that's just how I roll. I write entries with no real theme.

Porn is just bizarre from a Vulcan's pov. I just want to state for this for the record, because I want really low expectations. Okay? Okay. I'm saying, I will really spellcheck this time, and like, check my its/it's, and I want credit for that when anyone gets to like, page thirty, kay? Thank you.

In other news, there is no other news. I mean, winterlive is a filthy, filthy tease with fic (seriously, my inbox is such a porny, porny place) and transtempts is trying to drive me nuts with what appears to be OT3 foreplay that lasts forever, and svmadelyn is sending me links to fic where people use the word orbs for eyes without irony. I'm sorry, no.

Also, apparently, my playlist for Star Trek is dance-pop and techno. I wnat to say I do not associate Kirk with Britney Spears (damn you, butterfly, with your brilliance; when I get stuck, that's the vid I watch to get unstuck when writing), but it's a lie. I am so not kidding. I dragged out The Pussycat Dolls and I don't know what this means, but I know it's not an improvement on my emo-by-way-of-metal-guitar phase.

[And talitha78 for freaking Lady Gaga. I--can't even deal with this. I just pretend I am not me. I am saying, my musical tastes are pretty much "Did a vidder use this song? I like it!" Is that even healthy?]

No.

It's been a while, so I feel it's about time to list off my most recent fic peeves. In no particular order in two fandoms.



Stop using orbs for eyes. How can anyone write that and not think of Tolkien, I do not know.

You cannot use jade three times in a sentence, I do not fucking care how green Spock's cock is.

Lube. Lube. Lube. LUBE. LUBE. I am not asking much here. I am asking that I do not have an unmistakable physiological reaction known as SQUICK where there is twitching and so much mockery.

Weirdly, I am still okay with instant refraction period and marathon sex, but see, here's the thing. No one should be striving for realism, because realism is kind of disgusting, it's not like humans like sex because it is pretty and clean, we like it because it's filthy and its fun, but filthy can be really literal--they need to strive for hotness. Lubeless sex is not hot (there are exceptions, but I will state unequivocally that I will actually friend people on their ability to pull that off and not make me flinch. That's skillz.). Ten times in twelve hours is hot. What I'm saying is, I am really arbitrary in my enforcement of realism. I read astolat's Merlin tentacle fic and really hated myself for loving it as much as I did, alright? So there you go. Arbitrary.

Kirk is not dumb. Let me just state, in case Pike didn't convince you, Starfleet in three years and worked out that Nero was back due to a conversation while listening to two undressed girls talking and semi-conscious in sickbay with a snatch of an announcement. The novelization had him competitive for valedictorian of his class. Broke into Starfleet security to alter Spock's program. Spock's. Program. And heartily pissed off his Vulcanness pulling that shit. Not dumb. The Enterprise is chock full of geniuses. Crazy geniuses below the age of thirty-five who are going to either destroy teh galaxy or just set it on fire.

Smart is hot. Everyone can be smart! It's okay! You don't need a token dumb character to show how smart your favorite character is! Really! We're fangirls! I have at least ten MENSA on my flist and only hate them on alternate Sundays! Smart for everyone! Please. Stop that shit. It's not just irritating, it's cliched as hell. D/s all you like, but keep everyone's IQ intact.

Luckily, I read only by rec and very careful screening (ie, skim and run)--Uhura is not just awesome because she has lines and is a woman. She speaks eighty-three percent of Federation languages. Sit on that one for a bit for those of us who are monolingual with pretensions of understanding and reading a second language under stress. And all three dialects of Romulan. She owns herself, which is actually, oddly, why I like her. I liked her mocking Kirk while he flirted with her (the movie was a high improvement on the book on her character, btw, she shoots men down with style and with a smile; I love her for that).

Also, randomly, and I can't remmber if this was in the book or book and movie, but I was utterly thrilled when Spock gave her the conn. Small thing, but in TOS, I don't remember her being given command of the ship.



Okay, question for Uhura fans and the chain of command, please. This is jsut for my own curiosity for now, though I am using some of this for a fic.



Has anyone worked out the chain of command for the Enterprise yet? For my own purposes, considering her age and seniority, in the current Enterprise, I assumed Uhura was third in seniority after Kirk and Spock, but does it work like that or does the helm outrank communications? While the Captain can give command to anyone (see the novel Doctor's Orders I think for the hilarious results of Kirk making McCoy take it and then vanishing; that was great), I remember in TNG that Deanna outranked Ensign Ro despite being ship's counselor despite command experience, I'm not so sure here. I'm not even sure bridge crew no matter their rank are higher in the chain of command than someone of higher rank but not bridge crew; is it just me or is Starfleet just that confusing sometimes?

If it's not set, I'm just going with that interpretation due to her (probably?) being already graduated and the Starfleet equivalent of a grad student when the movie opens.

