressed-lipped smile on her face, “bad news.”

“Another one?” Hotch sighs, “have Garcia send us the info. Be at the table in 10.” He pushes his way out of the elevator, passed them all as they stare at Y/N.

“Hi?” She awkwardly waves at them all, showing off the bracelet on her wrist.

“See ya, Spence,” JJ and Emily say as they matt his shoulder, dragging Derek and Rossi towards the bullpen doors.

“Sorry,” he apologizes for them softly, stepping into her space.

She wraps him up in a quick hug, keeping one arm around his waist as she guides him towards the bullpen, “it’s fine, they’re going to have to get used to us being together.”

“Together?” He repeats her words.

“I only cry on my boyfriend's shoulders, if you're up for the title?” She teases him softly, pinching his side as they walk towards the doors.

“Can I frame “Dr. Spencer Reid, Y/N’s boyfriend” beside my Ph.D.’s?” He keeps his hand on her shoulder, holding each other slightly as they walk towards her desk. He felt like one of those kids who wouldn’t let go of their girlfriend's hand in the school hallway, attached to her at the hip.

“I’ll make one for you while you’re gone,” she laughs lightly.

They stop at her desk where he sees all rocks he got her collecting on the shelf, as well as a cup of coffee and his favourite kind of donut.

“Thought you deserved something nice too,” she says as she nudges his side.

He kisses her on the cheek as a thank you, “you’re welcome,” she smiles to herself. A feeling of pride growing in both their chests.

“See you later?” He asks as he picks up the coffee and donut, walking away slowly as she smiles at him.

“Come home to me safely, Doctor Reid,” her voice is just loud enough for everyone in the briefing room, where everyone is waiting at the window, watching them, deciding to put on a show in return.

He stops on the steps to look at her softly, “I’d fight a thousand unsubs to come home to you.”

“I’ll leave the light on,” she blows a kiss at him, making him blush a deep red.

He waves, making his way up the steps and into the briefing room. A smile on his face, heart thumping in his chest, all the support in the world swarming around him as everyone patted him on the back.

That tiger’s eye really did bring him good luck and happiness, and her name was Y/N.

[letteredlettered]

Do you have any complaints about HP canon, and if so, what are they? For example I know a lot of people really dont like that Draco didnt get a redemption arc, but your work seems to really thrive off of a close reading of canon Draco in a way I think a lot of fanfic just cant because hes like... a very bad person. Its made me wonder if you are very... canon positive? I guess? Or more positive than most, maybe.

I have too many complaints about HP canon to list in an ask, but I can try to list some of them. First I want to say that choosing to use canon to inform your fic has less to do with whether or not you like the canon and more to do with what you like or want from fanfic. If you don’t like that Draco wasn’t redeemed, you can write a fic that posits he is redeemed and so that canon doesn’t have to be dealt with. Or, you can write a fic that shows how he gets redeemed or deals with the fact of his redemption to show what canon could have been. I obviously prefer the latter style, though I respect anyone’s choice to write in the former style. I can’t say I always understand the former style, but I respect the fact that people want to do it and should if that’s what they want.

I will say that I’m not sure I’ve ever written a fic that’s fully canon compliant, and I can’t quite imagine wanting to. Most of my fics a response to canon--they’re about something that wasn’t in canon, that I wish was in canon; or they’re about something that wasn’t in canon, and I don’t want to be in canon, but I still want to be explored. I wish the MCU would actually deal with the responsibility of wielding outsized power of destruction, so I wrote MCU fics. I do not want Schitt’s Creek to deal with the darkness of David Rose’s trauma or past, but I was still interested in it, so I wrote darker SC fic. I love Star Trek TOS, but I want to see Kirk and Spock hook up, so I wrote TOS fic.

There are a few things where I like the canon just the way it is, so I don’t write fic for it. Rainbow Rowell’s Carry On series is just what I want. I don’t need to write fic.

Back to my complaints with HP canon, the major problem I had was a lot of set up without the follow-through I expected or desired. I discussed that in my tumblr posts about Ron and Ginny. The set up of the Harry Potter universe is rather black and white, which I appreciate--it’s easy to get invested; it’s easy to consume. You know who the good guys are right away, and there’s no more complication. LOTR is rather like that, and I love it. But then HP begins to deconstruct its premise--James Potter was good, but he wasn’t kind. Dumbledore was trying to stop Voldemort, but he wasn’t honest. Snape is a horrible person, but he’s trying to do the right thing. This is my favorite sort of story, the one that starts black and white--vampires are evil; the robots will kill us, and the Gems that didn’t rebel are the enemy. Then a vampire earns his soul, or you find out you’re a robot, or--well, actually I didn’t like where Stephen Universe really went with that, but you get the picture. The Harry Potter series began the process of turning its own premise inside out, but somewhere in Halfblood Prince, that got too hard, and things began to snap back to their original shape. Good is good, actually, and bad people will always be bad.

One example of this is the death of Voldemort. Harry is set up as a mirror to Voldemort. Their pasts are very similar. Harry even feels compassion for Voldemort. At several different points, Harry is faced with the fact that he has to kill Voldemort. But Harry never has to deal with killing Voldemort, or with making a decision to spare Voldemort. In the end, Voldemort causes his own end as a result of his own destructive tendencies. This makes me feel that the text is suggesting that Voldemort deserves death. The idea that anyone “deserves” death for bad things they’ve done is not something I believe in or ascribe to. But even if it is the argument the text wants to make--what was the point of showing us that Tom Riddle was lonely, hurt, feared, and probably mistreated? The point really appears to be to show that two boys can have the same background and one turns out good while the other turns out bad, because goodness is inherent to some people while evil is inherent to others. I find this conclusion abhorrent, but I feel the conclusion is ultimately borne out by plenty of other aspects of the HP books.

The other example is Draco’s lack of redemption. I do not think villains have to be redeemed. The world has proven that shitty people can remain shitty. I also appreciate stories that show us the humanity of shitty people. A story about someone who is faced with thier bad choices but continues to make bad choices because they’re too afraid to do otherwise can be a good story. But I guess with Draco, I felt like I saw enough of his inner turmoil to understand why his heart would change, but not a thorough explanation of why it wouldn’t. Combined with many other similar characterizations in HP canon, it just feels like more essentialism--bad people are bad, and that’s how it is. I don’t mean there’s no nuance--as I said, the series does begin to deconstruct its own premise; we even saw how the Trio could be shitty. But ultimately they make the right choices. The characters who make the wrong choices generally continue to make them, except for Snape and Dudley. My complaint with those two representing a change of heart is that we don’t get to see the actual painful process of what that looks like--Snape’s happens pre-canon and there is too little of Dudley to show what is going on in Dudley’s brain.

The last thing I absolutely hate about HP is a lot of the “bad” characters tend to be overweight or unappealing in appearance. It’s true that a lot of this might be Harry’s POV--maybe Snape actually is the sex god some fics make him out to be, and Harry just he’s greasy because he doesn’t like him, and maybe Harry doesn’t like a good hook nose (I do). Additionally, Lockhart is very pretty, and while I want to firmly stress that Draco is never describes as good-looking, he’s not really described as ugly, and I believe Narcissa is even described as beautiful. But the book isn’t written in close third-person Harry POV, and “pointy” isn’t very flattering. Unkind words and stereotypes are used throughout to highlight the badness or evil of almost all the characters we’re not “supposed to” like. The descriptions of the Dursleys in particular are upsetting.

In my opinion, the  above examples demonstrate a lack of compassion at the heart of the HP story. That’s what I’ve always hated about it and what always made me want to write about it. I want to write and say, “Look at this. This is fucked up. This is wrong.” Some people don’t read fic for that reason, and I think that’s fine. Plenty of those people really hate my fic, which is also fine. I know that many things in this world lack compassion, and I don’t spend years of my life writing fanfic about them. I think the reason I keep coming back is to me, the premise was unkind--which I was fine with, and then the text itself began to deconstruct itself--which I was overjoyed by. It made me fall in love with the series. But when the premise snapped back to an essentially black and white world, I felt betrayed.

In conclusion, I find HP at its very essence to be unkind. Ursula K Le Guin said it best when she said that it was “ethically rather mean-spirited.”

[gar-trek]

I review killing time (or whatever)

Okay, yes this review has taken me forever and that’s because there’s so much I want to say, and most of it has very little to do with the plot of the book. I cut down a lot of this so you guys could just get to the main point of what I’m trying to say, so I apologize if this is a little brief or incomprehensible to those who haven’t read the book. 

And also, before I get into it, I would like to say rest in peace to the author Della Van Hise, who passed away in march of this year. She contributed a lot to the fandom, especially in regards to K/S fiction, as well as publishing a lot of non-trek related work during her life. 

First of all, if you have heard of Killing Time, there is probably one specific reason for that. It’s the same reason I picked up the book in the first place and why it’s really even a topic of discussion on this site. To put the story quite briefly, Killing Time was recalled during its initial release on account of the book having too many slash elements (aka, the relationship between Kirk and Spock could be read as sexual/romantic). I first heard about the book here in this post where the history of it is worded to sound like one very dramatic mystery. One user (no shade intended here) even goes as far as to say the book was recalled by old Gene himself! Now I’m always one for drama and such, but after reading the book I looked into it a little more, and I don’t think that’s exactly how it went down. 

Here you can find multiple statements from the author herself, in which she tells the whole story. According to her, the book publisher accidentally released an unedited manuscript that was never supposed to make it to the public. So technically the publisher did not recall the book because it was “too gay”, they recalled it because they printed a version that was never meant for the public to see anyway. These were the edits that were specifically requested by Paramount, who the publishers were supposed to go through to get the final okay on all material. And like, yeah, all of Paramounts edits were pretty much to delete any sentence where Spock and Kirk are tender to each other, they were trying to make is less homoerotic, obviously. I understand why this slight distinction may not make much of a difference to you guys, but for me it’s important to note that the book wasn’t recalled because it was too gay, it was just never supposed to be gay in the first place. It doesn’t make that fact any better, but it does make it less dramatic, in my opinion. I encourage you to read the statements from the author on this topic though, because she gives the whole story a lot better then I just did. 

Now to address the main question at hand, does Killing Time depict a romantic relationship between Kirk and Spock, or is it all just hype? (in layman's terms, is the book gay or not?) and to answer quite plainly, yes it’s gay. of course it is. but then to answer less plainly, no. What the fuck do i mean by this? well let me try and explain. 

I read the second edition of the book, aka the censored version, but I also followed along with the first edition (using this great article). The changes made to the book did not effect the plot at all, and were really only minor things. Notably, in the second edition they just kind of left out any part where Spock and Kirk touch each other (and I don’t mean in a sexual way). For example, there is a scene where Spock and Kirk are having a serious conversation in the ships garden. In the first edition, at the end of the conversation Spock places a hand on Kirks shoulder, which Kirk covers with his own hand. In the second addition, all mentions of this simple contact are deleted. The differences between the two are mostly little things like this. There is no secret sex scene or love confession hidden in the first addition. You see, in my opinion, the changes made to the second edition of the book do very little to censor the romantic undertones between Kirk and Spock. That’s because they are ingrained in the plot line itself. 

One very important aspect to this book is that Kirk and Spock share a mental bond. This is something that can only happen between a Vulcan and another when they are extremely close. The mental bond that Kirk and Spock share is so strong in this book, it’s even present when they enter an alternate dimension where they are strangers to one another. There is a romance in this book between two original characters, and their relationship is constantly being paralleled by that of Kirk and Spock. And, maybe most telling, Spock refuses a female Romulan who is very interested in him over and over again simply because Kirk exists. And no, that’s not an exaggeration, here is a line from when the Romulan woman was begging Spock to be in a relationship with her: 

“I need you. The Empire needs you, what more can there be?”

“James Kirk” the Vulcan murmured without hesitation.

That line is in both versions of the book. What I’m trying to say is yes, there are K/S elements in Killing Time. There are many tender moments and lots of talk about Kirk and Spock’s devotion to each other. 

So now you’re asking yourself, Gar, why did you just say earlier that “no, the book is not gay”? Well, that’s because it’s not. This isn’t a K/S book. This isn’t a piece of Spirk fanfiction. Because for as much as this book is about Kirk and Spock’s relationship, it’s even more about Romulans (and more specifically, that one girlboss Romulan Commander from the Enterprise Incident.... bet ya didn't see that coming!) That’s right, the most controversial Star Trek book ever published is at it’s core quite plainly just a Star Trek book. There is weird alternate dimensions, time travel, espionage and lots and lots of Romulans! 

Alright, alright, what I’m really trying to get at here is that yes, if you read into Killing Time there is K/S elements. I mean for god sake the author was a known K/S fanfic writer, that wasn’t a secret by any means. If she wrote their relationship a little more tenderly than most authors would have, can we really be surprised? But writing a K/S story was not her intention here, and that’s not what this is. I think the author put it best herself, so I’m just going to put that here: 

“If people chose to see overtones of K/S in it, maybe it’s because there were overtones of K/S throughout Star Trek itself.”

People will hype up killing time as some secret confirmation that K/S is real and canon, and I really get that. Like, it would be really nice to have some canon acknowledgment of K/S, and I really don’t blame people for acting like that’s what this is. But that really isn’t what this is. And even if there was some kind of love confession, I really hate to break it to you, but the Star Trek novels are just fancy fanfiction and are not considered canon by any stretch (excluding the one Gene wrote himself, which let’s face it, perhaps has the most K/S elements of all). 

