#I had written some shitty tng shit

[fouralignments]

(@xmcu-fietro here, hi! :D)

For the ask game:

D: What’s the most personal fanfic you’ve written?

J:  What’s your favorite fanfic trope?  Have you written it?

R: Which writers (fanfic or otherwise) do you consider the biggest influence on you and your writing?

D: What’s the most personal fanfic you’ve written?

It's Shabbat Shalom, its 6522 words and 13 page fic. Its the last piece that I wrote before my father died. I kid you not I was editing/ getting ready to publish it (I just needed to press the button and that's it) it at the time of my father's passing. Some truth came to light about my dad's side of the family, intergenerational trauma and all around I have shitty grandparents, specially my grandmother. Who's a contemptible person. It made me reevaluate as to why my father didn't stay in contact with his parents except on mother's day and father's day and Christmas. He was a private man and didn't talk about his childhood.

Upon reflection, I went ohh.....it made me realize things about myself. Was I talking about Charles or myself? I went oh! I want to convert to Judaism; though it maybe hard b/c money is an issue and I can't afford the $200 fee for books. I have to wait until I'm financially stable before pursuing it.

I just let the timer run out on Ao3. I didn't want to publish it for a long time and there was a point in my life, I thought I didn't want to share with anyone. It was far too personal for me to share. I still cry when I go over it.

J:  What’s your favorite fanfic trope?  Have you written it?

Give me some modern AU domestic shit still have powers. That is my shit. Yes I have written it.

In Morning's light and Love's Embrace

Again for Shabbat Shalom

I find it to be relaxing and for that point in my life. It was a return to normal and reflection of found memories of childhood.

R: Which writers (fanfic or otherwise) do you consider the biggest influence on you and your writing?

Getting into writing and how my style got started was with Tom Clancy's Hunt for The Red October and Conn Iggulden's Emperor series The Gates of Rome and The Death of Kings. If you don't know about Tom Clancy's style logical technically detail description finally McStories Rain Dogs (a fanfic that's no longer with us, sadly). Those were the authors that I tired to emulate. But after writing like a 45 chapter TNG fic and several bad semesters at uni; I stopped writing all together and just focused on course work. I just spent a few years just reading and honing the craft. I had to get good at writing, editing, outlining, organization and just straight reading a lot of books.

I planned a few stories in the Tron: Legacy space and Class of the Titians just worldbuilding; but I never actually wrote anything except the first chapter of my Tron: Legacy story; but I was never happy with it.

One of sister's writing friends during a dinner one night said to me. We were discussing why I couldn't write was because I was developing my artist's eye. I brought Word Painting Revised Edition: The Fine Art of Writing Descriptively by Rebecca McClanahan; The Elements of Style by William Struck Jr. & E.B. White and Writing Tools: 50 Essential strategies for Every Writer by Roy Peter Clark and a few others that I studied and I had to find a system of writing/ thought process that worked for me. At my first university wasn't the right environment for me to flourish it was very much understood and expected of you that you knew how to write already; my professors left me out to dry very much as they it so vague as to what they wanted. I needed structure, I got that when I transferred to my alma mater, every semester I had one or two classes that required essays and a lot of writing practices because of my peace studies minor and general course reqs and having a great Ph.D student as my history professor;

It forced me to edit and get good at my writing until it flowed out of me. HOLY SHIT, the professors gave me good feedback.

I got into reading again, one semester I read around 15 books on topics ranging from the 1953 overthrowing of Mossadegh in Iran, Fair Food; the Working Poor; Robert O. Paxton's the Anatomy of Fascism; Populism and Nationalism by John B. Judis; The American coup in Guatemala over bananas; Pro by Katha Pollitt; Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil and I had a love affair with Henry A. Giroux I have about five of his books. I just was bored between classes and I just read in between them.

I believe one of the reasons why my work is so scholarly is that I actually do reference what I've been reading and for certain characters I reference certain books and writers

For Charles and his philosophy him being a professor, I believe its a good bent for his character, its Henry Giroux who leading voice in critical pedagogy that sees neoliberalism isn't just an economic model but permeates everything. Education and universities can be places of resistance aren't just places the corporations use to get educated workers.

