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stra-tek · 1 year

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Random spoilerific reasons to read Star Trek novels, with little to no context:

Ro/Quark is a thing

A Jem'Hadar joins DS9, tries to fit in but eventually snaps and tries to kill everybody

You learn the origins and final fate of the Borg

A thinly-veiled Dr. House clone joins the Voyager crew

Geordi briefly has 2 girlfriends at once (due to different writers not co-ordinating enough, but still)

There's a TOS book that's a musical

There are YA stories about Jake and Nog making mischief on DS9

YA stories about Worf, Geordi, Picard, Beverly, Kirk, Spock and McCoy at SFA

YA series about the Kelvinverse gang (including Gaila!) as cadets, taking on a drug problem at SFA and a very unique Borg scout in San Francisco

We very briefly meet the people who are to Q what the Q are to humanity

Janeway/Chakotay is a thing

Kirk's first mission in command of the Enterprise! Erm, at least twice.

Kirk was married between TOS and TMP

Her name was Lori

In the future, you have yearly marriage contracts that you either update or you don't and I think that's amazing

Trip didn't die! He faked his death to join Section 31 and go undercover as a Romulan

It's not great, tbh

The ENT books get better after the Romulan wars though, it's proper founding of the Federation stuff

We meet Jack Crusher (erm, the OG) when 4 timelines start overlapping and he's a bit unhinged

Teenage Kirk stole a car and his choice was go to jail or join Starfleet

What happened when Voyager got home? Seven broke up with Chakotay like 30 pages in

Kirk gets cloned, and his clone becomes the sub of an evil invincible super genius and its all very gay

George Kirk was Robert April's first officer on the first ever mission of the unnamed starship with the Naval Construction Contract 1701

Robert is a hard-core pacifist and has to turn command over to George whenever it's time to fire weapons

Data becomes fully human for a couple of days and it's really sweet

They never say "wristwatch" or "phone", it's always "wrist chrono" or "personal comm"

There are gays but they don't say that word because it's the 1990's and Rick Berman runs the franchise

Spock has a son in the past with Zarabeth

Everyone in the post-Nemesis era does spy missions all the time non stop, as if Starfleet has abandoned exploring the cosmos for doing Space Mission: Impossible

Bashir does it better than anyone else, he takes on Section 31 from the inside

Remember Control? It's from the novels, except the novels do it SO MUCH BETTER.

Remember how we never found out who Future Guy was? We do.

It's very underwhelming, nobody we know

We find out how the Romulans and Vulcans split

Surak was a Vulcan internet blogger

A Borg Cube eats Pluto

Janeway dies

Janeway gets better

At least one TOS book features a wizard

There's a Star Trek TOS/Here Come the Brides crossover novel

It had cameos from The Doctor (as in, Who), Han Solo, Starbuck and others

Whole book series about Section 31

Whole book series about the Department of Temporal Investigations

One time they do the Bill and Ted thing to escape confinement and it works

Wanna know how Riker and Troi met?

Wanna know what Picard got up to on the Stargazer?

Andorians have 4 sexes and it's very complicated

Data comes back from the dead as Data 2.0, and it was fresh and exciting because it happened long before ST: Picard did it twice.

Lal comes back too and we get father/daughter android stuff! They have a home and everything but keep having to save the universe

One time Mirror Seven is led around on a leash naked on Terok Nor

Geordi becomes captain of the USS Challenger, decides it's not for him because plot, and goes back to engineering on the Enterprise

Kirk is shot on the bridge and dies

Kirk gets better

They watch 3D holos of old Doctor Who episodes in the Enterprise rec room

The Enterprise also has an AI named Moira, which was Zora long before Zora

The TOS crew get together for one last mission. About three times.