If you are looking for a nice story about Kirk and Spock being in love, then I very much urge you to look at Ao3 or similar sites. Skip this, if you want a K/S story, because that’s not what this is. Now, if you’re a huge fan of the Romulan commander from the Enterprise Incident, then my GOD you have to read this. I think this was a pretty solid Trek book. It was no piece of literary genius, but it got the job done. There was a lot of it that I think could have been left out, because it the later half it started to drag horribly, and we got a few plot threads that went absolutely nowhere. I’m not sure I’m much of a fan of alternate universes, as I really really enjoy the established dynamic of the characters, but it didn’t bother me too much. But I mean hey man, there was defiantly parts where I was so invested I couldn’t put the book down. Give this one a read if you’re looking for a pretty interesting Trek book with a little bit of cheeky K/S sprinkled here and there. 

If you have given the book a read, or just have thoughts in general, I’d love to hear them! 

[nevermindirah]

Dorothy Freeman facts

By facts I of course mean headcanons, because Nile's mom doesn't get a first name in canon (or even confirmation that her last name is Freeman). All we know about her is the picture on Nile's phone lock screen (which is Kiki Layne's real-life mom and brother!) and a few lines that Nile tells Andy about her. I’ve been collecting my Dorothy headcanons for a while now to eventually make a post, and @mprosperossprite​‘s excellent post giving non-Americans context for what it means that Nile is from the South Side of Chicago prompted me to go ahead and share this. Disclaimer that I’m white and I will absolutely make corrections if it’s pointed out that I’ve caused harm with any of this.

So here have some fun facts about the version of Mama Freeman who lives in my head rent-free:

Her family and growing up:

she was born in the mid-'60s and named after Dorothy Dandridge

I can’t decide whether she was born in Chicago or moved there later on (maybe with Nile’s dad?) and when in the waves of the Great Migration her family left the South

she came of age in the "post"-Civil Rights movement and went to college in the mid-80s when a lot of what are now the foundational classics of Black feminism were being written

she was a young adult when Anita Hill risked so much to report that a Supreme Court nominee had sexually harassed her, and as a result she HATES Joe Biden

Marriage and babies:

she met Nile's father — I can’t decide how they met and I have two competing headcanons for his name, either Gideon for the hefty Biblical masculinity vibes (Giddy for short among family, that man loved to laugh) or Carl, which started out as a shitty Carl’s Jr burger chain joke that turns out to be perfect (it means free man!), and @knoepfchen​ used it in the sequel to if you do take a thief where Carl is alive!! — and Dorothy was a little skeptical of his near-religious devotion to the military but he was really hot and really devoted to her and they made it work

she's a little pissed that she was right but it's unbearable if she thinks about it too often

it's going to be a long, long time before she can look back on pictures of Baby Nile stomping around the house in her dad's combat boots (this is a Gina Prince Bythewood headcanon, whyyyyyyyy can I not find a link to where she said this)

she named their second baby Indus, Indy for short (this is nearly as established fanon in Book of Nile circles as how much Booker loves eating pussy, and Indy Freeman as a young adult is portrayed by either Aldis Hodge or John Boyega I don’t make the rules)

Work:

Dorothy did some office jobs but nothing really grabbed her, and she was probably gonna have to move for her husband's career, so she decided on teaching — high school humanities

she’s been active in CTU (one of the strongest teacher’s unions in the US) her whole career and one year she was on the bargaining committee and her babies know damn well never to trust a boss, not even one who says all the right things — if she ever finds out the way Nile said "like Quynh?" when Andy promised to protect her, she will lose her mind with pride

(Nile was 18 and freshly graduated from high school in 2012 when CTU went on strike for the first time in a generation and she brought her mom snacks on the picket line)

one of her very favorite things is getting her students to laugh despite themselves at her "oh my GOD you're so EMBARRASSING" old-people jokes

she's one of those teachers who can get 30+ teenagers to go dead silent with judicious application of body language

she's known to occasionally go easy on grading subjective things like essays when she knows students are having a particularly rough time at home, but the second she gets the feeling they're taking advantage and not trying their best that shit is over and they better mind their Ps & Qs

she's the kind of person who says old-people shit like that

she gives her students assignments like "help 5 neighbors register to vote" and "write a compare/contrast table about the candidates in this local election" and "research 5 different ways you could get grant money to do X" and other practical civic-minded shit

standardized testing is her supervillain origin story, just kidding it’s Rahm Emanuel, why the fuck did Obama trust that asshole

After her husband died:

she would have lost her goddamn mind if it weren't for her church friends after her husband died, people from the church raised money so they could make ends meet while his pension paperwork was taking forever, church friends watched Indy so Nile could go out for the soccer team, etc etc

she sold her and her late husband's house and moved to a 3-bedroom co-op unit when Nile started high school, it's more affordable and it meant she didn't have to worry about household repairs in the same way, she can use a wrench if she needs to but she doesn't have time and it just makes her grief flare up (co-op housing has a long history in Chicago and other US cities (like Washington DC where I live) as a way for Black people to access decent, affordable housing in the face of entrenched discrimination)

the move meant putting a longer commute between her and church, but she didn't even bother looking for a church closer to their new home, she loaded the kids into the car on the weekends, parking is hell in their new neighborhood but it's worth giving up a hard-won parking spot to not have to wait so long for the L on Sunday mornings

Indy lived with her through college and he was gearing up to get his own place when Nile died, Dorothy was planning to move into a one-bedroom in the co-op building because she doesn't need so much space anymore, Indy took a day off from his new job (not so new anymore, her baby's so grown!) to help her sort things to donate when those dress-uniform Marines came to their door

part of her wishes she could've been home more and not had to rely on Nile so much for help with Indy, but he's turned out such a kind young man, and he's a much better cook than his sister is (was, oh God — no wait, is! she’s alive! what do you mean you’ve been alive all this time??)

some of the girls from church are encouraging her to check out this social dancing thing, nobody's pressuring her to date but there's definitely been some ribbing, and with Indy out of the house... maybe? probably not, but maybe

Her feelings and beliefs and likes and dislikes:

she's an absolute badass and also she's a soft human woman with lots of feelings

she's very, very traditional in some ways, and part of her mixed feelings about Nile following in her dad's footsteps is gender stuff, she's proud of her daughter and would never stand in the way of what Nile wants to do with her life, and if Nile came home and told her she's a lesbian she would never reject her, but if Nile came home and told her she's bisexual maybe she can just try focusing on men? “I love you sweetheart and I want you to be happy I just know how hard it is already for us in this world” type shit

she has been on team natural hair basically her entire life and one of the worst fights she and Nile ever had was over Nile wanting to straighten her hair as a pre-teen

Indy takes more after her and Nile takes more after their dad, she's so proud of both of them, but Dorothy's activism was mostly wearing her natural hair to work and daring bosses to give her shit, Indy's out there marching in the streets like her parents had and she WORRIES

she teases Indy for going to so many protests like he's using it as an excuse to meet girls, but she WORRIES

when she turns 60, she gets box braids with streaks of dark purple, subtle enough that it's still work-appropriate but it makes her smile, she may be old now but damnit she’s still pretty!

she loves Grey's Anatomy and Star Trek and she watched Bridgerton all in one day

she has a dirty-old-lady celebrity crush on Chris Hemsworth

if she's ever masturbated thinking about Donna Summer, well, that's nobody's business but her own (do non-Americans know about the queen of disco??)

If you want to read fic featuring Dorothy:

I won't have to leave alone, 1000 words, Nile has a nightmare and decides to go tell her family she's immortal

I See Your Eyes Seek a Distant Shore, 65k, Nile adjusts to immortality and does a lot of soul searching about what it means to "do what we think is right", Booker goes to grad school for trauma studies, the working title of this fic was Booker Reads Edward Said and Gloria Anzaldúa and Goes Down on Nile and the final product has an annotated bibliography in the author's notes if you’re into that kind of thing, a lot of my Dorothy Freeman headcanons were born of my process writing this

Gather round the table, we'll give you a treat, 2279 words, college AU, Nile brings her Jewish boyfriend home for Christmas

a contribution I made to Shitty Old Guard Deaths: (Booker, USA, 2025, cause of death: a mother’s righteous wrath)

[enterprisetrampstamp]

And You May Tell Yourself - Chapter One

THIS IS NOT MY BEAUTIFUL HOUSE. THIS IS NOT MY BEAUTIFUL WIFE.

Months and months ago, I put out a call for prompts on my Star Trek sideblog. I got several, wrote a few, and then one of the people on the spones discord server I'm in-- unwitting of what she wrought-- said "spones + dopplegangers." And I thought about it, and I had an idea for a scene, and then I thought about what circumstances could lead to that scene, and finally I realized, "Oh, that could totally work for a rewrite of The Man Trap," which is an episode of TOS that I personally adore.

...so I started writing that. 10k and the first 5 minutes of the episode later, I realized that this project was, perhaps, a little larger than I had intended to bite off. "Maybe 35k words at max," I told myself. That estimate jumped to 40k... and then to 50k... and, finally, I wrapped up this story at over 67,000 words, the longest piece of fiction of any kind that I have ever written, with the most ambitious plotline I have ever attempted. I am, to be quite frank, exhausted.

I am also incredibly proud, and oh so excited to finally be sharing this fic with you.

This fic does NOT follow the plotline of the episode beat for beat-- those of you who are familiar with The Original Series, you may already know the major twist in terms of the murder mystery (...or do you?), but I promise there's enough new and original content here to keep your attention. And for those of you who may not remember the episode or have simply never seen it, you don't need to worry either-- the plotline is fully encapsulated within the fic.

This is, as listed in the tags and addressed in the original prompt, a spones fic-- but those friendship tags aren't just there for show! There's a well rounded cast to this fic, heavy on the medical staff, and including a variety of OCs who I am already VERY excited to continue using to flesh out the casts of my other fics. I love a good OC. (There are no familiar faces on that count, for those of you who've read any of my past work, except for an offhand mention of Lieutenant Givens. However, once you get to meet them, I think we'll all agree that Aylu, Lonna, and Kip are instant classics.)

This fic is 7 chapters, and I intend to continue editing and posting every Friday until they finish. I'm shoehorning it in as my Summer of Spones entry, as 1) it was the mod of the event who gave me the original prompt (thank you A-Chan!), 2) there's one scene where Bones talks about summer thunderstorms, and 3) the writing of this fic stretched from May to August, quite effectively providing yours truly with my own personal Summer of Spones.

The stunning, incredible, amazing, SUPERB artwork for this fic has been brought to you by AutumnInAprilArt (spones-in-my-bones).

Fuck, y'all. This is going to be a fun one.

***

"I'm ignoring the effects that all of you jackasses have on my delicate psyche," he said, pointing his spoon at her emphatically, "because I am determined that today is going to be a good day."

"Don't jinx us," Jim joked. He looked up as Spock approached, sliding his tray over to make room for him, and dumped another packet of sugar onto his grapefruit.

Leonard rolled his eyes, but he didn't comment. His own tray of food was a good handful of centimeters past the centerline of the table, but he didn't bother to move it; Spock could nudge it out of the way with his own if it was in his way. "I'd say 'Good morning, Mr. Spock,' but apparently it's illegal for me to be cheerful before oh-nine-hundred."

Spock arched an eyebrow. "I'm unfamiliar with that regulation, Doctor."

Leonard grinned, his good cheer returning in full with Spock's ever-stoic sarcasm, and he was pretty sure that was a glitter of amusement in Spock's eyes, too. He looked away before he could get caught staring; that didn't mean he missed the way Spock's gaze lingered for a moment before he looked down to cut one of his multi-color protein cubes into neat quarters with his fork.

"It was part of the vows we took when we became best friends, actually," Jim said, straight-faced. "If Bones turns into a morning person, I get the dog in the divorce."

READ THE REST OF CHAPTER ONE HERE

[i-did-not-mean-to]

Diary found in K---D--- : Part 2

So, here's the next little part of this :D

Imagine by @lathalea is indented!

Enjoy <3

Taglist: @shrimpsthings, @mulasawala (so you see where I'm going with this lol)

(Yes, there will be MORE artwork coming, stay posted...)

Fandom: Hobbit

Characters: Ori x OC

Rating & Warning: Fluff and silliness

His name was Ori and he was a scribe in Erebor. It turned out he visited the forest often to sketch the animals and plants. You spent the rest of the day together. In the evening, you exchanged campfire stories, sharing a meal. At one point, he shyly asked about where you came from. Blushing, he admitted, almost whispering, he never saw a person with such beautiful hair before.

You told him that you came from another world, from a region called East Asia, where many people looked similarly to you. He was very curious about your homeland, your culture and your world. You spent hours telling him everything about it and he listened to you in awe.

“Ori.” He replied, his lips quirking a tiny bit as if he was not used to speaking his own name. “I’m a scribe. In Erebor. The Mountain.” He pointed to a tree beyond the clearing.

Thankfully, I was familiar with the Lonely Mountain and did not think that he didn’t know the difference between a living organism and a pile of minerals.

“I have never seen you, neither here nor in that Mountain.” I replied, for I went into the halls sometimes to translate for travellers, but for the most part, I let the king be his grumpy, glorious self.

“I come here often, to sketch, but I seem to have lost my way.” He admitted with a tiny frown. Ah, a real dwarf. They only knew up and down seemingly and if there was no way into a hill, they’d stubbornly trek up until they tumbled off the other side again.

As if to prove to me that he was not lying – dear reader, he had a face that was utterly devoid of malice or dissimulation – he showed me rather good sketches of the fauna and flora of the dense forest surrounding us. “That is really good, Ori, the scribe, from under the Mountain.” I commented which made him blush with a fierce and, apparently, unexpected pleasure.

In an expression of indescribable cuteness, he literally wiped his face with his sleeve as if he could clean away the rosy hue like a stubborn ink stain from under his skin.

“What are you here for?” He then asked, pushing out his chest heroically. As a reminder, he was the one who had lost his way, but apparently, he wanted to defend either the forest from me or the other way around.

“I am here to think…in silence.” I replied; he retreated a few steps. “Oh? I’ll leave you to it then, I guess. It was great to make your acquaintance…”

I gave him my name, after all, he had given me his, and he chewed on it for a few moments before his face split into a smile that was like the sunlight breaking through the cloudy afternoon sky: tentative, warm, and strikingly beautiful.