For Erik its Hannah Arendt, who need no introduction. But one day I will read her book on The Origins of Totalitarianism. I've read some of her work called the Crisis of the Republic

En Sabah Nur its my textbook from my Middle East politics and society class called: The Modern Middle East: A History by James L. Gelvin.

I might just have go back and re-read some of theses books because my description has gotten sloppy and needs a bit of work to refresh myself

#Very very long reply to a question #ask four alignments #4 alighments replies to a question #4 alignments ask box

[readingwriter92]

I love opening pages for the first time in a few days to see writing i have barely any memory writing

#I rmemeber doing cathartic writing on like. monday. and that’s it #I had written some shitty tng shit #and then wrote 202 words of a 911 fic I completely blanked out for clearly #I don’t know whether this story is me trying to write an au or what #????

[chronotopes]

star trek parent child relationships ranked by objective quality

15. elim garak and enabran tain. as a character whose daddy issues serve as pivotal plot points in not one but two excellent two-parters, garak deserves no less than the bottom spot on this list. garak’s dad refused to acknowledge him as his son for years and forcibly locked him in a closet as a punishment, which is a charmingly unsubtle way to let us all know that tain is a homophobic 1950s politician. this adds an extra dimension to the already horribly sad dynamic between the two. 

14. gul dukat and tora ziyal. ziyal actually beats garak for the dubious prize of ‘most plot-essential daddy issues’. maybe this is something they bond over? anyway this is some truly shit tier stuff. the power dynamics are truly horrific, she’s not in a place to register this until a week or so before the narrative unceremoniously kills her off, and his biggest achievement as a parent is choosing not to kill her off to preserve his career. 

13. julian, richard, and amsha bashir. eugenics is bad, kids! while they are outwardly nicer than tain, and are not war criminals like dukat, the ever present knowledge that eugenics is, in fact, bad, means that they’re basically tied with tain from my pov. another way in which julian and garak are soulmates. 

12. worf and alexander. while worf is a pretty great guy, unlike all the other parents on this list so far, i think it’s best for these two to stay apart. also sons and daughters was only interesting during the ziyal b-plot and young alexander seems incredibly annoying. 

11. jim kirk and david marcus. to be frank jim and david isn’t much of anything! jim was absent for the majority of david’s life and when he did return david’s life went to shit pretty fast. this wasn’t through any fault of jim’s own but carol really could have benefited from sending david off on vacation for the entirety of the khan thing. from an audience perspective, the only useful thing david does is act as another kirk mirror who is (beta-canonically) fucking saavik, a spock mirror. which is fine but we went over that in tmp. ultimately they land so low not because they’re incredibly troubled but because the search for spock is a badly written movie. 

10. kira nerys and kira meru. these two , like the previous two, were characterized by an overall lack of contact. in fact i’m not sure that traveling back in time to find out if your mom was fucking gul dukat counts as a relationship, but i liked that episode even though its temporal mechanics were shoddy. and even though nerys did attempt to kill her for a bit there, meru does love her and nerys does realize this ultimately. and regardless of the questions re: collaborators and how much meru enjoyed the thing with dukat and the degree to which it  matters, she did a lot for nerys. and i’m fucked up over how much this show TORTURED my girl but that’s all known already

9. spock and sarek. these two probably deserve to be lower but i’m a sucker for their reconciliation arc! sarek LOVES HIS SON, man, it’s REAL. the mind meld scene in search for spock is a great scene in an overall pretty bad movie. in fact i’m obsessed with sarek’s antics as a father-in-law. still, though, sarek was a total dick.

8. sarek and michael burnham. i’m still only on ep 3 of discovery but they seem pretty cool. she facetimes him midway through a space battle which is perhaps not an ideal use of pacing but it does reflect the degree to which they trust each other and all.  

7. beverly and wesley crusher. wesley is a shit but from the minimal tng i’ve seen bev seems to be doing her best. god bless her she deals with a lot. and it’s a compelling ongoing idea to return to in theory, so i’m keeping it up here. 

6. spock and amanda. they love each other! fuck jjverse for killing her off, though. that was low.

5. kira nerys and kira taban. well even though i had to look up her dad’s name on memory alpha, and even though (much like meru) taban gets just one episode, they seem like they loved each other SO MUCH and it’s another episode that i’m fucked up over! nerys missed out on his death because she was out shooting cardassians but he forgives her, over in the celestial temple. occupations fuck with people’s priorities. they loved each other is what i’m saying. 