There's a Perry Mason book except it's about Kirk's lawyer from that TOS episode

Data 2.0 owns and runs a massive gambling empire on Orion

Spock keeps randomly showing up everywhere in the TNG era

Scotty keeps randomly showing up everywhere in the TNG era

Bones keeps randomly showing up everywhere in the TNG era

You're on Tumblr so you already know about Killing Time

There's a guy named McKenzie Calhoun and he's a total badass and captains a ship of weirdos and misfits

Kirk comes back from the dead, saves the galaxy repeatedly, has an intersex child (who identifies as male) with a Romulan/Klingon hybrid

Kirk beats up Worf

Kirk's child has superpowers

Kirk's child saves the galaxy at age 6

The Kirk stuff is 100% ignored in the other novels

About 50% of the novels are ignored in the other 50%, and the ones that are meant to be in direct continuity with each other aren't always quite

Just like the TV shows and movies, then

Lwaxana Troi meets Q, and it goes as well as you'd expect

Someone tells Data, yes you idiot you had emotions all along and he's like, oh shit you're right

McCoy is left in command of the Enterprise as a joke by Kirk, who is then immediately kidnapped

Ro Laren is captain of Deep Space Nine

Picard/Beverly is a thing, they get married and have a child named Rene. No running away and raising your kid in secret here

Riker and Troi are married, serve on the Titan together with a bunch of adorable weirdos and have a daughter named Tasha

You get to watch all the 24th century characters die horribly in the end along with their entire universe. Holy fuck it's a bleak horror show. Personally, I love it. But if that's not your cup of tea I'd skip the Coda trilogy

#star trek #star trek novels #star trek novelverse #star trek books #kirk #spock #picard #riker #troi #star trek tos #star trek tng #ds9 #Voyager #enterprise #add your own

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android-and-ale · 4 months

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Headcanon du jour: What if most Vulcan’s aren’t massively bigoted space racists?

The majority Vulcans we’ve met have essentially been Vulcan Royalty. You know, the institution which, here on Earth, is notorious for being bigoted, backwards, and inbred.

Tuvok and T’Lynn aren’t like that.

But then, they’re not direct descendants of Surak, son of a galactically famous ambassador, born and raised in the capital city of Shi’Khar, heirs to a massive estate on the homeworld, and educated in schools where admission to the elite Vulcan Science Academy is taken for granted.

Spock is the adult Vulcan equivalent of Prince Archie, if Harry hadn’t left The Institution.

Of COURSE we get flashbacks of Vulcan kids bullying Spock! The Learning Center is equivalent to the sort of British Boarding School where they sent King Charles. These places are meant to break kids. They’re all about exclusivity and maintaining the elite status quo. After all, maintaining tradition is only logical, and holy shit do Vulcans love their rituals - even if those rituals include hardcore school bullying.

Look at how the British royal family and media treat Meghan Markle. Now look at how all the Vulcans in Spock’s orbit treat Amanda Grayson. If Amanda had married a nice Vulcan biologist somewhere out in the colonies no one would have cared, but no, she married the single most high profile Vulcan Royalty of his generation. Plenty of Vulcans were no doubt jealous she snatched up that prize of a bondmate, then masked it as criticizing his choice for being “illogical in the extreme.”

I like to think that most Vulcans are just out there living their best IDIC lives.

Meanwhile, the S’chn T’gai family is out there living by Royalty Rules in everything they do.

Mutiny? Pshaw. Our great grandmother T’Pau knows a guy who knows a guy who will make the paperwork disappear. Stealing a ship? Well, the family could buy it outright, but that would be gauche. Starting a cult? Sybok is a direct descendant of Surak himself. Who better to lead a revolution?

#s'chn t'gai spock #Royalty are usually pretty racist #Why should Vulcans be any different?#I'm sure the elites see maintaining the inherited status quo as Logical #star trek #star trek tos #star trek aos #spock #vulcan #Royalty Rules #ambassador sarek #amanda grayson

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myidic · 1 year

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"Kirk is the unpredictable daredevil with the logical Vulcan sidekick."

Hahaha! Nah. That’s backwards.

Kirk may be a tactical genius, but he’s also a major nerd who collects antique books and is a chess Grandmaster. He was so focused on excelling academically at the Academy he was called a stack of book with legs. Kirk is the steadfastly moral, kind, bleeding heart who wears his heart on his sleeve. He’s compassionate to a fault. He may throw himself headfirst into the fray, but only because he’d rather sacrifice himself than others, and has the faith that Spock will always rescue him, and Bones will be there to piece him back together.

On the other hand, Spock is a REBEL of the highest order. He’s a thrill seeking adrenaline junkie, who dives head first into danger.