“Stay. I like your face.” I heard myself saying. Maybe, it was my teasing, mischievous streak acting up, but I had liked his embarrassment so much that I couldn’t help wanting to coax more of these blushes out of him.

“My…face?” In that weird dance he had been engaged in for the last few minutes, Ori stepped closer again, shuffling his feet in the heavy boots dwarrows insisted on wearing.

No, your ass, I thought, but bit my tongue; Ori the dwarf looked like someone who would die on the spot if I said anything even remotely inappropriate…as I was wont to do when nervous.

My sarcastic thought spurred my own interest though and I examined him a little closer: he was indeed swaddled like a babe, beads of sweat pearling down his temples on account of the steep climb and the stubborn blush powdering his nose and cheeks with pink blotches.

“Sit down, you’ll get a heat stroke.” I invited him and pointed to a patch of moss beside me while rummaging in my pack for the flask of ale I had brought.

“Thank you ever so much.” He plopped down in a cascade of earthen-coloured wool and awkward limbs. He did smell warm, I noticed, a blend of cinnamon and comfort.

Also, he had one of those faces that only became better when seen up-close, I admit freely; there were golden stars dancing in the depth of his dark eyes and he had the most adorable freckles as if some outlandish fairy had sprinkled gold dust over that heart-wrenchingly handsome face.

“Are you thirsty, Mistress?” He asked, nodding at the flask in my hand.

Handing it to him rather abruptly, I realised that I had spent the last moments intently staring at his face as if I had never seen a male dwarf before in my life.

“I have work to do.” I snapped, feeling immediately guilty for taking my own embarrassment out on him, but he merely nodded and pulled his sketching supplies into his lap.

Strangely enough, Ori did not disturb me. If anything, the silence felt fuller, richer, deeper with him by my side. As I translated a letter, as a spinster I had to support my family and my insufferable sisters as best as I could, I felt like the chirping of the birds and the vibrancy of the colours around me were even more enjoyable now that I shared them with someone else.

…

The sun crept along its never-changing arc slowly and yet, much too fast.

As I looked up, I wished I was a better painter myself, for this dwarrow was made for sunsets.

The way the last golden hurrah of a perfect day exploded in a halo of warmth around his figure, the way all the greys and the blues seemed to bleed out of the world to leave nothing but warm tones behind, and the way his smile was the perfect expression of this mellow, unhurried mood…it struck me deeper and more violently than a thunderstorm in all its booming rage would have.

“Will you join me for dinner, Ori?” I asked gently, “I shall escort you back down.”

“It would be my honour.” He nodded, tearing out a page of his notebook and handing it over.

“It was an invitation; I do not demand payment.” I said seriously, for the sketch of the doe was so good, it might have been worth actual money. “Oh…” His nose crinkled at little at that.

“I wanted you to…have something beautiful. I have seen you work very hard.”

Of course, he was a scribe as well, he would consider the scribbling work, I thought and gave him a thankful smile. “You’re beauty enough for one day.” I shrugged.

He gasped, bringing his notebook up to his face as if to shield himself from my words.

“You’re having me on, aren’t you? Dori has warned me that girls do that sometimes.” He sounded utterly dejected. “I am not having you on. Has nobody ever told you that you’re handsome?” It was my turn to be wide-eyed with shock.

“And who is Dori?” I followed-up when he didn’t really reply to my question even though I thought I had seen his braids move like strings of pearls in a draft. The minutest of shakes of the head, a quiet admission of inadequacy that sunk ugly, ragged claws into my soft heart.

“He’s my brother. I have two of them. Dori…and Nori. They’re…” – “Older than you.” I completed. “Protective.” He supplied.

He was still holding his drawing out to me, and, after a moment, I took it gingerly and put it between the pages of my own writing supplies. I would hang it in my room and look at it daily.

Nowadays, there were but very few gifts for me; all the money went to my two younger sisters who were still nubile and would, if Mahal willed it so, be able to make a good match.

Busying my hands with making a fire, I asked him to tell me about his brothers.

“Oh, Nori is…agile. He’s…funny and brave and resourceful.” Ori started, his voice warm with affection and admiration. He sounded like a proper rogue to me, and as it turned out, he was, but he also deserved every single ounce of the deep-felt care Ori held for him.

“Dori is…fussy. He’s polite, he’s very caring, and he’s exceedingly proper.” Ori went on as I waved a hand for him not to stop. I enjoyed hearing about the life of other families than my own.

“So, is he the one who raised you to be this…warmly clad and gentle?” I asked, turning to place the foodstuffs I had brought up and stored in the cool lake water on spits to roast over the fire.

“Warm? Oh yes…I was a sickly pebble and he’s been worried ever since. I hope I have behaved in a way that would not make him disappointed in me.” Again, he worried his lip.

“Let’s see, you’ve startled a bird and an unsuspecting dwarrowdam.” I listed with a wicked gleam in my eyes; his face fell, and he looked properly guilty.

“Then, you’ve kept me company, and the best company I’ve ever had, it has been, on my grandmother’s grave, I swear.” I went on and that treacherous blush was back with a vengeance.

“I didn’t mean to startle you.” He then said in a low voice. “Great beauty is always startling.”

“I am hardly Thorin Oakenshield.” He laughed. Readers, you cannot imagine that sound just by reading my words. If flowers blossoming had melody, if the sun setting on the eternal sea had a song, if autumn leaves dancing on a gale had a tune, they would have sounded like nails on scree, like cats having their tails trampled, and like kettles going unheeded compared to Ori’s laughter.

“There’s beauty in the doe as much as in the wolf.” I replied gently.

“May I…can I ask where you’re from? I don’t seek to be rude, but I’ve never seen anyone quite like you; your hair looks like those fabrics the Elves weave. It…seems so soft, so liquid, so smooth.” He blushed a darker shade yet.

This might well have been the first time that someone had asked me about my origins without making it sound like an accusation; there was honest fascination in his demeanour.

“My family and I have come from the Far East. I have travelled a lot, Ori, I have seen landscapes entirely made up of rock and sand, I have walked forests so stiflingly hot and moist it felt like being underwater, and now, I am here in the land of tall trees and taller mountains.”

I said, surprised by my own frankness.

“That sounds amazing.” He took the food I offered readily enough, and I told him about the people I’ve left behind to be stranded at the other end of the world.

“This is good, is that a recipe of your homeland?” He asked, looking down on the piece of meat I had seasoned with herbs I had grown myself in our small backyard.

“It actually is. I’m glad you like it. I had not planned to have company, otherwise I’d have brought something more palatable to the local tongue.” I apologised quickly.

“No, I like it. You should definitely trade some recipes with Dori…and Bombur…oh, and if any of your delicious herbs are medicinal, Óin.” He laughed again when he saw my dumbfounded expression.

“I make a good honeycake, if I can interest you in that? Maybe…” He fell back into silence.

…

A look at the sky told me that it was too late to go down in the inky darkness.

“We’ll have to stay here for the night.” I mumbled, slightly uncomfortable at the idea of spending the night with a dwarrow who had not lost a single word about a wife.

“Are you married, Mistress? Will that endanger your wedlock?” He asked shyly.

“No, I am not and I have no name to lose…It’s a long story.” I didn’t feel like blurting out my disgrace, lest it give him strange ideas after all, especially as he would easily have been able to overpower me if he so chose.

“Neither am I. I don’t know about my name…Doesn’t look like I’m going to be married either. There’s not enough dwarrowdams as it is, and I think the royal line has a prerogative there.” There was no resentment in his tone; he seemed to accept this as a fact.

How could someone that sweet not be married, I wondered. He was courteous, he was cute, and he would have made the fortune and happiness of someone.

“Well, in that case, I think we can risk our reputation rather than our necks.” I grinned, rolling out a blanket I kept tied to my pack for emergencies and stretched out next to the fire on the moss.

“Erm, yes…Good night…” He mumbled, fidgeting around with his different layers of clothing. Apparently, he was deciding which one he needed least on his body to use it as a bedroll or blanket.

I eyed the proceedings with interest and a good deal of amusement.

“I can offer you my cloak to lie upon…the ground will grow very cold and wet soon.” He said in a low voice, not sure if I had already fallen asleep or not.

“Alright, I can offer you a spot under the blanket then?” I extended my own graciousness.

“With you?” No, with the red bird, I thought, rolling my eyes internally.

“Yes, Ori the scribe, with me. I will not eat you, as you have witnessed, I have had dinner.” Not that he did not look good enough to devour, standing there with his cloak in his hands and his face all crunched up in embarrassment.

“Hmmm…I guess.” He muttered doubtfully, spreading out the cloak and sitting down on it carefully. Impatiently, I scooted over and spread my lousy blanket over the both of us with a flourish.

“Sleep!” I commanded as I turned around only to find him staring wide-eyed at the spot where the back of my head had been only a second ago. Now that he was presented with my face, only inches away from his, his eyes grew even rounder and bigger in wordless distress.

“Friend…Have you never lain with a woman? And I literally mean, lying next to one?” I laughed for there had been friends and cousins aplenty in my own life and the feeling of having another body so close to mine was not a new experience for me.

“Well, I fell down on the battlefield once, next to a foe…I’m pretty sure that was a Lady-Orc. She was dead. There was a…” He gestured, indicating a spear or a lance sticking out of his chest and brushing against my own with the back of his hand. Dear reader, he flinched back as if I was a tiny Durin’s bane wreathed in flames.

“A Lady-Orc, indeed…” I mused; no doubt, he could hear the smile I hid in my voice for his face crunched up in embarrassment.

“I am sorry.” He sighed, rolling his eyes, and thinking – there was not a shadow of a doubt about that much – of his brothers who would have mocked him mercilessly for his stammering.

“There’s no need to be sorry” I tried to reassure him, but I admit now that there were things that I did not tell him right away then. We had only just met, and he was blessedly unaware of my shameful past.

How could I have made him understand – without hurting his feelings – how much I enjoyed that air of purity about him that I had squandered myself on an undeserving fiend? As a daughter amongst others, I had been used to dwarrows coming to court or to seduce, their eyes ablaze with greed and their hands wandering.

He would not have comprehended how much the absence of that voracious hunger that had plagued my youth and had ended up destroying my promising future meant to me.

“Sleep.” I repeated, unable to put into words how miraculous and precious the things he seemed to be most ashamed of were to me.

“Good night, Mistress.” He breathed with a soft smile that was nowhere near the wolfish baring of fangs I was used to and so, it was easy to return it.

You who may or may not have stumbled upon this ludicrous account of the most important story in an otherwise unimportant life, you shall hear another confession I did not make at the time.

I was fiercely aware that – had I but leant forward a little – I might have pressed my lips upon his; I was young still at that time and, despite what had happened, parts of me, that should have withered and died in the aftermath of my botched engagement, were much alive.

He smelled like our dinner and warmth, and the gentle reticence of the curve of his smile was more inviting than any flashing grin I had ever seen before.

Yes, in that very moment, on this very first evening, I had already been conscious of the shrewd attraction this self-effacing dwarrow held for me…and it scared me half to death.

…

Part 3

[red-becca]

And so, we hit 20 followers early, lol. Woo! If you have any critiques on my headcanons or want to add more, let me know!

Also, some of these probably don't make sense, so allow me to put in some context. I see Red as a secret hopeless romantic and that even when she's older, she enjoys reading about fairy tales and all that. And secretly loves watching Disney films. This is due to me loving Disney too much and getting ideas from them, lol.

But yeah, that's about it for some context that I can think I can explain right now. If you wanna ask anything about my headcanons, that's allowed too.

---

(These are headcanons for aged up Revin, just a warning/ saying. Just to be sure you guys know that. And also, these are subject to change at any point in time because I just love making hcs/ changing up my hcs for fun)

-Before they got together, they were always sad and watching from afar whenever the other was with someone. Now that they are together, they get jealous every now and again instead.

-But Kevin is the one who gets jealous more due to Red being one of the popular girls and is generally seen as a really pretty girl by most guys at their school.

-They both really frickin' love each other. Like if they had to give up their favorite thing just to be with the other, they would not hesitate to do so.

-Both of them are also huge dorky geeks and you can't tell me otherwise. Though Kevin is clearly more of a geek than Red.

-They have specific nicknames for each other. Kevin's nickname for Red is "My Goddess" or "My Alien Queen" and Red's nickname for him is "My Sweet Prince".

- But also, Red rarely calls him by his full name. Always calling him "Kev" unless she's mad at him.

- In the genderbent world/ universe, only Robbie has a nickname for Kassie so far. He calls her "My Sweet Star".

- They have specific ringtones for each other. Kevin has "Just The Way You Are" by Bruno Mars for Red. And Red has "Love On Top" by Beyoncé for Kevin.

- Kevin got her a black rose necklace for one of her birthdays. The same black rose necklace she would constantly stare at whenever they had dates at the mall. She would tell him that he didn't need to buy it for her and yet he did, anyway. Meanwhile in a genderbent world, Robbie would have gotten Kassie a Star Trek necklace.

- Then what Red got Kevin that he treasures so much is a custom Stormtrooper motorcycle helmet that he wears whenever they go on rides on Red's motorcycle.

- Kevin always gets her a bouquet of red roses whenever he can afford it and Red does her best to lengthen the lives of the roses. While Robbie gives Kassie a bouquet of forget me nots.

-Their first kiss wasn't as romantic as Kevin hoped it would be, he ended up headbutting her out of pure nervousness. And despite getting better at kissing, Red regularly brings up the incident to him and her friends.

-Most of their dates consists of just watching Sci-Fi movies at Red's place with some snuggling in between.

-But their favorite kind of date is strolling around with ice cream in their hands. Well, it's mostly Kevin's favorite as he enjoys watching Red messily eat ice cream and happily cleaning her face.