4. molly, kirayoshi, miles, and keiko o’brien. (and kira nerys.) one big happy deep space family! they retain a really good home life, mainly, for a family where the mom is written in or out as it suits the writers’ convenience and the dad is formulaically required to be tortured in every season. good on them! 

3. nog and rom. (and later leeta.) the extent to which i was ultimately invested in this One Big Happy Ferengi Family is something i could not have AT ALL predicted over the course of my ds9 adventure. they both advanced their careers out of quark’s shitty bar and became compelling characters, AND they loved each other and made it through trials such as ptsd and quark’s continued shittiness. (dw quark i reluctantly love you too.) good on them as well. 

2. joseph and benjamin sisko. joe sisko is in like five episodes but he proves to be just as iconic as his son and grandson. his golden moments include calling ben out for getting too Patriot Act on him, being a badass priest in ben’s prophet vision about racism & rick berman sucking but science fiction being great, and running around a desert in his old age out of sheer stubornness. a kind man who gives good advice. a sisko father son relationship that can only be challenged by… 

1. benjamin and jake sisko. dodging cliche sources of manufactured conflict as ben accepts jake’s decision not to join starfleet easily! making us all cry in the visitor! warming our hearts as ben supports jake’s career as a writer wholeheartedly! get this lads: ben is the only starfleet captain to balance a career and a family, prophets bullshit nonwithstanding, and he was in the middle of a WAR. your faves could never! prophets bless them forever. 

#the takeaway here is that cardassian filial piety is pretty fucked up #also: i'm so sorry i didn't intend for this t #o be so fucking long lmao #trek talk #just katia things

[sleepymarmot]

Andromeda liveblog: day one

Spoilers!

Eos/Tempest:

The Vault is beautiful! Even though the moving bridges, just like the floating rocks on Habitat 7, are blatantly copy-pasted from Trespasser.

Drack said the fight was fun. Of course it was -- that was the first time I used Annihilation/Charge/Nova!

Military or science -- how is that even a question? :D

Even back in the trial, I instantly became fond of the Tempest crew, in a way different from the Normandy. Not bound by the blood they spilled together -- but a team of nerds and people taking care of those nerds, pretty much. Feels more like the Enterprise!

What helps is that there's already a net of relationships between everyone -- I was thinking about it when Drack was revealed to be Kesh's father and talked about their problems with Tann and their relationship with Vetra. The Nexus backstory really gives depth to this game.

I didn't expect this, but I actually do like Peebee! Since her first trailer appearance, I've been annoyed with her -- obligatory asari LI, shitty design with a sexualized outfit and eyebrows, manic pixie dream girl-ish image -- but her personality won me over. She's a bit similar to my Ryder, and they clicked instantly -- two young, energetic explorers. And she doesn't seem too quirky so far, just a very extroverted nerd. And she has something nice to say about everyone on the ship!

You know, I've been wishing for a romance with a nerdy but genuinely nice person (unlike a certain elf...) and looks like I have not one but two -- and female! -- options here! :D 

The first flirt option with Peebee is good, the second is not.

Ah yes, a readheaded religious wlw written by the same person as Leliana... Look, Leliana is special to me, but this is just annoying. Maybe because Leliana is special.

Another convo with Vetra: "Someone had to know" "Did your father?" "I'm not sure" LOOK THE CONFIRMATIONS JUST KEEP ROLLING IN

Oh, here comes the flirt option I've seen on Youtube! I feel a bit awkward hitting on both of them repeatedly... Will I, on my seventh Bioware game, finally encounter a jealousy conversation?

Peebee has attractive personality, but Vetra's fashion style is obviously superior.

*looks at Liam's handsome face, sighs and stops herself from hitting the heart because that'd be a bit too much*

Nexus/Hyperion:

I love that Tann is the only real politician around, and everybody won't stop complaining about him, even though he's completely benign :D

It's a great feeling that doing sidequests is completely justified this time. In this game, it's literally my job to fly around and ensure random strangers' wellbeing! Oh look, someone on Reddit made a post appreciating this too.