Okay, I cannot deal with her being junior to Sulu and Chekov. I just can't. It doesn't make sense. I keep clinging to Spock giving her the conn as proof currently she's third in the chain of command.



And because this came up on my flist.



Recently, several people on my flist were gathering information/recs/links about fic that highlighted POCs in fandoms and pairings. If you're into Trek, I submit Voyager as being the only fandom I know of that every major pairing het and slash involved a POC. The only ones I can think of that weren't and had a following were Paris/Seven and Janeway/Paris for het and Janeway/Seven in slash, and two of those didn't take off until season five. And Paris/Seven was not that popular; I know, it was my tertiary pairing. At one time in the fandom, I think I was responsible for like, half of all existing Paris/Seven stories and one novel. I--really need to find my list of fic. I never did finish a decent Voyager fic rec page.

Weirdly, it was not until the last year when someone mentioned it that I ever noted that of Voyager's major characters, there were only five that were white, and only two of those were bridge crew: Captain Janeway, female; Kes, female, alien, not bridge (season one through four); Seven of Nine, female, Borg, Astrometrics, not bridge (season five through seven); Lieutenant Paris, male; and The Doctor, hologram, doctor, not bridge. Not an ideal spread, but still kind of surprising to me, possibly because when the question went around where people were thinking what POC related stories they'd written, I completely forgot the majority of my Voyager fic was primary Tom/B'Elanna (and fine, one Chakotay/Paris, but that story had him sleeping with everyone. As I am one with cliches sometimes). Which is a reminder of my level of awareness is not exactly all tht great.

Even that mix isn't ideal or representative, but compared to TNG (and to a lesser extent DS9, though DS9 had a much higher proportion of alien, and I wasn't a regular watcher, they could have been much more diverse and I just don't remember; I watched for Sisko and Jadzia, basically) that's not--too terrible. Which isn't exactly a recommendation, but I can say my pairing has some seriously amazing writers, and was also not only my first experience with fandom, but with threesomes (Tuvok/Paris/Torres and Paris/Kim/Torres and Paris/Torres/Seven). I can hunt up recs if anyone is interested.



Finally, for anyone who is interested or who wasn't around circa 2006 when I did this, Trek Meet and Greet. I haven't updated comments since last year, nor is it terribly organized, but it has a pretty interesting cross-section of Trek writers on LJ, comms, etc. If it feels useful or there isn't a better reference out there, I'd be happy to start organizing and updating it again. There are some people I haven't added or removed either by request or because they really, really seemed to not want the connection.

Yes, this is what happens when I've been struggling with Vulcan porn. I can't even look at myself in the mirror right now. Kirk POV--next time, Kirk POV.

ETA: darkrosetiger asks for Tuvok recs here and now I'm kind of interested too. Bring your Tuvok recs!

Comments

[pocketmouse]

I kinda can't deal with Chekov being seventeen. I'm kinda hoping it's actually relevant, otherwise it's wrong for no good reason. I don't understand their character choice there, other than 'adorable!'

I tried to nail it for certain on the second viewing, but I'm still not clear. I got the impression they were basically Beta shift officers. It's that thing again of how much crew does this ship actually have, not counting cadets.

(I was reading Kobayashi Maru, BTW, having gotten it back from my sister, and in Chekov's story it says something about 90% of the trainees (couldn't tell if he meant at Starfleet or command school specifically) never end up even serving on a Starship. Interesting statistic, even if it's probably not canon.)

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I loved that book! I need to get out my Trek novels; I packed all the good ones together that I liked re-reading. I need to get replacements for a few pretty soon; I think I wore teh covers off of Spock's World and the Rihannsu duology.

[pocketmouse]

I made my sister mail them to me. All the bits in this one are great, but I love Scotty's the best. It's basically 'I don't want to be a captain, but my family's making me.' He's too much an engineer to be bothered to captain the ship. I think they managed to keep that in the movieverse, because Scotty's not complaining about being stuck on a chunk of ice, he's complaining about the food.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I loved that. And I loved they brought his little green boyfriend!

Oh Scotty. He's totally going to revolutionize replicator technology for the sake of dinner, I swear.

[bendtothesun.livejournal.com]

I kinda can't deal with Chekov being seventeen. I'm kinda hoping it's actually relevant, otherwise it's wrong for no good reason.

But wasn't Chekov only 22 in TOS? It seemed right to me then but with my math and timeline skills I'm just going on pure sounds okay here.

[pocketmouse]

Yeah, he is, but there's a lot of difference between 17 and 22. And even with that, I can't recall if in the show Chekov got the conn ever. In the movie, the conn was handed around to the point that I think after a while the writers were nearly consciously making a joke out of it, or at least using it to emphasise a point about the narrative of command in the movie.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

This. Seventeen is ridiculously young for the helm or being high in the chain of command.