-Though if their date is to somewhere outside and it gets cancelled because of rain, they will simply slow dance to old music with the rain softly being heard in the background.

-They always celebrate Chinese New Year together and even wear the traditional clothes for it. And once they get married and have a family of their own, they get their kids to wear traditional clothing too.

- And speaking of getting married... When they do get married, their first dance will be based on the first dance from the live-action Cinderella movie. (The only good live action adaptation, imo-)

- Because they loved practicing and performing that dance, they can't help but recreate it whenever they have nothing to do at home.

-They rarely go to Kevin's house to hang out because Kevin's mom will literally not leave the two alone despite Kevin's countless protests.

-Kevin's mom absolutely adores the red head Kevin is dating. Which Kevin appreciates but sometimes, she can be a bit too much.

- Red's parents, on the other hand, while they tease Red on how overwhelming sweet she is to Kevin, they respect them enough to leave them alone together. (That or they are too busy with each other, lol-)

-They love wearing matching outfits/ shirts whenever they go out for dates. (Yo, I don't know about you guys but this shit is legit the most cutest thing a couple can do) (Also, lowkey want to see them with like Mickey and Minnie Mouse ears but I can't draw, so yeah. :/)

-Because he's an adorable little gentleman, he always waits on Red after his basketball practice to take her home. Whether it be a long cheerleading or volleyball practice, he will always wait for her. Granted, because of how long they take, he ends up falling asleep each time but Red always appreciates the gesture and/or thought.

-Part of the headcanon above is Kevin learning first aid just to tend for Red whenever she gets injured during these practices.

- And then when it's Kevin who's busy with his practice for basketball, Red returns the favor by waiting for him and then taking him home on her motorcycle.

- During their respective events, the other will do their absolute best to cheer for the other.

-Kevin always takes stolen pictures of Red and posts them on Instagram with the caption "Just my red head goddess looking beautiful as always" or anything cheesy and sweet like that.

- Red does the same, sometimes. She captions them with the sweetest thing she could ever type or pretty much just describes what's happening in the picture.

-Kevin tries his best to be more suave and less dorky around Red by like trying to flirt and using tips from Kenny and Clyde but whenever he uses them on Red, he quickly becomes a blushing mess which Red always finds to be hella cute.

-Red just absolutely loves grabbing Kevin's face and giving him Eskimo kisses. To which, no one's surprise, Kevin absolutely loves, too.

-As much as other people dislike it, Red loves (or maybe gets even turned on, heh) whenever Kevin speaks all geeky and stuff like that. Meanwhile, Kevin really loves it whenever the girl speaks Klingon.

-No matter what Red does, Kevin will always find what she does to be the absolute most coolest shit he's ever seen. He always loves to gush about how cool his red head goddess is.

-Even though it's a struggle for her, Red's doing her best to give up her smoking addiction just for Kevin to stop worrying about her health.

-When they start living together, Kevin adopts an adorable Siberian Husky puppy for her to keep her company while he's at work and then that's their baby until they get married.

- But before that happens, he will be the one who buys her little black kitten, Serendipity, for one of her birthdays.

-Speaking of living together, the jobs they'll be having are the following: Kevin is a streamer who streams pretty much anything that he wants to stream and Red is a model. They keep their dating life private for the most time. Mostly due to Red not wanting to steal attention from Kevin in any streams.

(They didn't look like a lot from where I originally posted them but, I guess, I shouldn't be so surprised, lol. I am Revin trash, after all.)

[procrastinatorproject]

To Find the Truth

Here’s a question for the avid Star Trek: Picard viewers among us: why did Bruce Maddox send Soji to work on the Artifact?

I’ve been pondering this for quite some time now, trying to sort out what, exactly, Maddox’s plan was for Soji, and so far, I’ve mostly been puzzled. The obvious answers don’t actually hold that much water once you really look at them, but I’ve been struggling to find any alternative explanations. So, I decided to look at what exactly the show tells us about Maddox’s motives and how, if at all, I can make sense of them.

[Edit 1: I originally started this with a timeline of Maddox’s actions and whereabouts from around the time of the synth ban to the beginning of season 1, but given how incredibly, incredibly long this essay ended up being, I will post that separately (keep an eye on my “Star Trek Picard meta” tag).]

[Edit 2: If you don’t feel like reading a very, very long essay on tumblr, I’ve also posted it on medium. Tumblr notoriously hates links, so please forgive me for not linking directly, but you can find it at medium.com/@arelithil ]

SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRETY OF ST: PICARD SEASON 1 AHEAD!

So. Why does Maddox send Soji to the Artifact?

The closest we get to an explanation of Maddox’s motives is his conversation with Picard, after the Sirena crew saves him from Bjayzl on Freecloud.

When Picard asks why he sent Soji to the Artifact, Maddox says: “For the same reason I sent her sister to Earth. To find out the truth.” and when prompted, he specifies: “[The truth] about the ban.”

Maddox: “There are lies upon lies. They’re hiding something.” Picard: “Who?” Maddox: “I don’t know. The same ones who were hunting her.” Picard: “The Romulans?” Maddox: “Not just them. I think the Federation are involved. That’s what I sent them to find out.”

There’s a lot of information here. Maddox sent Dahj and Soji to Earth and to the Artifact respectively to investigate the Synth Ban, which implies investigating the Attack on Mars, since that was the inciting incident for the ban. Maddox seems to think that the synths didn’t go rogue due to some faulty programming or glitch, but that someone had a hand in it, and that they’ve been covering it up ever since. He suspects someone or some group from the Federation was involved, but so were outside forces.

It makes sense to send Dahj to Earth to investigate the Federation connection (I will go into more detail on Dahj’s assignment in the upcoming timeline post). That would mean Soji’s task was to find out who else was involved.

After watching Picard the first time, the impression I came away with, especially given the conversation with Picard mentioned above, was that obviously, Maddox suspected the Romulans to be culpable in some way. It’s the logical conclusion, right? He has Soji work on the Artifact to find out more about Ramdha, how she’s connected to the Attack on Mars, and whether the Romulans had a hand in that event or in the cover-up following it.

Except the more I thought about it, the less plausible it seemed.

While he was working at the Daystrom Institute, Maddox helped build the synths that became Utopia Planitia’s workforce. Being so closely involved in the Romulan resettlement, he knew there were voices in the Federation and Starfleet that objected to the rescue effort from the start and might have taken action. By contrast, suspecting the Romulans themselves to be involved in the destruction of the armada built to rescue their own people seems like a much greater leap of logic.

This in itself is not sufficient proof Maddox wouldn’t have believed it possible, though. From how Agnes Jurati and Altan Soong talk about him, it sounds like Maddox got obsessed and possibly a little paranoid in the years after the ban. It’s entirely possible he found reasons why one Romulan faction or another might have sabotaged the rescue effort for political gain, isolationist sentiment, or animus toward Starfleet. And he would not be the only one coming to this conclusion.

However, if he was suspicious of the Romulans, why would he send Soji to the Artifact of all places?

A Romulan Connection?

If Maddox’s plan was to have Soji investigate the connection between the Romulans and the Attack on Mars, he would have sent her somewhere she could gain access to sensitive Romulan records, and where she could make the acquaintance of important or well-connected Romulans and exploit them to gain information. He should have placed her in some kind of diplomatic service, maybe working for a Federation ambassador to the Romulan Free State and whatever other organizations have succeeded the Romulan Star Empire. Perhaps he might have made her part of a humanitarian mission, working in the resettled border worlds or in the collapsed Neutral Zone. But the Artifact?

About the only thing the Artifact has going for it in this regard is that it’s a place where Romulans and Federation citizens work unusually close together. This might make it easier for Soji to gain access to their critical computer systems and classified records. However, for this exact reason, I imagine the Artifact must be somewhat sequestered from whatever systems the Romulans use to store and transmit sensitive data. You wouldn’t want easy access to your Tal Shiar communications network within reach of a mass of Federation citizens and unpredictable xBs.

At this stage in my considerations, I realized something: At no point in season 1 do we actually get confirmation that Soji is on the Borg cube to investigate the Romulans. I only assumed she was, because before we even meet Soji, we find out that the Romulans are caught up in the Big Mystery of the show somehow. We don’t learn the full extent of the conspiracy until later, but from a viewer’s perspective it makes sense for Soji to be looking for more information on a possible Romulan involvement. We want more information on the Romulan involvement.

But, if you take another look at Maddox’s discussion with Picard, it’s actually the latter who brings up the Romulans. Maddox says he doesn’t know who’s behind it all. And as outlined above, if he really wanted to investigate this angle, he wouldn’t have sent his spy somewhere so out of the way and disconnected from Romulan political power and historical records.

So, if Maddox didn’t send Soji to spy on the Romulans, there are essentially only two things I can see that might make the Artifact relevant for his investigation of the Attack on Mars.

Cube Collapse and Synth Sabotage

The first possibility is that Maddox thinks whatever caused the Borg cube now known as the Artifact to lose its connection to the collective somehow also caused the synths to go rogue on Mars. Whether it was some virus, third party sabotage, or even some unknown cosmic power, it caused the cube’s submatrix to collapse and the synths to rebel against their masters.

At first glance, there might be some evidence that this is Maddox’s reasoning. We don’t know the exact timing of Ramdha’s initiation into the Zhat Vash, her failed assimilation, and the Mars Attack. The title card on the flashback to Ramdha experiencing the Admonition says it happened fourteen years ago, same as the Attack on Mars...

... but from the dialogue we know the initiation happens before the Zhat Vash carry out that attack.

The xB we see Soji help to reclaim (which convinces Hugh to let her talk to Ramdha) is said to have been in regenestasis for fourteen years.

If we assume that’s the date at which the cube broke, it must have happened relatively quickly after Ramdha’s initiation, right around the same time as the Mars attack, or possibly a few months later. Given this, the timing of the cube breaking might make it seem connected to the rogue synths in the eyes of devoted conspiracy theorists, even if it happened nowhere near Mars.

We know that Soji is very intent on finding out why the cube broke. When she has her conversation with Ramdha, she starts out as intrigued anthropologist Doctor Asha, exchanging ideas about Romulan mythology news. However, the moment she starts asking about whether Ramdha knows why the cube severed its connection to the collective, she suddenly turns into an intense Android On A Mission.

Afterwards, Soji can’t explain where she got the information about Ramdha’s ship, the Shaenor, being the last to be assimilated by the cube, and it’s not clear that she knows why she was asking about it in the first place. This would make a lot of sense if Maddox sent her in to find the reason behind the cube breaking because he suspects whatever caused its submatrix to collapse might also be what caused the synths to go rogue.

However, there are some holes in this explanation. Most glaringly: If Soji’s main aim was to investigate the cube collapse, why did it take her months if not years to get around to interviewing Ramdha? It’s not entirely clear how long Soji has been working on the Artifact at the beginning of season 1. We know Maddox created her fake identity three years ago, but how much time passed between then and her beginning her assignment is less clear. From the way it’s presented on the show, though, it sounds like it has been quite a while.

Finding out about the Shaenor‘s connection to the cube’s destruction would have taken some time. It can’t be easy trying to break through massive Romulan security and Borg encryption without getting caught or doing anything so obvious that your “I am totally human”-algorithms couldn’t suppress the memory of it. We also know that by the start of season 1, Soji has been asking Hugh for a while to give her an interview with Ramdha.

It's clear that these investigations couldn’t happen overnight, and Soji needed some time to get to the stage where we meet up with her. Several months if not years seems a little excessive though.

And again, this line of argument completely depends on the exact timing of the cube becoming the Artifact in relation to the Attack on Mars. If, through some enormous cosmic coincidence, these two events happened one soon after the other or even overlapped, it might cause Maddox to see them as connected. However, we don’t know if that was the case, and I think there is another explanation that better fits the facts and events presented in season 1.

Everything’s Coming Up Borg

If Soji is investigating neither the Romulans, nor some interstellar reason for the cube collapse, there is only really one explanation left for her assignment: Maddox doesn’t think that whatever created the Artifact Formerly Known as Borg Cube is connected to the Attack on Mars — he thinks the Borg themselves are. Somewhere in his investigations, Maddox came across information that gave him the idea that maybe, somehow, the Borg might have had a hand in making the synths go rogue. It’s not his only theory, it might not even be his main theory (which is why he sends Dahj to Earth), but it’s a theory he deems plausible enough to want to investigate.

Before I go into why I think the text of season 1 makes this the most plausible explanation, there is a question that needs to be answered. It’s easy for us viewers to understand how someone like Raffi or Maddox could suspect the Romulans or the Federation to be involved in the Attack on Mars. Since these are the theories that turn out to be true, we spend a lot of time seeing suspicious behaviour and clues that might be picked up by avid investigators. It’s harder to imagine how someone might come to an alternative explanation.

If we are to believe Maddox could suspect Borg involvement in the destruction at Utopia Planitia, we first need to figure out why the Borg would want to destroy the fleet designed to save the Romulans from a supernova.

The most obvious answer here would be that the Borg found a way to remotely hack into the synth workforce on Mars. How exactly they did that is immaterial, there are probably a good dozen different ways they conceivably could have, the important thing is they did. Because the synths operating on Utopia Planitia were limited in their abilities, the Borg probably couldn’t, say, turn them into a strikeforce against Earth. However, they could use them to destroy the rescue armada that represented the last best hope of salvation for the Romulan Star Empire.

This gave the Borg a unique opportunity to plan a large-scale attack against the Romulans. In the wake of their star going supernova, whatever remained of the Romulan Empire would be in disarray, severely weakened, and easier to assimilate than it had ever been before.The strategic, scientific, and technological knowledge that would be gained from such a campaign would probably be incentive enough for the Borg. Add to that the opportunity to gain a foothold comparatively close to Federation territory, which would put the Borg in a favourable position for their next attempt to assimilate the Federation, and you have more than ample reason why they might launch a targeted strike against the Utopia Planitia shipyards.