"Your father is my problem. He's everyone's problem. We're all paying for Alec Ryder's ego. He preyed on Jien Garson's trusting nature and bulldozed us to this godforsaken place" !!! More evidence!! (Random angry woman on the Hyperion)

This is a great way to introduce flashbacks! And to reveal information gradually.

SAM is basically the third Ryder child, huh.

The camera angle and lighting in SAM's room is one of the most flattering in the game.

I'm glad we're actually giving spotlight to the transhumanism theme, unlike with Shepard...

Or maybe SAM is Ellen's reincarnation somehow? It's clear Alec somehow intended to save her with it, but how? I'm genuinely enjoying this mystery. Alec sure has a lot of character and presence, especially for a character with so little actual screentime... You can see his shadow over the entire story.

There's some nice animation at Scott's bedside!

"Is dad okay?" Shit. Shit. Now that's a choice...

(I mean, what she's saying will turn out to be true, hopefully...)

I didn't lie about Habitat 7, though. That's not as important.

Holy crap, that was an emotional scene.

I like Garson's Super Ethical VI Interview.

Professor Gerik in the lab on Nexus has a letter about us being invasive species and preserving local biodiversity! That's nice. (But on the other hand, we'd endanger it just as much if the Scourge hadn't done it first.)

Female Salarians look like male Salarians and sound like female humans. I should just learn to live with the fact that there'll be no real Salarian voices in this galaxy... Ugh.

Ahh Drack is visiting Kesh!!

Have I mentioned how fond I am of our new council/advisors? Kandros is a bit bland, but the other three are great.

30 minutes after I said that SAM is like another sibling to Ryder, he got infected with a virus. Give this family a break!

Of course the hackers were wrong etc, but the things hacked!Avina says are still absolutely correct...

BTW I chose to unfreeze merchants first -- to get the bigger inventory. Ugh, the lack of inventory was one of my favourite things about ME2 and ME3...

I had to read a walkthrough for "Station Sabotage"...

I like the design of Zara's face.

The Nexus sidequests are all about intrigue and investigation! Just like the main one about Alec, and the characters' backstories related to the uprising. Nice. I feel like a detective. It really gives the game a unique feel.

The saboteur has a good face too. And another sympathetic voice re: the uprising.

Tempest

Cora the gardener!

Damn, that speech about acceptance sure sounds like she's not talking about biotics... Why is she straight, Bioware?

Poor Cora. I can only continue to admire her ability to not hold grudges -- something that impressed me about her when Ryder became the Pathfinder.

It's so cute that the crew members have a group chat, have I mentioned? Really makes the ship look alive.

Vetra, Peebee, Gil and Liam are chatting like old friends! And the fact that they're playing poker reminds me of the Enterprise even more.

Eos

A timed mission to save colonists... with driving... I was so nervous!

FUCK I can't figure out this Fiend fight

I died like four times already what the fuck

Why can't I charge?! What do you mean "wrong target"?!

Also autosave glitches me through the floor every goddamn time!

Died about 8 times, I'm going to replace Peebee with Drack and turn down the difficulty

Oh thank fuck, this time it worked.

*can't find the evidence in the cave* *fast travel back to the start three or four times, get stuck on rocks*

Oh, here it is. Yeah, I enjoy playing detective, but I'd like less bugs!

I died and the game got stuck on reload

Alright, some sidequests are in the level 3 radiation zone which I don't know how to clear, and I can't find the bodies of the dead colonists. It got boring anyway. Back to the ship!

Tempest

Gil sends me an e-mail mentioning Jaal, whom I haven't even met...

Kallo's still arguing with Gil -- I'm pretty sure there's something going on he's not noticing... Nobody else has anything new to say. Let's advance the plot, then.

New solar system/Tempest/Nexus

Whoa, I didn't expect things to get so intense immediately!

Sooo, are you going to explain how the angara got the translators working within several minutes?

Are you trying to tell me the kett and the angara aren't related, despite having exactly the same faces?

Jaal's cape flapping is mesmerizing.

I don't understand, why is everyone being so weird and unprofessional?? Instead of opening normal diplomatic talks, they stand in a circle and say shit about Jaal in his presence. Why the hell are they being so entitled? If the angara help us, of course we need to offer something in return.