People hear Spock say that he is too “emotional” for Vulcans, and think it’s just because he gets into fights defending his and his mother’s humanity. Maybe he’s considered too emotional because he cries, or struggles to hide that he’s overly sensitive, or that he lashes out at bullies instead of suppressing his reactions, but really, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Spock craves adventure and exploration. He may look like the model buttoned up Vulcan to the nakedly emotional humans, but to Vulcans he’s the kid who undertook the kahs-wan at 7, three years early. He’s the kid who questions everything around him. He’s a scientist who craves discovery, to be the first to prove the unprovable.

He responds to slander against his mother with violence, and defied his father’s wishes and broke generations of family tradition by saying a giant “Fuck You” to the VSA and refused admittance when they insulted his and his mother’s humanity, and left Vulcan for Earth and humans without looking back.

He may be the great grandson of Solkar, and the heir to the clan of Surak, but the other Vulcans see him as the human son of the illogical Ambassador who defied logic and Vulcan precepts to marry an even more illogical human. They see him as the first Vulcan to officially join a human led, militaristic armada that explores the deep recesses of space, deliberately putting himself in situations that force him to respond with violence and emotion.

Spock isn’t the calm, collected, logical exterior he projects. Spock is a BAMF, and don’t you forget it.

#Spock the rebel #Spock is a bamf #Illogical Vulcan #spirk #James t Kirk is a nerd #emotional wreck #tos spirk

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quasi-normalcy · 6 months

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Another point about the Romulans: They remembered their ancient kinship with the Vulcans, even though most of the Vulcans themselves were unaware of it; they were in fact working behind the scenes to reunify with the Vulcans, right at the time that humanity appeared on the galactic scene.

So basically, they have this rich, 2,000-year-old history with their old enemies/cousins; they've reached out, tentatively, to the highest levels of Vulcan High Command with a plan to merge their empires. They just need to get their boy in place as a dictator on Vulcan, and in order to do that, they need to stage a terrorist attack. Okay, well; against whom? Against the embassy of this absolute nothing-burger bunch of space-hillbillies called the "Humans." Whatever, they only just invented warp drive like 5 minutes ago, who cares about them? Blow up their embassy, blame this pacifist sect, get V'Las some emergency powers and then toast to the 10,000-year reign of the Romulo-Vulcan Empire.

But what's this? The humans are investigating? They've made contact with the pacifist sect and it turns out...that they have Surak's katra and and the true record of his writings? What? And now V'Las is being arrested? And now the Vulcan government is being dissolved, and the entire planetary religion is undergoing a reformation?? And the new government wants lasting peace with its neighbours! Well, we can't have that! We'll send a false-flag ship in to sow chaos between Vulcan, Andor, and Tellar; we'll have them back on a war-footing before they know what's going on, and hopefully get V'Las out of prison--

And our false-flag ship was just destroyed...By the Space-Hillbillies. AGAIN? Well, clearly these "Humans" are more dangerous than we've anticipated. No matter. We shall send our imperial navy to swoop in upon their nascent civilization, just as the unmerciful raptor swoops in upon its pr--

What the FUCK, our fleet was DEFEATED!?! And now the Vulcans are forming a union with these peasants?? They were supposed to be forming a union with US! WE are the ones with the thousands of years of shared history! WE are the ones with the bonds of blood-kinship going back since before our ancestors left Arret bearing tales of the Ganmadan! Who the hell are these people!?

And then they go off to sulk behind the Neutral Zone for the next 200 years.

#one can't help but feel bad for them #romulans #vulcans #star trek #enterprise

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ex--astris--scientia · 3 months

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C'Thia, Surakian Philosophy, and Vulcan Polytheism

While most would consider Surak to merely be a philosopher and reformer, thereby removing any hint of religion from the discussion and forming instead an idea of both Surak and his philosophy as being, at best, atheistic or agnostic, and at worst, being anti-theistic, I have to strongly disagree with this assessment. Especially when it's used as proof to claim that modern, post-Awakening Vulcans are also at best atheistic or agnostic, and at worst anti-theistic. I believe this comes about due to a commonly held misconception that religion in and of itself is anathema to science, to progress, to intelligence, and therefore, to logic itself. This is, of course, a blatantly false binary and we are shown over and over again in canon that while Vulcans place a great importance on science, education, intellect, and logic, they are also a very spiritual people. Most of the important locations on Vulcan that we see in canon tend to be temples, sacred mountains, or holy ruins. Leaders tend to be high priestesses. Meditation is almost universal for Vulcans, and while it can be argued that it is very much a mental discipline as well, meditation was birthed, and continues to find its roots, in spirituality, and at its heart, is a spiritual discipline. Meditation, after all, was not invented by scientists, but by monks.