The question which inevitably follows this line of argument is, of course: if this were true, why didn’t the Borg send a massive fleet into Romulan space in the wake of the Attack on Mars, or the supernova at the latest?

This is where the Artifact comes in.

If you follow this logic, it’s likely that after the rescue armada went up in smoke, the Borg sent a cube into Romulan space as a scout or maybe a vanguard, to do reconnaissance and test the waters for a full-scale attack. Unfortunately, that cube encountered a Romulan scout ship, tried to assimilate them - and then suddenly and inexplicably suffered a complete sub-matrix collapse.

According to Hugh, the disordered xBs, i.e. the passengers of that scout ship, the Shaenor, are the only Romulans ever to have been assimilated by the Borg.

This claim is a little dubious, but even if there have been others, there clearly haven’t been many, so it’s possible the collective doesn’t have up-to-date intel on Romulan defensive capabilities. When an entire Borg cube, one of the most dangerous weapons in the galaxy, gets so thoroughly defeated by a single ship of two dozen Romulans, suddenly the whole large-scale attack might look a lot less appealing. It would stand to reason that the Big Borg Bonanza would get called off, or at least postponed until better intel could be acquired.

Now, if Maddox believed in a theory like this, or even parts of it, he might have wanted to investigate it by somehow gaining access to Borg systems and records. Alas, it’s not like you can just walk up to a terminal in a Borg cube and start rifling through their databases OH WAIT!

Suddenly, sending Soji to the Artifact Formerly Known As Borg Cube makes a lot of sense. Even if Maddox doesn’t think that the cube itself or its collapse were in any way connected to the Attack on Mars, it’s the perfect location for a fact-finding mission if he suspects Borg involvement.

He gives Soji a PhD in anthropology, rather than medicine or cybernetics, because her job on the Artifact isn’t, say, to learn about Borg technology or AI applications, it’s to make a connection with the xBs. If it turns out the data in the Borg systems that might contain clues about their involvement in the synth attack has been compromised or is inaccessible for some reason, Soji has another option. She’s working with the xBs on finding ways to deal with their collective trauma. This would give her an opening to subtly interrogate them about memories from their time in the collective without raising too many eyebrows. If the Borg had been planning a large-scale attack on the Romulan Empire, the former drones on the Artifact would probably know about it, even if their own cube was unconnected to those events. The stronger Soji’s connection with the xBs, the more likely they would be to open up to her about this.

If Soji is actually searching for a general Borg connection rather than the one concrete reason why the cube was severed from the collective, that would explain why it keeps her busy for several years. As outlined above, doing this kind of research in secret (especially in a way that keeps it secret from herself) would have taken some time, and there are vast quantities of data to wade through.

Of course, Soji doesn’t find any connection between the Borg and the synths at Utopia Planitia, because, as we know, there isn’t one. In the course of her investigations, though, she would learn that the cube got destroyed when it tried to assimilate the Romulans on the Shaenor. After many of the avenues Soji explores don’t lead her anywhere, the destruction of the cube is one of the last big unknowns. Even if it doesn’t directly link back to the Attack on Mars or a possible aborted Borg attack on the Romulans, it might still be worth looking into. So, Soji sets out to learn more about the passengers of the Shaenor, which is where we meet her at the beginning of season 1.

In this scenario, it’s not entirely clear why Soji decides to talk to Ramdha specifically. I cannot imagine anyone outside of the Zhat Vash knows that it was Ramdha who caused the cube to collapse, and I doubt they keep records to that effect that Soji could come across. After all, the Zhat Vash are so secretive, their existence is considered a myth even by the rest of the Tal Shiar.

However, given Soji’s preternatural hacking skills, it’s possible she might have found out there was something suspicious about Ramdha from some Borg record that was inaccessible to the Artifact’s new owners, or from talks with other xBs. Alternatively, she might have simply picked Ramdha as the person to interrogate, because Ramdha was the Shaenor passenger who had the most in common with the personality of Dr Soji Asha.

Either way, I think it’s likely Soji started her work on the Artifact with the general brief of “finding ways to connect with the xBs and accessing their traumatic memories” and no special interest in any one xB in particular. Only after she fixates on Ramdha as her most promising point of contact does she (subconsciously) decide that her focus is (and always has been) “using myths and legends as a shared narrative framework”. There would have been little reason to focus on Ramdha’s very specific niche of expertise from the start since, as I said, there is no real way for Soji to know Ramdha is important before she arrives on the cube.

Of course, it’s also possible Maddox has given Soji a connection to Ramdha’s research completely by coincidence or based on some reason unrelated to her investigation. Whatever the case may be, Soji’s research focusing on ways for the xBs to process their shared trauma makes the most sense if her brief is to connect with them. And this, in turn, makes the most sense if she is on the Artifact to investigate possible Borg involvement in the Attack on Mars and subsequent cover-up.

Side Note

No matter what the reasons behind Soji’s interviewing Ramdha are, whether Maddox decided in advance to target her specifically, or Soji chose her as a point of connection over the course of her mission, the fact that she is connected to the Attack on Mars at all is a giant cosmic coincidence. Ramdha could have gotten the traumatic apocalyptic visions in her brain from any number of sources, and the breaking of the Borg cube would have happened in the exact same way. Likewise, there is no conceivable connection between the Plot to Ban All Synths and the Borg assimilating Ramdha’s ship. The fact the assimilation happened around the same time as the destruction of Utopia Planitia is another coincidence. It could have literally happened at any time after Ramdha experienced the Admonition.

It just so happens that Ramdha’s cube-breaking vision is also the vision that spurred the Zhat Vash into attacking Utopia Planitia. Causally, the two events are completely unrelated. So, essentially, while following an entirely different line of enquiry (“does the reason for the sub-matrix collapse give me any information about Borg involvement in the Attack on Mars?”, Soji just so happens to stumble ass-backwards upon a piece of information that, by complete happenstance, links the two events. (And the same would still be true if she were looking for a Romulan connection, by the by.)

To Sum Up

Taking into account all the information we can gather from season 1, it doesn’t make sense for Maddox to send Soji to the Artifact to investigate the Romulans. If he did suspect them of being involved in the Attack on Mars or the subsequent cover-up, he would have sent his spy into the political or cultural centre of the remains of Romualn Empire. The Artifact might provide a good opportunity to mingle with Romulans, but it’s out of the way and probably cut off from any truly sensitive information.

Likewise, it seems unlikely Maddox thinks that whatever or whoever corrupted the synths also caused the Borg cube’s submatrix collapse. The only way these events might appear linked is if they happened at a similar time, which we can’t be sure of. And if Soji’s main goal really was to investigate the reason the cube broke, it would not have taken her so long to get around to interviewing the xBs from the Shaenor. We repeatedly see evidence of her prodigious hacking skills, so even Romulan firewalls and Borg encryption could only have stopped her for a short while.

As far as I can tell, there’s only one way Maddox’s choice to send Soji to the Artifact Formerly Known As Borg Cube and her actions once there make sense. Somehow, somewhere amidst his research from Coppelius, Maddox starts to suspect that the Borg found a way to remotely compromise the synths on Utopia Planitia. Most likely they were preparing for an attack against the Romulans or the Federation that got called off for some reason, and then the Federation decided to cover it up.

The Borg cube that broke down in the Neutral Zone around the same time might be connected to the Attack on Mars, or the aborted invasion, or it might not be connected at all. Either way, it’s the perfect place to find information about a possible Borg plot. That’s why he sends Soji there to trawl through their records and connect with the xBs to look for clues.

Whether this is Maddox’s only theory or even the theory he finds most plausible isn’t clear. He does send Dahj to Earth to investigate other angles. But this is the one explanation I have been able to find that accounts for Maddox’s decisions, Soji’s actions, and the events we witness and learn about in season 1 of Star Trek: Picard.

Postscript

I’m not going to lie, when I started writing this little (hah!) essay, this wasn’t where I saw this going at all, but I think it’s a fairly logical place to end up.

To pre-empt the comments: yes, I’m aware the actual reason Soji is on the Artifact is probably a mix of Rule of Cool and “there was a very good explanation, but it got lost in rewrites / edits.” And I don’t blame the writers for this. When you’re in the middle of creating an involved story and have all the details in your head, you can sometimes forget which plot points your audience is and isn’t aware of. It happens. And the show’s vague hinting at “Soji is on the Artifact for unspecified Romulan reasons that are probably connected with Ramdha” works. It doesn’t ruin your enjoyment of the show and I certainly never would have questioned it if I wasn’t predisposed to completely overthink every single aspect of stories I like.

This is not a call-out post or a complaint about plot holes. It’s a loving attempt to wring every last drop of detail from the source material and organize them all in a way that proves that the story totally does make sense, actually. Even if it’s not the sense the creators originally intended. Because what is life for if not occasionally revelling in benevolent pedantry?

And now, if you’ve made it all the way to the end of this screed, I would love to hear your thoughts on the matter. Did I miss anything glaringly obvious? Do you have your own pet theories for why Maddox sent Soji to the Artifact? Let me know all about it, I really enjoy thinking through these arguments together!

[a-shakespearean-in-paris]

Hi! I found your Dragon Age fanfictions on Ao3 and love them and sometimes check your blog too but don't have tumblr. What is this whole controversy about being 30 and liking Cullen being wrong? I feel like I'm missing something. Anyway, I'm 32, married, expecting twins and never felt too old for Bioware games. WTF

Hi there, thank you for the support, it means a lot! And congrats! :D

Well, to make a long story somewhat short, recently a video circulated on tumblr from TikTok, one of those “what your favorite X says about you” videos that’s pretty common on the platform, if a bit overdone. This one was a “What your Favorite Dragon Age romance says about you.” Some jokes I’ll admit I found somewhat funny, others just made no sense. (Someone explain how liking Isabela gives you “mommy issues,” I still don’t get that.)

However, what was most egregious to many, myself included, was what this person said about Cullen romancers. According to this person, all Cullen fans are “thirty year old white moms” who are “creepy,” and “Cullen won’t save our failing marriage,” and we need to “go back to making our kids chicken nuggets.”

So, various bloggers broke down what was wrong with this, other than the fact that’s it’s just plain not correct about Cullen fans (Hi there everyone, in case you didn’t know, I’m very Polynesian and a huge Cullen fan, also not a mom yet, though I would like to be one someday. :) )But the breakdown of why these statements are problematic is as follows (under the cut for length):

1. The comments were ageist. The TikToker wielded “thirty year old white mom” like it’s some sort of insult.  There is literally nothing wrong with enjoying a game at thirty, literally nothing wrong with being a mom and enjoying a game. I have news for everyone: when you have kids your life or personality outside of being a Mom doesn’t end. To this end, the comments came across as gatekeep-y.

2. The comments were also misogynistic. A woman in the kitchen joke… in 2020. Not only that, but related to the above, it implies that women can’t have hobbies outside of being a mom when they turn a certain age, and do you see the same thing being said about men and their sports teams, or fantasy football? I don’t know why it’s viewed as cringey to be a part of fandom when you’re an adult woman but dudes can still collect their Star Wars memorabilia into their thirties and beyond. Especially when:

3. Dragon Age is rated mature, and it’s always had the M rating even when it was just Origins. This is a game for adult audiences. If you’re engaging with the media online, I am going to assume you’re an adult. Not only that, this is an eleven year old franchise. People who played the games in 2009 can still enjoy them even if some of them have had kids during this eleven year period.

4. Related to that: most, if not all the developers, I’d imagine, are probably over 30. Should they stop making the games for us and make their kids chicken nuggets instead? Is this why we don’t have DA4?!

5. Cullen’s exact age is unclear from canon, he was probably around 18 in Origins, but there’s no way he’s not under thirty come Inquisition. A thirty-year-old crushing on another thirty year old is creepy because…?

6. I haven’t seen others mention this, but it’s something I gathered. To me, the video subtly implied the TikToker’s view that women need to settle down by the time their thirty with kids, which is pretty heteronormative IMO. I’m just not here for that you’re thirty you need settle down BS. I’m 26 and I get crap for being single, which is a whole other pile of BS I won’t get into here. I would like to someday, but there is nothing wrong with being 30 or above and single with no kids. No one has to “settle down” if they don’t want to, there’s no age where you have to “grow up” and stop engaging with things you enjoy.

Being involved in a few different fandoms I don’t see all the discourse but I did happen to see this, and as I said earlier I do not think the person who made the video meant any real harm. I understand the intent was to joke, but people can harm others under the guise of “jokes” all the time. I can tell you in my life, people have “joked” with me about needing to put on a grass skirt and dance the hula, and not understood why I’ve been offended because they just meant to be funny. Casual racism isn’t funny and neither is casual misogyny or ageism.

It was also discouraging to see people on the tik toker’s video laughing at the Cullen joke for being true, as apparently we need to “find a better romance.” And this lead me to say something in a post which I’ll repeat here, as this video managed to trudge up the same old discourse I’ve seen periodically on tumblr about Cullen since I’ve been here in 2017, and mind you, I started writing/tumblr THREE YEARS after Inquisition’s release: that all his fans are boring, basic, idiot women who just like him because he’s traditionally handsome and we just ignore his flaws in favor of his looks, and also he’s just the basic white guy in a slew of “more interesting” romances. Heck, early in this blog’s creation, I could see discourse within Cullen fandom about the “right” way to portray him. (I won’t get into this right now though, it’s a whole other kettle of fish, and this is a pretty nuanced topic in an already nuanced topic.) Speaking for myself, I actually don’t gravitate towards pretty boys. Cullen won me over with his mature romance route. And I like his arc in Inquisition and think it’s a good redemption-esque arc considering this franchise has a lot of characters to develop— but that’s another story as well.