Liam, what movie night?! We're kind of busy!

Well, at least Jaal isn't going to let me exhaust all conversation topics in one go! :D

"I LIVE IN AN ESCAPE POD" :D

Stop! Prompting! Me! To! Flirt! With! Gil! Two different times in the same conversation -- what??

Okay, by this point I'm pretty sure that the poker mentions are not just a coincidence but a deliberate reference to TNG. 

When will I have enough materials for an asari sword? Maybe a quick trip to the Nexus will help. *immediately gets buried under sidequests*

What, you don't have laws for attempted murder? That has never happened in the entire history of Milky Way? Bioware sure likes to create a complex situation then make you decide between two extremes. I let the turian stay, but I'm not impressed.

What, and they didn't even tell the public what really happened? Ugh.

Pacified the protesters successfully.

Was prepared to go and realized I forgot one sidequest on the Nexus, went back... I need to stop doing this! It's ruining all momentum.

Havarl (not sure about the spelling)

Main plot again, here we go!

Oops, clicked on the wrong button and now my team still has Vetra instead of Peebee.

Nice scenery.

Okay, it's stupid to leave the planet just to swap squadmates, but it's even stupider to explore this planet without Peebee.

Oh right, there is a spot here for a forward station. (Don't the angara mind?)

There's an entire alien jungle, and nothing is scannable? Really?

@myself stop fucking dying... how am I supposed to fight enemies I don't see without any reasonable cover...

Oh, right, this is normal water, not the Deadly Electric Water. That's a relief, at least.

Oh look, normal cover, I can use my ranged powers like an adept/sentinel I intended to be instead of novaguarding.

Spent like half an hour trying to find a way towards the forward station mark on the east, gave up. This Pathfinder isn't very good at finding paths...

Let's find the gay turian Pathfinder!

What am I going to do with all this nickel? These aren't the materials I'm looking for, Bioware

And finally, after exploring everything else -- the Monolith!

This happened again: the profiles refuse to switch mid-fight. WTF???

"Follow the Remnant river?" You mean, what I've done an hour before? I sure hope the Remnant didn't respawn...

So the Remnant are Order and the Scourge is Chaos? I see we've arrived to witness an existential struggle of cosmic forces...

Why are my companions so useless during exploration? They don't give advice, they don't even have banter like in DA.

Oh GREAT, a jumping puzzle, and in the dark too.

I must say, the design is really beautiful, they nailed the intersection of "Alien", "Ancient" and "Powerful" here. Though I'm salty because it's just a sci-fi variation of the ancient elven design from DAI, which means DA4 won't be able to use it probably.

Nice view! @people with powerful PCs, please photograph these things for the rest of us!

Novaguarding+shotgun (only a Katana!) is so powerful I don't feel the need to do anything else...

We're nearly at the top and there's a health pack. I better save...

The plot thickens!

Oh. Is THIS the forward station I've been looking for? No wonder I didn't find it lmao. They should have just covered it in fog...

Why are shields so much harder to take down than armor? Ugh, that boss. At least on the second try I managed to kite him...

Yes, I climbed the column. Whatever. I got some Vanadium! Finally, I need it for my asari sword.

Oh, okay, THIS is the forward station from above. OK.

One of the enemies I had to defeat in a camp got stuck somewhere and I had to run around for 10 minutes before I found him, except I didn't even see him and he apparently died when I approached, but idk how it happened.

I met the reincarnated dude. And that's enough for today.

#mass effect #mea spoilers #blah blah blah

[thehyperspacesystem]

Things about Cameron and some sys origins

M has been actually doing her therapy homework. I have been reading her log entries since I needed to figure out why I was suddenly here after a couple of days.

She was asked last counciling session to pick her favourite episode of Star Trek Voyager because she mentioned watching it as a kid.

I am going to put the rest of this behind a (Read More) because it is super long. I think only sysmembers who are doing the “Getting our host to not like freak out completely about us” stage of the journey will be interested in this. 