In the episode of the Animated Series, "Yesteryear", Spock tells Sarek that he is merely passing through ShiKahr on his way to the family shrine to "honor our gods". This one line proves to me that, at least for Spock, there is no incongruence between his modern Surakian belief and practice of C'thia (commonly this is translated as just "logic" but a more accurate Vulcan translation is "reality-truth") with that of traditional Vulcan polytheistic religious practice. One can assume that this is not, however, unique only to Spock, seeing as shrines require some semi-regular maintenance and he very rarely visits his father's homestead so it is unlikely that Spock alone is the one who maintains them. Sarek also is unsurprised by Spock's actions, which suggests a kind of normalcy to it. One does not get the impression that Spock is doing something rebellious by performing religious rites to Deities.

Likewise, in the Voyager episode, "Hunters", Tuvok receives a letter from his wife. In it, she tells him that she and their children have asked the priests at the Temple of Amonak to say prayers for Tuvok's safe return from the Delta Quadrant. Prayer requires something to which a person prays to and the assumption here is, again, the existence of Vulcan Deities as well as devotional practices targeted toward them existing even until the time of Voyager. While one of the purposes of prayer has to do with the person praying, as in, a benefit to prayer is that it gives the praying person something to do when they may not be able to do much else about a situation, and therefore T'Pel and her and Tuvok's children may be using it as a kind of meditative practice meant to give their grief and worry about Tuvok's safety somewhere to go that may then help them control it, I believe even this would still imply belief in the existence of Deities. One could meditate without the use of prayer involved but that was not the course of action that T'Pel took. She specifically made a trek to a sacred temple with the intention of saying prayers for Tuvok and told him about it, again, just as with Spock and Sarek, showing that there is something normalized about the action. Belief in the Gods and religious practice utilizing them is, therefore, not something performed only in the dark or in secret.

So, Vulcan polytheistic spiritual practice has continued past the Awakening and into the Vulcan Reformation. Is it the same as what it looked like to pre-Reform Vulcans? What's different? I wish we got more glimpses of Vulcan religion beyond mostly backdrop (while we are explicitly shown rituals and ritual locations in episodes like "Amok Time", "the Gambit" and many places in Enterprise, and in movies like "the Motion Picture" and "Search for Spock", very rarely do we see explanations for what the Vulcan lay people and priest(ess)es are doing and why) but that simply means that I instead get to make things up. Which is my favorite thing to do. So while the entirety of this post is built on a core of canon and information from Memory Alpha and Beta, as well as the Vulcan Language Database, most of what follows is my own musings and thoughts.

Firstly, in my research I've established that there seems to be two major pantheons within Vulcan spirituality, the Ka-ta-pak, or Inner Chorus, and the grouping I've named Ek-tam'a-ta, which is where I've placed every other named Deity not belonging to the Inner Chorus. The Inner Chorus, being made up of Deities that seem much more akin to emotional archetypes, become a much more thorny topic to consider when it comes to reconciling the worship, or, at the very least, acknowledgement of these Beings with the rigorous control of emotions that is to be expected within the Surakian cult of C'thia. As such, they are what I plan to focus on here.

The Inner Chorus is made up of the following Deities: Tel-Alep and Alep-Tel, Kir-Alep and Alep-Kir, Valdena and Dena-Vel, Kal-ap-Ton and Tyr-al-Tep, and Ket-Cheleb. Other than the last Deity, each is a part of a pairing where one represents the lighter, more acceptable form of a suite of emotions, whereas the other is the darker, shadow side. It's a concept similar to reading Tarot cards, where a card's reversal typically points to the darker reading of the themes the card communicates when right side up. For example, Valdena is famously the love Goddess and rules over emotions such as joy, beauty, fullness, pleasure, etc, whereas Dena-Vel, her shadow twin, rules over the darker side of love, namely concepts like possessiveness, covetousness, envy, domination, etc. What I would posit as probably one of the fairly radical reforms within Surakian thought, is the idea that C'thia is meant to subjugate and control both sides of what the Inner Chorus represents, not just the shadow side.