Anyway, I digress. To me the post was less about Cullen and more about “older women” in fandom and how to some find older women here creepy. (and I’m sorry but if you think 30 is “old” I have to laugh.) Also, I have a secret for you: “older” women built fandom spaces as we know it, and we owe a lot of debt to those who paved the way for us to enjoy content, from the early days of the Star Trek fandom, and even before with fan zines.

Fandom is for everyone, and can we stop trying to box people who like A, B or C into certain categories, because your choices in a fictional game don’t speak for who you are in real life.

[sassysnowperson]

writer's meme - TY to @r0b0tb0y for the tag!

How many works do you have on AO3?

168 - oh man that's more than I'd realized. I passed 150 and didn't even notice!

What’s your total AO3 word count?

1,133,901

So many.

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Since r0b0tb0y and I were just talking about this, I conveniently have a list of all 20 ranked by number of works

134 - Star Wars 7 - Original Works 7 - Marvel 2 - Pirates of The Carribean 2 - The Old Guard 2 - Discworld 1 - Good Omens 1 - Leverage 1 - The Good Place 1 - Avatar: The Last Airbender 1 - Ocean’s 11 1 - Harry Potter 1 - The Goblin Emperor 1 - Gundam Wing 1 - Star Trek: TNG 1 - Hades (Videogame) 1 - Sailor Moon 1 - Russian Doll 1 - Mummy/Wonder Woman crossover

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Lol, looking at my top five - it falls into two categories

1. Fics I wrote right at the height of a fandom's popularity that got a massive reader boost because it was the Hot Thing Right Then

2. Star Wars Fix-Its

~

A Series of Better Decisions - A Padme/Obi-Wan/Anakin SW Prequel Trilogy fix-it where Anakin talks to Obi-Wan and spends Revenge of the Sith in a stressed-out bisexual panic instead of becoming a Space Fascist. He winds up fake-poly-dating Obi-Wan to try to bring down Palpatine, and eventually winds up in a better place due to the power of Quitting Your Job and becoming a househusband.

Galactic Response Time - Captain Marvel - an at the time MCU canon-compliant gen fic that ran the universe forward and explained how Carol really TRIED to show up for all those other crises that happened, but it turns out most of the major MCU disasters only lasted like three days and space is real big, y'all. Featuring Nick Fury cathartically bitching with his Space Bestie.

New Lands for the Living - Fix-it where the sequel trilogy ends Even Worse, Poe goes back in time to mercy-kill the timeline, and much to his dismay winds up married to just-before-Original-Trilogy Luke Skywalker. He has an existential crisis about his own existence, meets some competent women, and starts fixing things.

Life's Little Pleasures - The Good Omens fic where I put all my ace feelings, featuring metaphysical bonding and good scotch.

Flustered - Another Padme/Anakin/Obi-Wan SW Prequel Trilogy fix-it, where Order 66 never happens. Anakin gets some therapy and Padme gets a horrible crush on Obi-Wan.

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I do! I love getting to talk to people about fics, and I so appreciate people making the effort to comment I want to spend some time with them! It's so much easier not to comment, I know.

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Hmmm this is not my normal wheelhouse. I usually go angst that gets resolved by the end. Let me look to see what the options are.

Okay, I think we've got two contendors: In Waystation an exhausted Poe Dameron crash-lands in a station where a Bodhi Rook that lived and then hid now lives with Baze and Chirrut. There is a little epilgue that implies they're going to meet again, but the bulk of the fic does end with Poe making the decision to go back to the Resistance, and leaving Bodhi behind. Still, I think it's more wistful, rather than angsty.

Time Enough for Mourning takes it though, I think. Davits Draven/Antoc Merrick, that is entirely about Draven mourning the fact that Antoc has died. The end is still, I think, more cathartic than angsty, but it is overall probably the strongest "break out the waterworks" of my fics.

Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

I do occasionally, usually when someone prompts me and I find something in there that makes my brain go!!! I think the strangest is probably The Face Underneath. It's a Cassian Andor/Elim Garak fic where I drag Garak into the Star Wars Universe for a triple drabble series where he is an old mentor of Cassian's.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Mmm, not proper hate. Realtalk, the most devastating one for me was when I posted a fic that the only comment was a spelling critique.

And yes, there was a spelling error, but still, very crushing to have that be the only feedback. (It has since found a few readers that said nice things, very healing :D)

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

Yes! Uh - consensual, between adults, often M/M adults, tho I have written explicit femslash, hetfic, and poly piles. It's usually affectionate, often plays with power dynamics even if it doesn't go into full dom/sub.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that anyone has made me aware of, I've never looked.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Had a request or two, but never been linked the result - so not sure if it didn't happen or if I just didn't get linked. I welcome it!

I have had several fics podficced, and I LOVE that. What a joy! Making a blanket permission statement that allowed podfic is one of the best decisions I've made as a fic author. Suddenly, Podfic!

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Once or twice! I like the idea of doing it, but follow-through is hard. Hoping to do some co-writing soon though, so we will see!

What’s your all time favourite ship?

Sorry, unrepentant multi-shipper here. I like possibilities, and finding the story that will bring people together, more than one specific thing.

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

I don't have ANYTHING I've given up on, but there are a few fics in my unpublished drafts that were beautiful ideas, and really struggled to become contained stories. They all want to be sprawling things, and I have not felt sprawling-thing-writing passionate about those ideas. But, you never know! Inspiration may strike.

What are your writing strengths?

I'd say character voice, along with that, dialogue. Also humor moments that still have real weight and don't undercut the story, as well as straight comedy writing.

What are your writing weaknesses?

You see, I, uh, do this thing where I don't really end a sentence - I think about ending it, I even assume, at some point while I'm writing that I have ended it; I have not and it meanders, persistently, until I have constructed a whole paragraph made out of one chain of words and a hodgepodge of punctuation.

Also the thing where I accidentally use an unusual word five times in one paragraph because my brain has grabbed onto it like an excited puppy and keeps offering it up as the Perfect Word.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I love having multilingual characters. When writing, I tend to keep all the words in English and use dialogue tags to denote language shift - unless I am inventing the language, or have a speaker of that language willing to beta the bits to make sure I don't mess them up too badly.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Actually wrote and posted? Rogue One.

Fandom of my heart my younger self spun out stories in my imagination about? Where if I had my own computer and easy access to a fic archive they almost certainly would have become spectacularly earnest fics?

ReBoot and Sailor Moon. The Sailor Moon was an AU that took place on the sun and they all had kick-ass horses. Baby Sass knew what was up.

What’s your favourite fic you’ve written?

Nope, sorry, can't pick, love them all in different ways for different reasons.

Tagging: @semisweetshadow, @anamelesstraveler, @jules-of-the-crown - and generally if you follow me and want to do it, do so and tag me in it!

[sullustangin]

Fan Fic Writers Meme

I remembered one of the memes I wanted to do!  I saw this one on @walk-ng-d-saster‘s blog, so I’m doing it. 

How many works do you have on AO3?  26 (for some reason tumblr is making this answer huge in font size)

What’s your total AO3 word count?

492,356 (CHRIST)

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Things I have completed and posted:  SWTOR (AO3), DC Animated (Bruce Timm/Paul Dini productions from the 90s and early 2000s) (AO3 and FF.Net),  FF7 (FF.net), Doctor Who (FF.NET), House (frigging forgot about that one until I saw it in my files, yikes)

Things I have completed but not posted:  Star Trek

Things I have not completed nor posted:  Law and Order: SVU, West Wing, FF6, Highlander, Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes (ACD), the Mandalorian (now totally out of canon, thanks Luke), Tombstone, and Sin Takes a Holiday (a random Basil Rathbone 1930s film I latched onto like a leech for a few weeks and this mangled file is all that remains)

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Parthenos, In Theory, and The Slow Road from DCAU (Wonderbat ship), then The Grand Reveal (Rishi fic, my latest complete multi-chapter), A Shan Family Tradition (possibly canon Baby!Shan fic), and Who She is In the Dark (the first fic in the SWTOR series I have running.

Do you respond to comments; why or why not?

I don’t when I feel guilty because nothing is in the chute. (Hi, Slow Road people.  I know. That whole kerfuffle about Batman earlier this summer took the wind out of my sails because I didn’t want it to come off as a Bat Stan... because if you read the series, you know what’s happening soonish and now I’m waiting for that to die off.)

I absolutely do when I’m still writing and creating content (Hi, SWTOR people)

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

I don’t like ending my fics on an angsty note.  I like hope at the end, if there is nothing else left. 

Do you write crossovers? If so, what’s the craziest one you’ve written?

When I was a young teenager, I plotted out an extensive FF6/FF7 crossover that paired Celes Chere and Vincent Valentine.  It never got written, but it was elaborately planned.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

No.  I have received.... comments?  Statements? that could have been constructive and could have started a dialogue, but then the commenter’s follow-up behavior indicated they were not being sincere; they weren’t actually worried about the issues they presented, but rather, they were trying to get a reaction out of me. (They went on another platform and made snide remarks.)

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

I do write smut but it’s unpublished at the moment.  I fail utterly at writing PWP (so far), so I can’t just have them do the thing and leave it at that.  I think (hope?) I’ll be more comfortable publishing smut once I get to that point in my plotted Yavin fic. 

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I have had someone take my FF7 fic premise and poorly recycle it.  When I messaged them about it, I was then accused of stealing THEIR fic (somehow, in a time machine).

Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, but I would be open to a collab with someone on a translation.

What’s your all time favorite ship?

In terms of what I write, there’s an ongoing thing of Relatively Orderly Guy/Relatively Chaotic Gal recurring.  

What are your writing strengths?

I can come up with an original plotline.  I do the research and I try to get things ‘right’ within a universe, so there are lots of details.  I have been told I can strike to the heart of a character’s dynamic with other people. 

What are your writing weaknesses?

I sometimes worry the details can be too overwhelming for people and they tune out.  I think I sometimes have too many ‘talking heads’ chapters where there’s lots of exposition -- too much tell, and not enough show.  Per spouse, I also get reaaaaally defensive about my writing (particularly professionally, but even in fan fic ), so I have to have a policy of letting the comment sit for a certain period of time before I attend to it.  The interim time is spent woe’ing and beating myself up.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

Minus a few words that are sprinkled in (like how Mandalorian is used), I tend to just say they’re speaking in that language.  I do read a few languages, but dialogue is so much more informal and less stiff than the written word.  Also, it’s easier on the reader.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Star Trek.

What’s your favorite fic that you’ve written?

I have affection for the pieces on the cutting room floor; things I cut out or have never published that sort of stay on the hard drive as a monument to the effort and also a little bit of a cheat when I need a scene for something else.  For example, parts of the casino scenes from The Cosmic Deck were cannibalized from the unfinished, now totally AU Mandalorian fic I have.  I’ve taken a bar scene from one fic and redone it as another universe’s party.

[scottymcgeesterwrites]

Final Fantasy VII Remake Review

Year: 2020

Platform: PS4

I finished this game shortly after posting all my main single-player series Final Fantasy reviews. I was still digesting it and thinking about it to put together my review.

Synopsis:

The Shinra Electric Power Company rules over the city of Midgar, and the eco-terrorists AVALANCHE stop at nothing to try and prevent the life essence of the planet from being used as energy. Barrett, leader of AVALANCHE, hires a mercenary named Cloud Strife for their bombing mission on a Shinra Mako Reactor. Cloud doesn’t care much for the greater cause and only wants his pay. But then, after a mission goes awry, he meets Aerith, a flower girl who is the descendant of the Ancients. He quickly finds himself wrapped up in the greater conflict against Shinra.

Gameplay:

Final Fanatasy VII Remake has one of the best gameplay styles of any Final Fantasy game. It’s that good. It seems like after all these years, this is what Square really wanted to do. Since this was released after Final Fantasy XV, it’s pretty much the successor to its gameplay. While Final Fantasy XV has you more or less spamming the attack button with occasional spell casting and item usage, Final Fantasy VII Remake has you much more involved with the Materia system, abilities, and guarding/evading. One notable example is that Final Fantasy XV always told you when you should guard in order to counter, but Final Fantasy VII Remake has you figure that out on your own.

The abilities are so goddamn flashy and cool during gameplay. Tifa’s moves are quite possibly the most awe-inspiring.

My only complaint is locking onto the enemy during battle. You have to press down on R3 to lock onto an enemy, and I sometimes found that jarring with the camera controls. Sometimes I accidentally disengaged from an enemy and missed an attack. Since your moves are dependent on an Active Time Battle system, you can waste a turn if you get hit while conjuring a spell or taking out an item. That sometimes made me go “REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”. But in the long run, those were very small gripes. The battles are so much fun.

Since the game follows only the Midgar portion of the story, it’s linear. But you reach sections where you are free to roam around and do sidequests before continuing with the main objective. I’m sure the later releases of the remake will feel much less constrained. But this remake does a good job at expanding upon Midgar without feeling too redundant.

Graphics:

Jesus Christ. This game is gorgeous.

Both in-game graphics and pre-rendered cutscenes. The switch between a pre-rendered cutscene and in-game cutscene has become much more seamless than ever before.

If you remember my Final Fantasy XV review, I mentioned how NPCs and other in-game animations seemed stiff and stilted. Final Fantasy VII Remake takes steps to remedy that. Characters have more fluid movements and everyone’s lips move a lot more. However, lip movements can come off as awkward. My friend was watching me play, and during one in-game cutscene they said “Something looks weird with their lips.” At times, lip movements seem too dynamic when the character is standing relatively still, which comes off looking like Mr. Ed the horse trying to talk.

Despite those small awkward things, the rest of the game is extremely polished. Remember how blocky Final Fantasy VII was? We now finally see these characters and the world of Midgar brought to life in beautiful HD graphics.Like holy shit. Everyone looks so beautiful.

Before I played this game, I was a Tifa stan, but now, ho man, they made Aerith so much more appealing.

SO.

MUCH.

MORE.

APPEALING.