Some notable things she wrote:

I really relate to Seven of nine’s Character. I remember how I learned to disociate. I was 6 years old. I was bullied at school endlessly. I was finally allowed tv… I was watching I think robocop. At some point about 9… Cameron?? is… actually… that first…. I don’t remember what I even called them at age six. at some point around 7 or 8 I was actually kept home from school an entire year. at about age 9 we started to hit the bullies back. and I started getting into trouble at school I was told…. don’t hit them whatever they do to you… and i’d already found I didn’t really even have to be there for school… like sure my body was there.. I have written about this in song lyrics “the glass wall surrounds me… looking out… can’t break through / all alone / no connection. “ (checj the actual lyrics). I had blamed that on Asperger Syndrome of course. Noooo fucking way!????

I know.. it’s not very coherent, but she doesn’t do co at all well. For some context, us probably having Aspergers (but never actually being like.. address or even professionally dx’d) was used as like a kinda free pass to invalidate and make us always wrong when we were young.

M still doesn’t trust her own perception of the world pretty much at all because of that.

We did get an Offical dx of Asperger Syndrome when we were 16, but that was in the context of trying to get HRT (our body is trans, which I am not going to talk about here - that isn’t my story). The dx was pretty much given in the context of being an excuse to make us wait until we were 18 (which fortunately did not happen, we may not be alive today if we’d had to wait that long).

There was another entry about memories of when we were about 3.

Another one… I was walking down the [redacted] shops … was still lived in the shed at the place my family called “the farm”, although nothing actually grew there except for gorse. I remember being asked what kind of ice cream I wanted or something like that. Me: “We want that one.” Mum:”Who’s we?” I felt embarrassed(??? cannot name emotion… I will have to get one of those charts abd try again) and I was careful never to say that again. I understood that I was referring to myself. I could walk on my own and it was a distance. I know from external info that I moved into [redacted] at the age of four so that puts a bound on my ages. I really wanna know who “we” is too like really. Did I have an immaginary friend or something? My gut feeling is that it was referring to myself like “we are borg” (but I would not see that until 10 years later). Strange.

she is referring to… our bio mother, not step mom. I have nothing nice to say about her so I won’t. (I do not speak for the whole system here).

M also wrote she was going to stop there becasue she read my notes about what we call “L1” which is the most hidden layer on our sysmaps. I also called this place “The Abbyss”. It is what you’d expect from that name.

When I try to access that stuff it is usually a total out of body experience and it can take me to some pretty scary places. Monsters.. Razor Sharp alien grass. A dead desolate world full of erupting volcanones and these flying monsters that look like Terrodatyls which breathe fire.

Anything that tries to hurt me there is usually stopped by an egg shapped barrier around my body that looks a bit like force feilds in star trek. If I am feeling vulnerable, I can get “kicked out” back into my body.. or sometimes that just happens.

It’s reactive to my emotional state though, so I have learned that if I can accept whatever scary stuff is there… I some how pass through that stage and can access what is actually hidden there.

Even then.. still lots of physical effects, headache.. random pains.. being exhausted… accessing that stuff. So I try not to.

[readacted] wants to pick out my favorite st voyager episode. Lol after thinking they were gone soon as I try to settle on a single episode… the fragmentation feels are back again. I don’t think letting “Sixteen” pick hers… and then me pick mine… is going to fly. Anyways it’s pretty clear now that Cameron is actually based off of a mix of The Borg, Robocop, Data from TNG, Seven of Nine and a more shitty portion of my life experiences and Cameron took literally just her name from TSSC because she liked the “We’re not built to Cruel.” and ballet scenes. There were a bunch of names before that but I don’t know them. I still dunno the story behind sweetie at all. For now sweetie appeared to serve no purpose other than to stop me from figuring out what really happened. Sweetie is alleged to exist by [redacted] and [redacted]… but I don’t know much right now.

I am really very impressed. M is doing really well.

We still have 4 or 5 weeks to wait until we can see an actual psychologist. This counciling is meant to keep us going OK until then.

I know this is hardly the ideal way to do system work, but it’s the reality we have right now and i’d rather have M doing some of that the “wrong™” way than going back to suppression.

Suppressing things in general doesn’t work very well as a coping strategy.

edit: Shit the formatting on the journal pastes got all messed up. I will fix it later.. I have a really bad headache (probably a switch thing. With M it is always a “hard” switch since she resists everything so much). 

-Sixteen.

#actually dissociative #cptsd therapy #ossd1a #about cameron #system origins