Isn't it illogical, however, to worship archetypal manifestations of emotions that one is trying to suppress? This was the big question that came out of my exploration of Vulcan Deities and led me to conclude that there is a difference between how Vulcans interact with Ek-tam'a-ta Deities vs the Ka-ta-pak, wherein the former is treated much more like how one stereotypically interacts with Gods, ie with reverence, worship, offerings, prayers, etc, as well as an understanding of the Deities being Beings outside of the mind in their own rights, while the latter is much more localized and symbolic. The Ka-ta-pak are not so much outward Beings, as they are emotional symbols and touchstones, metaphors to be focused on in meditation rather than as Gods to be worshipped.

Even the name, the Inner Chorus, suggests this kind of community of emotional beings, of aspects of the interior Vulcan mind, and furthermore, points to a need for a harmony amongst them. It is my thought that the Ka-ta-pak are less like sentient beings with personhood and more like the Platonic ideal of the emotion they represent. They are the emotion in its most perfected form and by experiencing this, experiencing the presence of this being, this outward-focused inner spirit, in the relative safety of meditation, the average Vulcan is able to meet that emotion and learn how it manifests within their own body and mind. In this meeting, they are able to name the emotion, learn it, experience it, and understand how to master it so that when they experience it outside of meditation, they need not be conquered by it and brought into chaos but instead are able to hold to order and logic in the face of it.

In the Enterprise episode, "Fusion", we are shown that Vulcans don't typically dream and that meditation has usurped the role that dreaming would usually take in the Vulcan psyche. It follows, therefore, that they process the emotional stimuli of the day through meditation and that symbolism, which is an important language for the sub-conscious and the language that dreams are written in, would probably play a role in that. Thus, the use of the Inner Chorus as a symbol of focus, as the emotional tangle that one seeks, through meditation, to sort out and bring order to, makes sense. I believe that this constitutes some of the work of t'san s'at, or the intellectual deconstruction of emotions that Surak preached. T'san s'at is the study of one's own emotions, and the effects these emotions have over one's actions. The peace and tranquility that lies at the end of t'san s'at is the goal of every Surakian Vulcan, and is a lifelong aspiration. It is through working with the Ka-ta-pak with this goal in mind that brings these ideas together.

Another idea I found interesting about the Ka-ta-pak is that the names of the Deities match the names of the other planets within the Vulcan solar system (according to the Memory Beta article that I believe is based on a Trek inspired ttrpg). A solar system, with its constant routine of stable orbits and cycles, would be an obvious metaphor for the idea of Order. The Inner Chorus strikes me, then, as the microcosm within the Vulcan mind/spirit as connected with the macrocosm of the living universe around them. It is the connection between the Vulcan mental and katric interior space and the exterior physical space. Just as the solar system is in constant harmony, subjugated to the laws of gravity, order, and simply the natural mechanisms of the living universe, one's own interior system should likewise be ordered. That it is called an inner chorus is very telling to me, since when choruses are working correctly, they are making music in harmony, just as the broader cosmos makes the music of the spheres, which is the sound of mathematics purified. It is the goal of every Surakian Vulcan to harmonize their inner chorus (part of which involves meditating on the form of the Inner Chorus) with the music of the macrocosm. In this, I believe the mind, or the reasoning capacity, represents a kind of conductor, who directs the inner chorus of emotions to properly allow for the production of music. The music produced by this harmony is C'thia, which is the same substance that keeps the planets in their orbits and the universe ticking onward.