And Tifa shines better than ever. I’m very tempted to just gush about her but here is just a couple enticing gifs.

Imagine playing this game and still thinking gamers are oppressed.

Story:

Final Fantasy VII Remake follows from the start of the original game up until the party leaving Midgar. Square plans to release the rest of the remake later.

I have to say, they made the story a lot more engaging than the original. That may seem like blasphemy, but the dialogue and voice acting was just so damn good. Some of my favorite moments included the banter between Aerith and Cloud. Like I said, I wasn’t into Aerith that much until I played the remake. She’s just so damn cute and charming. One of my favorite parts was when she said, “Shit” and almost fell, after mentioning how she didn’t need help climbing a ladder. Her voice is so lovely and amusing to listen to. The growing romance between her and Cloud doesn’t come off as forced or cringey, because we now spend so much time with Aerith.

Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie have much more important roles in the story. This gives us a greater sense of Avalanche as a ragtag group.

Entire chapters focus on them, especially Jessie. I cringed a bit at Jessie to be honest, despite her popularity. She now comes off as a copy of Aerith in the sense that she comes on strong to Cloud. But really strong. Like “I want that D right now” strong. Cloud has officially become your usual anime boy who is good at everything that can make any woman magically fall in love with him. So that whole thing made me roll my eyes.

There are some new characters inserted, such as the SOLDIER Roche. I thought they were going to do more with him but, apparently not. The new characters can be a bit “meh”, such as Chadley. Johnny isn’t a new character but may as well be since his role is so expanded. He was probably the most annoying, constantly calling Cloud “bro”. That gave me some bad flashbacks of Prompto’s modern-speak in Final Fantasy XV.

The remake adds a certain new plot element that you’re not sure at first where it’s going until it’s revealed at the very end. The ending can be a bit out there, as the original storyline is changed significantly. SIGNIFICANTLY I was curious if this game would make sense to first-timers, but, probably not when you reach the end. The ending heavily relies on you knowing the original game.

My only complaint about the story was how they started the motorcycle chase cutscene. That was my favorite cutscene of the original game, with Cloud driving down the stairs and the group getting into the car. I liken it to the barrel scene in the original Hobbit novel. But like the Hobbit movie, they made the motorcycle scene pretty outrageous. Like so over-the-top that my initial reaction was to scoff at it. It also struck me as awkward, because there were many moments when the bad guys could have shot them but just. . .stood there watching Cloud kick their asses.

Some people may be upset by how the remake ended, while others find it cool. I thought it was cool. But at the same time, now I want an official “remastered” Final Fantasy VII too. Just a game strictly like the original but with vastly improved graphics.

Music:

The music was pure eargasm. There were many moments when I fanboyed screaming “THIS IS THE SONG! YESSS!” They remixed the songs so well, from the battle theme to the Shinra theme, and the Wall Market theme. Everything you loved about the original soundtrack but MORE gusto, more pomp and circumstance.

A couple complaints though.

1 – I think the focus on making the music more orchestrated takes away the mood of the original music. I missed some of the synth and electronic from the original game because it related well to the technological city of Midgar. The synth and electronic featured in the original game gave off a brooding, darker mood.

2 – I didn’t like what they did with the Crazy Motorcycle music.

Notable Theme:

It’s difficult to find pieces of the original soundtrack as of today, because Square is taking them down from YouTube. Still, some people have managed to keep up some of the coolest tracks from this game. Unfortunately, the videos have gameplay footage, which could be spoilers, technically.

I’ll just leave it as this:

The Jenova battle theme is a much longer piece in this game, but it pays off at the final quarter of the song.

Trust me.

Verdict:

The remake does the original justice. We waited so long for this game and it delivered, unlike Final Fantasy XV.

I don’t think a first-timer would really appreciate it though as much as a fan of the original game would. Sure, there’s nothing stopping you from just going into it without knowing the original game, but there are things that one wouldn’t understand unless you played the original game. In that sense, the word “remake” is a bit misleading. Maybe they’re “rebooting” the entire Compilation of Final Fantasy VII? It seems like they’re going for what they did with the newer Star Trek movies, if you catch my drift. But I can’t say for sure exactly where they’re going with it until the next game comes out, but it seems that way to me.

[dgcatanisiri]

I remember when I was reading the DS9 novel The 34th Rule, I complained about how David R George III, the writer of that book alongside Armin Shimmerman, has a habit of writing VERY decompressed time - there, it was having a chapter open with Kira entering Quark’s and then going on for a good two, three pages, without even mentioning her again, focusing on things like Quark interacting with a couple of characters who only appear in that scene, doing no set up or development by focusing on this bit, just... having it happen.

Which can be a service to certain stories, but with him, it seems like a consistent thing that he will STRETCH everything out, so that a book that could run maybe 280, 300 pages ends up hitting 400 easily. And because of that, all of his scene-setting and such goes on for much too long, overstaying its welcome and making the reader (me) just want it to get a damn move on already.

I think, having just reread the first of the Worlds of DS9 segment of the Star Trek Litverse, I see another issue I had, even before getting to his entry - he REALLY did not seem to care for the novel original characters of the post-finale DS9 world. Like... Honestly, the more I roll this over in my head, I’m not even sure if he cares about ANY of the DS9 cast.

Lot of details from the Star Trek Litverse, the novels set in the 24th century following the conclusion of DS9, so I’m gonna just throw up a cut so that those who don’t care about my ramblings are spared.

This is being spawned from having read the Andor entry of Worlds of DS9, which is centered entirely around characters who only exist in the novels, characters created to fill gaps in the officer roster after the end of the show. And I realized... NONE of these characters actually really feature in the course of the novels following David R George getting the primary pen that advances the DS9 setting.

Like I’m thinking ahead to the post-Destiny era, and... Of the DS9 cast who were introduced in Avatar and explored in those books... I don’t think ANY of them really fared much under his pen. Like... The Mission Gamma novels had the core cast put across the four of them, so let’s use that to show the Who’s Who.

So, left to right, Treir, Commander Elias Vaughn, Quark, Ezri Dax, Ensign Thirishar “Shar” ch’Thane, Kira, Gul Macet, Vedek Yevir, Nog, Bashir, Morn, Kasidy, Lieutenant Ro Laren, Ensign Prynn Tenmei, and Taran’atar. Not pictured are Jake (who returns to DS9 after this mini-series, getting a novel about his journey during this time of his own), former-Kai Opaka, now returned to Bajor, Ben Sisko, who returned for the birth of his daughter, and among the additional new cast developed, we have Counselor Phillipa Matthias and the new Bajoran liaison officer once Bajor joins the Federation and Kira takes on a Starfleet commission, Major Cenn Desca.

After Worlds of DS9 and the loose trilogy of Warpath/Fearful Symmetry/The Soul Key, the DS9 novels jump forward several years, and what happens?

Well, Shar and Taran’atar have left the cast, Shar in Worlds of DS9, Taran’atar at the conclusion of The Soul Key. During the Destiny novels, Ezri, now on the command track, has transferred to a new ship, the Aventine, and gotten a battlefield promotion to captain after the original captain and first officer are killed during the Borg invasion (she also took with her a few other minor original recurring characters I didn’t mention above). Kira has resigned her commission and is now becoming a Vedek (more words to follow). Vaughn became the station commander, but accepted a promotion to Captain and a ship for the Borg invasion, during which he ends up in a coma and eventually dies. Yevir has seemingly gone off into the ether. Macet likewise is not much of a figure at this point. No one even talks about Opaka’s return, despite how significant a figure she is among the Bajoran faithful - the Kai who led the Bajoran people through the end of the Occupation, lost among the Prophets only to be returned to them in a time of spiritual need. Likewise, Matthias has no real use in his stories, even though she’d been a major recurring figure in the books prior. Ro has become the station commander, complete with a Starfleet captaincy. Sisko, like Vaughn, took a ship posting for the sake of the invasion... and then actually ended up separating with Kasidy.

Actually, reading further into the Worlds series, there seems to be a reference to the naming of a certain Vedek, a man named Solis, who was mentioned on the show and who became a minor player during the late Mission Gamma period as standing against the Vedek Assembly and their response to a newly discovered book of prophecies, being encouraged by Opaka to run for Kai. But the Kai of Bajor does not appear in the post-Destiny DS9 books until the last book he wrote for the series, and it’s some woman we’d never met before. So he ignored the existing plot threads to do... something else entirely.

And then, as the Federation deals with the newly formed Typhon Pact, the station itself gets blown up.

I mean, yeah, sure, okay, take the iconic location of the series and destroy it, no problems there...

The Federation and Bajor approve the construction of a new station, but it takes a year for that to happen. When it does, Treir remains on Bajor, managing Quark’s franchise there. Prynn has been spending her time at Vaughn’s, as he’s her father, not getting ANYTHING to do other than be the mournful daughter.

Then, in a novel not penned by DRG, Bashir ends up stealing classified Starfleet data to aid in the ongoing reproduction crisis facing the Andorians (bringing in elements of Shar’s storyline), and he resigns his Starfleet commission, subsequently setting out to bring down Section 31.

Meanwhile, back with DRG’s developments, Kira has vanished among the Prophets. And, speaking of the Prophets, also in this time, we learn that one of Bajor’s moons is hollow, a “falsehood,” which casts a lot of doubt on the Prophets among the Bajorans. This, in turn, leads to Major Cenn resigning his commission and walking away, his faith shattered. And Ro, a character often defined by her lack of connection to the Bajoran faith, begins to wonder.

So... He functionally fazes out most of the DS9 crew brought in that he had no part in, and rejiggers Ro, the one preestablished character among them, to be a character honestly more in line with who Kira was while getting rid of Kira herself.

Why was he given sole creative control over these novels when it REALLY just seems to come across that he doesn’t like any of the characters developed for this setting?

Like I always come back to the “Vedek Kira” business as seeming like a fundamental misunderstanding of the character. It NEVER made sense to me. Or to Nana Visitor - as I understand it, while Star Trek Online borrowed some ideas from the Litverse, including this one, she made it a point to say that she would only return and voice Kira in their DS9 centered expansion if Kira got back into uniform at the conclusion of it. Like, yes, there was a major focus on her issues with faith in the initial run, due to her being effectively excommunicated from the faith by Vedek Yevir and the Assembly, but... That doesn’t mean she’d turn around and join the Vedeks.

Even in the book Ascendance, where we do jump back in the timeline briefly to a point after The Soul Key... Kira doesn’t FEEL like Kira in that segment, and the novel basically tries to convince us that she’s been feeling this discomfort with the uniform for a while, but... It just doesn’t ring true to the character. It never feels RIGHT. It just feels like after the fact attempts at justifying this radical shift through retcon, rather than a natural development of the character.

This isn’t even going in on the stuff done with Sisko. Like... Somewhere, I believe there’s an interview or statement or something from him that says that this was part of the beginning of Sisko’s journey under his pen, and that this is paying off the “you will know nothing but sorrow” thing said by the Prophet in the form of his mother, but... We are still talking about a white author writing a black man abandoning his family, something that Avery Brooks himself stepped in to prevent happen in the finale proper. This is not good optics, “beginning” of the story or not - even if it’s in keeping with a prophecy from the show... My dude, are you REALLY the guy who should be writing this PARTICULAR story?

(Though, admittedly, they DO reconcile and Kasidy and their daughter join him on board his new starship, but... Honestly, a part of me can’t help but feel that this was more due to the audience NOT accepting this at all, rather than being his intentional story direction...)

I mean... Maybe, MAYBE, this all was in service of some building story that never got published, because of the announcement of Star Trek Picard effectively putting an end to the ongoing Litverse, since there are a handful of lingering plot threads that I figure that the Coda miniseries just won’t be able to get to and wrap up, but... Given everything that came before, I don’t feel like that was going to happen.

I don’t understand why HE got to pen the continuing adventures, when it really just seems like he didn’t want to work with or build off of what had come before.

Like I remember in 2016, there were a handful of DS9 novels, among them the above mentioned Ascendance, which was the conclusion of a storyline started in the further above mentioned Jake novel (Rising Son), so a plotline that had run since 2003. And yet that year, in DS9 novels? I was far, FAR more excited for Jeffery Lang’s Force and Motion, which was a side story featuring Nog and Chief O’Brien on a mission away from DS9 proper. While part of that is surely just about how much the Ascendant storyline in question had dragged on for the better part of fifteen years there, it still says a lot about how much excitement this conclusion mattered to me by this point, under his pen.

It doesn’t help that my other big problem with his writing the DS9 novels is how much NOTHING seems to happen - he writes novels in the realm of 400, 450, 500 pages, and about 300, 350 of those pages constantly feel like spinning the wheels, going “hey, THING may be important, this THING we’re talking about. Hope that THING happens soon, and that THING will do THING. Yup. that’s a THING that’s happening.” It’s like the story can span weeks or months in the course of a single book, but by the end, NOTHING really felt like it’s moved forward. No character advancement, no plot advancement, just a bunch of people, standing around, talking about the THING and how the THING may be important, but we’ll have to wait around and see it anything happens about this THING.

If I’m happy about anything with the big Litverse wrap up, it’s that hopefully, he’s DONE playing in a progressing DS9 playground. Because honestly, I would probably be happy never seeing his name attached to a Star Trek novel again, because his writing style just does not work for me, on top of my above issues with his portrayal of characters.

[punkpoemprose]

December 3rd- To Boldly Go

Universe: 1990′s AU/ Star Trek Convention AU Rating: G (General audiences, cleavage as a plot point but otherwise it’s a meetcute) Length: 3107

A/N: Thanks so much to @karis-the-fangirl for the idea to do a Trekkie convention for the 90′s AU. I actually got really into TNG around the same time I got into Frozen, so this was a fun callback for me. Also as a sidenote, this fic involves side Elsamaren, because meddling siblings and their equally as troublemaking significant others are always fun for me to write!