[fyrdrakken]

Thing is (and Starfleet being as directly patterned on the navy as it is), Age of Sail stuff has lieutenants and even wee midshipmen (in their teens, generally) being given command of small missions or entire captured vessels. Age is a consideration, but when command is what they're being trained for (have been training for several years already) and especially when they're running out of experienced officers for whatever reason...

[bendtothesun.livejournal.com]

Oh I wasn't talking about in terms of being handed the conn or anything, just that with how young the characters were it made sense for Chekov to be that age.

He was left in charge in "A Private Little War" but I think that's pretty much the only time.

[pocketmouse]

It's hard to say given that we have maybe 3 dates in the whole movie, but if Kirk entered the Academy at the same time that he did in the original verse, Chekov would be 5 when Kirk enters, making him 8 at the time of the movie. Even with some slippage in there, it's still -- thing.

In the whole movie, everyone's age is off even relative to each other. I kinda gave up, really. I mean, Bones should be older, I can't tell with Scotty, and again we've got that whole issue of 'straight from being a cadet.'

[bendtothesun.livejournal.com]

Clearly he is just a very advanced 8 year old.

I think giving up is the best thing to do, the movie basically wanted the crew hot and young and well that they got. *ahem* Ages don't really concern me all that much as I consider it the AU fanfiction of trek and I'm good to enjoy it no matter what they do. ;)

[pocketmouse]

The age thing was one of the few things that really irked me, because I would have liked to see a better spread of age than this. But I'll take what I can get. :)

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Kirk entered about five years later than normal, I think -- he's 22 when he goes in the movie (because 'three years later' is twenty-five years after the Kelvin attack) and I think original canon says he went in at 17.

[pocketmouse]

OK, I couldn't remember how long it'd been since the Kelvin attack when he entered. If he's 25, it's 2258 (you're right, he was 17 in canon). So that's him graduating 4 years later than the TOS counterpart, and not going to the Farragut.

In the original, the Enterprise was launched in 2245 (though the first 5-year mission is with the Apocryphal April, so I believe a case can be made for 2250/1, with Pike's 2 5-year missions). 2258 should be in the middle of the Enterprise's 3 5-year mission, not it's debut. So there's also the fact that the timeline is just whack. In TOS he takes command in 2264, at the age of 31.

And if it's 2258, Chekov should still only be 13. Maybe he's like Rand, and was born to a colony of Russian space travelers whose ship was accelerated to nearly the speed of light, and that's why he's technically 17.

[feanna.livejournal.com]

I've seen it argued that the Kelvin's encounter with the Romulans changed the whole outlook of the Federation, with one smaller consequence being that Chekov's parent's met earlier/decided to have a child earlier. They had a boy and named him Pavel A.. If you go with that you only have to decide whether it's still the same Chekov or a hypothetical older brother.

I can actually see people being more relaxed about age restrictions and more willing to decide aptitude for a position on an individual basis. With non-humans serving in Starfleet age has to be a relative thing anyways.

Also the Enterprise was never meant to be in combat. It was supposed to be a humanitarian mission after some kind of natural desaster.
Then there's also the arguement that in this timeline Starfleet may be more pressed for competent officers, because of the change in outlook.

[pocketmouse]

Yeah, I've seen all those arguments too. This is an alternate universe, we can't take anything off the original canon. Hence all my continual caveats. And I'm especially kinda willing to take it for Chekov because his characterization is so different (like I said, I wouldn't be surprised if it turns into a plot point. Then, I wouldn't be surprised if it drops by the wayside, either).

Starfleet is definitely more relaxed about age restrictions, but Chekov is still a human, as far as we know, so we're still going to have to go by human standards for not only aptitude but maturity and legal responsibility, and I'd still want to know more about this 17-year-old we're handing the conn to. That's why I think that the writers gave Chekov the conn as a sort of joke in the game of musical conn that was a deliberate point in the story. Because with the story of Spock and Kirk having all those power dynamics, the obvious implication is that it doesn't matter who is sitting in the command chair, it's who has the power to command. Hence how the chair can be passed around so easily.

The Enterprise may not have been supposed to be in combat on this mission, but it's still labeled as the flagship of the fleet. That must factor into who crews it (though I'm sure it also factors therefore in what cadets get assigned to it). And yes, I definitely agree that this version of Starfleet is more starved for crew. I speculated in another post that this Federation may have less planets to draw from, among other things.

[feanna.livejournal.com]

So in parts of my comments I might have been referring to your meta. I just suck at keeping straight who actually said what, because at the moment everybod yseems to be saying something and isn't it awesome?

[pocketmouse]

*snerk*

I don't even usually do meta. This is surprising the hell out of me. I'm only doing this because it's about timelines and theory and not personal characterization. If we were talking about that, I'd be running for the hills.