This post is getting a bit long but there's one last thing I want to talk about and that would be Surak himself. As mentioned earlier, there is a common misconception I've seen that, again, makes Surak some kind of radical atheist philosopher who, in stomping out the violence and ignorance that marked the culture of his planet, must also have gotten rid of its religion, not just superstition or conservativism but religion more generally. Again, this comes more from the mistaken belief that spirituality and science are necessarily at odds. But what we see of Surak doesn't actually support this erroneous belief. Instead, one of the things that Surak is famous for is his pilgrimage. A pilgrimage is a religious journey undertaken for religious purposes. Surak set out to visit many religious orders and temples, before traipsing into the wilderness in places like Vulcan's Forge and Mount Seleya, to learn from and connect with the various priest(ess)es, as well as to connect in solitude with his own mind. C'thia is always shown as a revelation. Surak perceives it for the first time and discerns its meaning while on pilgrimage, while in meditation, while studying spiritual truths. He discovers it, not in a laboratory, but in deep contemplation on a mountain peak. Thus, Surak strikes me as much more akin to a Hindu yogi or an enlightened New Age seeker than he does a Richard Dawkins type. He doesn't dismiss the spiritual lessons he learns from visiting the other religious orders but instead incorporates them into his new cult. I think it's this incorporation of c'thia with traditional polytheism within Surak's own spirituality that allows for modern Vulcans to do the same.

In conclusion, anyone who claims that the post-Reform Vulcans shown in canon are atheists have not been paying attention to the actual canon, first of all, and secondly, are doing nothing more than showing their bias toward the science vs religion binary. I think the Vulcans are a little too smart to fall for this dichotomy, and they are certainly aware of the need for a philosophy to be an open one, if it's to be sustainable at all. I think having access to the neverending mystery of space, peopled as it is with many different kinds of beings, has allowed the Vulcans to be open-minded toward religion and the existence of Gods and other numinous beings. After all, they fully accept the existence of katra and thus, souls, spirits, and the idea of beings existing without bodies. It is not an illogical leap to suppose that since animating spirits (ie souls that are housed by and animate a body) exist, other kinds might also, including Deities. And since Vulcans possess a psionic system, capable of the extrasensory perceptions involved in their version(s) of telepathy, they may be able to perceive these spirits telepathically, even when psi-null folks may not be able to.

So, I don't think Vulcan polytheism is relegated to some point in the planet's distant past but instead continues, alive and well, into the post-Awakening world.

#star trek #pop culture paganism #vulcan polytheism #vulcan religon #vulcan spirituality #vulcan culture #vulcan #vulcan mythology #surak #surakian philosophy #c'thia

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dduane · 7 months

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Hi hi! Hope you are doing well! Would like to say I absolutely adore your works, and am very happy to have found you.

(Apologies in semi-advance for any grammatical or spelling errors, English is not my native language.)

I understand that you do not write Star Trek any more, and have not for some time, but I have a question regarding the spoken Vulcan that was seen in Spock's World. Particularly "Hwath ta-jevehih tak rehehlh kutukk'sheih nei ya'ch'euvh" seen on page 111, and "ekhwe'na meh kroykah tevesh" on page 227 (or at least in my copy). There are no translations or suggestions of such for either one. I was simply wondering what you were thinking they or what you believed they were expressing while writing it, if there was any. It has been on my mind ever since I read the book, and despite my best efforts, will likely continue to be unless addressed. If you have already answered this question elsewhere, then do direct me that way.

Regardless of your response, I would love to express my joy over the book as a whole. I read its entirety in a single day. Between how you crafted the worlds in such vividly visible detail and beauty, and the way you portrayed Sarek, Amanda, and Leonard, and frankly all of the characters, really made my day.

Thank you! :D

Hi there!

Since in the first one McCoy's discussing with Kirk how he learned Vulcan, and Kirk asks him whether he'd taken a "listening course" or a "speaking and listening" one, McCoy's response almost certainly means something along the lines of "Like I'd have had time for that while I was on leave!" (In any case. McCoy had taken a series of tailored messenger-RNA treatments to acquire basic fluency in the language.)

The p. 227 excerpt comes during McCoy's address to the population of Vulcan during the secession debates. Having said "Hell, no!" to the question of whether he approves of the concept, McCoy then asks pardon for slipping into his native idiom when he might "more correctly" quoted Surak by saying—and he says it in archaic and period-correct Vulcan— "Better even rude* truth than craven refuge in silence." (The kroykah in the Vulcan phrase, which we've heard canonically in ST:TOS s2e1, "Amok Time," is here used in its sense of "be still" or "be silent", with an inferred positive inflection from the "-'na", instead of "Stop" or "Cut that out right now".)