You don’t need to know a lot about Star Trek to get this fic, but you’ll get a kick out of it sooner if you do know at least a bit about Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Anna tugged up on her collar, trying to keep her top from plunging quite as low as it had. She was having some regrets when it came to her choice to dress up for the convention. She’d been so excited by the possibility to be like her favorite character for the day that she’d forgotten that Counselor Troi was clearly much more comfortable showing off her decolletage than she was, and was now paying the price for that as she walked around the convention center with her sister and her girlfriend.

They had made the better choices of dressing in general Star uniforms and were making a particularly cute and comfortable couple of science officers. She couldn’t help but smile as she watched them out of the corner of her eye, Honeymaren was helping re-pin Elsa’s Starfleet pin and Elsa was smiling at her like she’d hung the stars. A part of Anna was a bit jealous. While she was, of course, thrilled for her sister to have found someone who made her happy, she also wished that she’d be so lucky in love.

“Having issues with your uniform Deanna?” Elsa asked when she took note of Anna tugging her top up again.

“No more than you are,” Anna grumped, trying and failing to play it off like it was nothing.

She had been so excited when the convention had been announced. She’d never really considered herself the nerdy type, but as soon as she saw her first episode of Star Wars: The Next Generation she’d been hooked. That her sister had been willing to watch it as well had given them something to bond over after years of not having very much in common. This convention had been the ultimate way for her to enjoy the show and to meet other fans, but she just couldn’t stop thinking about how this wasn’t at all what she had planned.

When the announcement was made, she’d immediately gone to the nearest box office to her that was selling tickets and picked up three. One for her, one for Elsa, and one for her now ex-boyfriend. Honeymaren was just filling in so that the ticket purchase wouldn’t be a waste. She of course liked the show too, but hadn’t been watching it for years like they had, her fascination with it being a much more recent development.

She was glad that it had actually developed though, given that after Elsa had come out to Anna and introduced her to her girlfriend, they had needed something other than Elsa to talk about. Hans, her ex, had only feigned an interest, and like many other parts of their relationship, he’d not paid any attention to it.  

“You do look great though, just so you know.”

Honeymaren offered the compliment without any hint of placation. She wasn’t saying it because she thought Anna needed to hear it, she was saying it because she meant it. It was one of the things that Anna appreciated most about her sister’s girlfriend. She was honest, sometimes to the point of accidental injury to others not so versed in her frankness, but Anna was always glad to know exactly where she stood with her, and she thought that after the many years Elsa had spent second guessing everything, she deserved someone whose love she would never have to doubt.

“Thanks Honey,” she replied, “I’m sorry I’m being such a bummer.”

Elsa shrugged, “You’re usually Ms. Mary Sunshine Anna, you’re allowed a sad day. Just let us know what we can do. I know we both want you to enjoy the convention.”

“You can find me a Riker,” Anna teased, already feeling better knowing that she could enjoy the convention in the company of people who cared about her. And who, she was certain, would keep her from having an accidental nip slip.

***

Kristoff had been happy enough to take some of his siblings to the Star Trek convention they’d been talking about for weeks. He hadn’t really known what to expect, but when it came to his brothers and sisters he couldn’t really deny them anything. Well, at least he couldn’t deny them anything reasonable. They had asked him to dress up as Spock, and that was, ultimately where he drew the line.

They had begged and pleaded, but as much as he liked Spock, and generally enjoyed watching the Original Star Trek series with them, he didn’t really consider himself the dress-up type beyond his little sisters sticking him in a tutu here and there.

“Krissy!” his sister Crystal called, tugging on his hand, “Come on, there’s going to be a panel in a minute about how to make your own tribble!”

He huffed but smiled down at her. “How about you go grab Ben and Gemma from the merchandise table over there and head on over without me. If you promise to stay together you can go by yourselves and I’ll go figure out something for lunch.”

She grinned and then took off toward her other two older siblings. He could tell she was giddy about the trust he was placing in her and couldn’t help but feel glad that despite their high energy, his siblings were very good kids. Crystal was the youngest at nine, and then Gemma was the eldest excluding him at fourteen. Ben was smack dab in the middle at twelve, and while they still needed a chaperone to go to such a big event, he knew that he could trust them on their own for a little while. Especially because they’d be sitting.

He’d been adopted when he was five because his parents thought that they couldn’t have kids. That had seemed to be true for a little over a year until they discovered that they were expecting Gemma, and from there Kristoff never had a moment of silence to himself. It was a blessing of sorts, to go from no family to a small family, to having three younger siblings who loved him unconditionally.

It was worth all the diaper changes when they were small and now it was worth taking them on trips on his days off. His parents always appreciated the help, but really he enjoyed it more than they needed it.

As he watched them run off, Gemma holding Crystal’s hand and Ben following directly behind, he turned off the path of the convention floor and found a pillar to lean against. He just needed a minute to breathe before he went to find lunch for the kids. As much as he loved spending time with them, he wasn’t fond of the crowded convention space. It was too many people for his taste, and while he did enjoy the show, he didn’t really know much about the newest incarnation and that seemed to be most of what was highlighted at the booths and panels. He didn’t particularly have the urge or interest to investigate, but he did need a break, and he would take it where he could.

***

“Oh my gosh,” Honeymaren exclaimed, taking Elsa and Anna both my surprise.

Elsa tried to look in the direction that Honeymaren had been, but Anna watched as she quickly turned her to the side with a tug on her hand.

“Don’t look!” She chided.

“Look at what?” Anna asked, feeling just as confused as her sister looked.

She was quickly shushed and then Honeymaren grabbed her hand and dragged both her and Elsa off the show floor’s path and into a lull area by a merchandise table.

“What?” Elsa asked her girlfriend once she seemed to have settled from the whiplash of being dragged away from where they’d just been walking.

“Okay, keep your voice down, and don’t be obvious.”

“Obvious about what?” Anna asked, feeling like she’d fallen into an episode of Star Trek and some alien with an inability to explain its actions had taken over her sister’s girlfriend.

She gestured to the side, nodding her head in the direction of a pillar filled empty space off the show floor. It was near the hallway entrance that lead to the panel rooms, and Anna didn’t notice anything at first except for the fact that many people in and out of costume were resting in the space. She saw a Worf standing off to the side talking to a redshirt, an Uhura checking her lipstick in a hand mirror, three kids heading toward the panel hall together, and a handful of aliens eating snacks or sitting on the floor with their backs to pillars.

“What? Do you see Wil Wheaton or something?”

He was the only actor that was particularly close to their ages that was potentially coming to the convention and Anna knew that Elsa found him particularly charming on the show. There was probably a kinship for her in his character, a young kid who suddenly has to deal with the death of a parent and who is constantly trying to find his place.

“No, against the pillar, don’t be obvious.”

She was giggling now, and after a moment so did Elsa.

“Oh.”

“Oh what?” Anna replied still trying to scan the pillars, being quite obvious probably, to figure out what the two other women were looking at and giggling over.

“Oh.”

She spotted him after a moment. Tall, broad and handsome, leaning against a post with a short beard and a black turtleneck.

“You told us to find you a Riker,” Honeymaren said gleefully, “Well there you are.”

“I mean, he’s blonde and not in uniform, but she’s got a point Anna.”

She did, in fact, have a point. If one took a moment to slap a Starfleet uniform on him he’d make a pretty convincing Commander Will Riker. Except of course his blondness, but given that she was a red-haired Deanna Troi, she supposed that could be excused.

“You have to go talk with him,” Honeymaren said, seeming very convinced that it would be a good idea despite Anna, who normally considered herself an optimist, already forming doubts to how that would work out.

Anna looked to Elsa for assistance, but she was just smiling at her sister sheepishly, as if silently wishing her good luck. Honeymaren had a firm belief that things happened for a reason, one that had only been reinforced when she and Elsa had accidentally got trapped in an elevator together for three hours which was certainly the strangest meeting she’d ever heard of for a couple.

“I couldn’t. I mean, he looks like he wants to be left alone, and…”

“And nothing,” Honeymaren said, pushing her towards the pathway again, intending fully to make her cross it and walk over to the not-costume-wearing-Riker-like-gentleman leaning against the post.

Anna tried to turn back, but if there was one thing that her sister’s girlfriend and the Borg had in common it was that once they had a plan for you, resistance was futile.

***

“Uh… hi!”

Kristoff opened his eyes. He’d been taking a moment to decompress while his siblings were in their panel and had all but forgotten for a second, other than the loud noises of chatter and phaser sound effects, that he was in the middle of a room full of people.

He wasn’t sure who he expected to see when his eyes opened, but it was not a beautiful redhead with her cleavage on display right in his sightline. He flushed and averted his eyes, trying to burn away the mental image of freckled breasts that within a half a second were already lodged deep into his memories.

“Can I, uh…” he met her eyes and forced himself to maintain contact, “Can I help you?”

She flushed in return and he thought for a moment that she might have thought that he was someone else and had approached him by accident or something. It had never happened to him, but there was, of course, a first time for everything.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” she said, sounding sheepish, “But uh, do you see those two girls across the way? The blonde and the brunette? That’s my sister and my friend.”

Not really sure where any of this was going, Kristoff awkwardly raised a hand to wave to the two women who were watching their exchange with interest. The brunette waved back, but the blonde, realizing they’d been caught, or more accurately ratted out, flushed and covered her face with her hand.

“They well… they think they’re funny and because you look kind of like Will Riker they told me to come over and talk to you. Stupid, I know.”

She had him until Will Riker. He thought that maybe he was an actor he didn’t know about or something. His Trek knowledge really was limited to just what his siblings had him watch, so he didn’t know much about anything else.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know who that is, but you’ve got the wrong guy.”

“Oh,” the girl said looking nervous and turning redder by the minute, “I didn’t mean I thought you were him I mean obviously… wait.”

She gave him a serious look for a moment, then continued.

“You’re at a Star Trek convention and you don’t know who Commander William Riker is?”

The accusatory tone to her voice almost made him nervous, like she was going to call the convention police on him or something.

“Uh, is he from The Next Generation?”

She nodded then, looking a bit confused still, but also a bit satisfied.

“I’m sorry, I’ve never watched it. I’ve only seen parts of the Original. Mostly I’m here watching my younger siblings. They’re in a panel.”

He didn’t know why he was telling her that. It didn’t really matter after all, there were no Star Trek convention police who were coming to kick him out for not knowing enough about the show. Yet he told he anyway, maybe because she was clearly in this situation under duress, or maybe because he’d stared at her cleavage and felt that he owed her for it, even if it was unintentional.

“Oh,” she said, “Well, um… that’s nice of you. I’m so sorry I bothered you. I’m sure you can understand siblings trying to talk you into things…”

He nodded. He did get it.

“You know, they tried to get me to dress up as Spock. Not Kirk, Spock. I had to tell them no, but it was a battle anyway, so I get it. And, uh, also… you weren’t really bothering me.”

“Oh, that’s nice of you to say. But I just interrupted your sibling break. I wish I could catch one of those, but if I walk away on my own I know those two are going to follow me anyway. Also, if your younger siblings watch Next Generation they’ll want you to be Riker next time.”

“Would they follow you if we walked to the café together?”

He didn’t know why he asked. He didn’t even know this girl’s name, but she seemed nice and he was starting to get a bit of a sense that she might be a kindred spirit. Clearly, he thought, she was a much more social kindred spirit, but someone he thought he might like to talk to nevertheless.

She flushed again and he was trying to think of how to backpedal when she answered, “Probably, but they might leave after a little bit. I’m their ride so they’d need to find me eventually, but it might be nice to spend a second alone… or alone together I guess. Until your little siblings get out of their panel that is.”

He nodded, and let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. He wondered if she would let him buy her lunch. Because of the cleavage staring thing of course, to fix his karma, nothing at all to do with the fact that his treacherous brain was already filing away the details of her smile and ascribing labels to them like “cute” and “beautiful” which he rarely if ever did. He was the sort of person that fell in love with a personality before he did with looks, but he had to admit he wanted the opportunity to get to know her a little better.

“Oh!” she said, “And I’m Anna by the way… or Counselor Deanna Troi if you don’t want my real name. You don’t watch the show so you probably wouldn’t have known that anyway.”

She let out an awkward little laugh, and he couldn’t help but smile.

“I’m Kristoff,” he replied, “Just, uh Kristoff. I could’ve been Spock though, or I guess this Riker guy. Why did they think you should come talk to me anyway? I mean I get it’s because I look like the character, but is he important or something?”

He saw her blush brighten before she shook her head and took off towards the hallway that would lead them to the café. He followed behind and realized suddenly that he really needed to watch The Next Generation.

***

“What do you think?” Honeymaren asked, flapping a polaroid in her hand.

“You’re not supposed to shake them you know,” Elsa teasingly chided, “It says so on the package and everything.”

“Well I just wanted to make sure quickly that it was a good photo,” she explained, “I mean it’s their first date after all, I want to make sure we have pictures to show your future nieces and nephews.”

Elsa chuckled, “You’re always so sure of these things, aren’t you?”

She took the photo from her girlfriend’s hands and couldn’t help but grin when she saw that despite the distance, you could clearly tell that Anna-Deanna and her mystery not-Riker were smiling at each other and blushing in a way that very much indicated that Honeymaren was right to send Anna over to him.

“Of course, I mean this one was just too easy. I mean I know he wasn’t in costume, but he does look like Riker, and Anna makes a good Troi even if she’s a redhead and since those two are getting married in the show, we might as well assume our real life analogs will get there too.”

Elsa shoved the photo into her canvas bag, tucking it between a zine and a headshot of Wil Wheaton as Wesley Crusher. Anna would, no matter the outcome, probably want it later for the memory. She only had to hope, grabbing Honeymaren’s hand, that her girlfriend’s romantic sense was as good for others as it had been for them.

“Come on,” she said with a sigh, “Lets stalk them to the foodcourt.”