In both these cases I didn't translate because I wanted the reader to have a chance to experience the slightly-at-sea sensation then being experienced by the POV character. In both cases the meanings aren't necessarily going to be important to the reader, but the usage itself goes to the issue of the moment: that Vulcan is being spoken (a) relatively easily and (b) with significant effect.

I can't take credit for the technique. I picked it up from C.J. Cherryh, who as a language teacher is absolutely flawless in the way she handles alien languages in her work. Whether I pulled it off as well as she does is a judgment best left to the readership.

Meanwhile, thanks for the query! And I'm delighted you enjoyed the book. :)

*In the sense of "rough" or "ill-formed", not "impolite".

#Star Trek #Star Trek novels #Leonard McCoy #Spock's World

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pavel-chekov-appreciator · 3 months

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I want better for Sybok.

I want a world where he got a fighting chance to do anything but become a cult leader. I’ve seen aus where he becomes a counselor and I can’t stop thinking about it.

No gods, no Sha-Ka-Ree, no cult. Just a kid who knows his history. Who researches Surak, and the world before him, and finds himself dissatisfied with present day Vulcan’s interpretations of his teachings. Unable to see the logic in following one ancient man’s words with no additional input or thought. Is this truly the best way for them to live? His mother didn't think so. He doesn't think so either.

He’s young, and he has big ideas and a lot of charisma, and a lot of inner pain from losing his mother and being suddenly told the way she was raising him was wrong. He quickly earns a reputation as a troublemaker. Indulging in blatant displays of emotionalism, just to prove his point, that he smiled and nothing bad happened, he cried and he felt better after.

He’s dissatisfied and ostracized and convinced there’s a better way to be living.

He fucks off at 18-not quite banished, but so strongly encouraged to leave that he might as well have been-and goes to a college on Earth, because the federation is a post-scarcity society so he has his basic needs met and he just wants to figure himself out, and where better to do that than a college campus, as far away from Vulcan society as possible. On his step-mother's home planet, where he knows at least a little of the culture, the language, what to expect.

He sees the school counselor a lot, and gets a lot out of their sessions. Takes some psychology courses and ends up getting really passionate about it.

Teaches himself to embrace his emotions while acknowledging that it’s very easy to be ruled by them. Utilizes aspects of traditional Vulcan control combined with the human practice of mindfulness to understand his emotions and control his strong impulse to act on them, without completely rejecting them. Knows he is choosing not to control his emotions, but he can and should control the actions he takes in response to them to avoid hurting himself or others. Knows that understanding why he feels a certain way can help him understand himself better.

Lives his best life and studies psychology to help other people find the same joy and peace he has, in whatever form that takes for them.

Then he finds out his baby bro basically told the VSA to fuck off and that dad more or less disowned him for joining Starfleet. Feels so damn proud of him for standing up the their parents like that.

Reunites with his brother after years of separation.

It’s rocky at first, but after both being disowned they’re all the family the other has left now, and they both do really care about each other.

Spock doesn’t understand Sybok’s choices, but he doesn’t need to understand them to respect them; Sybok is clearly still exercising some degree of control over himself, he even still meditates, he’s just controlling himself less, and differently, and his mind is more at peace than it’s ever been before. Sybok doesn’t really understand Spock’s continued dedication to logic either, but he respects it too, because clearly it still means something to Spock in a big way.

They make peace with each other, and their differences, and with the fact that their parents and society have rejected them. That Sybok did everything “wrong” and Spock did everything ��right” and yet they both ended up in the same place; on Earth, with mom ignoring their calls, because she loved them both but she loves her husband more.

And ultimately he enrolls in Starfleet medical to become a ships counselor, because he still takes great joy in doing things he knows dad would hate, and because he wants to specialize in trauma and grief counseling and Starships need a lot of that, and because getting a new perspective on life from being around humans helped him a lot and he’s rejected a lot of philosophy that he found unhelpful but IDIC is something he still believes in; he wants to be around as many different ideas and perspectives as he can to improve himself and his practice, and Starfleet is a great way to do that.

Getting to follow his only remaining family into space is just a bonus.

#star trek #star trek tos #spock #sybok #s’chn t’gai sybok #priority one shitpost #i havent actually watched any snw yet i know some sybok stuff is explored in that but im not 100% on the details #this is mostly based on st5 and some secondhand info from a plot description of the novelization of st5

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