forget your Unified Theory of Everything

Title: Midnight Judges
Fandom: Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek (2009), Star Trek Into Darkness
Rating: PG
Ships: gen
Characters: original characters, Spock Prime, Number One, Christopher Pike, Gaila, Doctor M'Benga, Christine Chapel, James T. Kirk
Additional info: race, ability, religion, genderqueer, original characters, meta

Summary: In the two weeks following the events of Star Trek Into Darkness, a Starfleet officer tries to put Starfleet back together again.

As a friend pointed out, anyone looking for a fic with plot and subtlety should probably not read this fic. It might work whether you liked the movie or not, but I wrote it in order to address multiple aspects of fail. It should probably be titled, "Why I Love Starfleet".

A/N: Thanks to mage_girl so so so much for the speedy read-through, and talking to me about issues and things. Thanks also to everbright for the just-as-speedy SPAG check, and for being so generous with your time. And thanks a million times over to my_daroga. my_daroga came up with an essential plot point to this story, and provided other useful suggestions. She also did a read-through and edited for me, and most of all, always listens to me talk non-stop about stories when I am writing them. I'm sorry! You're amazing. All mistakes are mine. Thanks so much, all three of you!

This story is finished.

Midnight Judges

1) Guys, Captive Prince. Captive Prince, guys.

2) Has anyone bought the paperback novels? I wanted to, because the maps and covers look pretty, but for some reason never did. I have no idea whether the Penguin editions will use her covers etc, so maybe I should buy them while I can.

3) coffeeandink said maybe the publishers are hoping for another Fifty Shades. It would be so awesomesauce if the book was popular. And gay romance novels become more mainstream.

4) I'm wondering how much they'll edit?

5) Book 3, you guys. Guys, book 3.

6) Once on my way to Portland to see my brother, I'd just gotten off the bus, and checked my ipad. I saw there was an update of Captive Prince. I walked to the rental place, rented a car (Okay, I know, environment, but the train was booked for the time I needed it and renting a car and driving it to Portland is actually cheaper than taking a train there), got in the car, and then drove to a parking lot. And then proceeded to read the update before starting my drive because I JUST COULD NOT WAIT.

6) In other news, I think Kindle Worlds is hilarious.

Lots of “original canon” fans don’t like reboots, adaptations, sequels, reinterpretations, prequels, et al of their canon. It’s understandable, but I’ve never really understood it when original!fans claim that the new!canon “ruined” their canon. I understand the disappointment, but not the way original!fans seem personally offended, as though their feelings have actually been hurt.

I understand it a little better now.

I’m not saying it’s logical. New!canon can’t change original!canon. I’ll always have original!canon. I’ll always be able to go back to it. Different people like different things. Not everyone has to like the thing I like; I don’t have to like the thing they like. These are just two different canons. I can play in my original!canon sandbox. No one’s telling me to get out.

So, it’s not rational to feel personally hurt right now; I just feel that way. I feel affronted and betrayed and resentful and bitter and angry and most of all just really sad. No one did that to me but me. But I’m still sad.

So, if you want to talk about Star Trek: Into Darkness like a rational person, I highly recommend going elsewhere. If you wanna get your rage on, welcome!

( Contains spoilers for Star Trek: Into Darkness, and everything that is the opposite of squee. )

I started writing this because I realized the in-universe and out-of-universe responses to Iron Man 3 could possibly bear some similarities. Which I then found hilarious. And then I went too far. It ended up facile, stereotyped, and self-affirming, but I had fun thinking about it and trying to put my head in the universe.

Please enjoy and do not take seriously.

( Iron Man 3 spoilers )

Hi, so, I went and saw Iron Man 3 Thursday night, and I’ve been trying to write my reaction ever since! Things were really busy, so I was just snatching time here and there, but after a while I realized I’d sort of snatched a lot of time. More time than it would take a person who is normal to write a reaction post for a movie they loved.

Then I looked and my reaction post was 8,000 words. Oops. Well, this is lettered for “so many feeeeeeeeeeeeels!” ( SPOILERS IRON MAN THREE SPOILERS )

Pick a fandom, character, ship, plot, trope, and/or concept (any combination of these things) and I'll try to write a drabble/short fic/poem/something based on it.

I've been trying to work on Sick of Shadows, the next Responsible Science fic, an H/D fic, and two original stories for the past month and it feels like beating my head against a wall. This hardly ever happens to me. Usually I'm writing something, even if it's not the thing I should be writing. I figure drabbling is better than nothing!

Help me! Please prompt :o) Thanks.

The AO3 stats meme is going around. I love this meme because people talk about their stories and their readership(s). I always sound like I'm whining when I talk about readership, but sometimes I really just want to make observations about why people read the things they do. Also, apparently I don't like to do memes I just like to do meta on memes. So here we go!

Please comment to this post with a link to a fic/art/meta you're really proud of having created, that hasn't received the attention you felt it deserved. Tell us what the story/art/meta is about, what you really liked about it, and tell us why you think it didn't get as many hits/kudos/comments/replies/recs/etc as you'd secretly hoped.

I'm not promising to read your story/meta/look at your art, because I might not have time, but I find this interesting and cathartic to talk about. If you are not a writer/artist, comment with a fic you like that you wish had gotten more love. Please feel free to direct people to this post so that they can share the fic they're proud of and discuss things like readership.

ETA: The fic doesn't have to be on AO3. Also, the hit/kudos/comment/whatever count doesn't have to be low. For instance, the fic I have that feels under-appreciated got a lot of nice comments and nice attention. I still feel sad that it didn't really get the wide readership I feel it deserves. This is your place to talk about that without feeling self-conscious about wishing something got more attention.

That first line meme is going around. I never think much or care about first lines, but I went and looked at mine anyway, and they sucked. Then I thought, even though I suck at it, I should dig up first lines I loved from other fics--and came up with exactly nil. It's not that you folks haven't written some great first lines; I'm sure you have. It's just that I, personally, dislike first lines.

I just wanna be inside the story already; I don't actually like the slow get-to-know-you dance; the "do I like you/do you like me?" kind of thing. I hate it in real life too. I hate meeting people and I hate, "So what do you do? Are you married? Where did you go to school?" I even hate the, "How are you?" part of conversations, because the part of a conversation where you get to talking about how someone really is isn't until the meaty part of a conversation, which is often in the middle. (Even if someone answers, "How are you?" with "Dismal!" the part that's interesting is why.)

( Even the first parts of posts are boring. )

Sometimes I'm very confused about what I want from writing fanfic. Sometimes I want to write Careful Stories and other times I want to satisfy my id. I think a lot of people would say that fandom is about the latter, definitely, but it never really has been for me. My absolute favorite stories in fandom are the ones that a) make me think, or b) leave my id wanting more. I have loved (b) type stories as much as canon sometimes, because it produces that same feeling of wanting to fill in all the missing pieces. I love that feeling; it's part of why I've always been so fannish.

So when I go to write, I always feel like I'm making the choice between filling in those pieces (an id-pleaser), or creating more stories with carefully crafted missing bits (a Careful Story). My id is pleased by both, just in different ways. And I generally do write both, but when it comes to which one I'm going to do the work to finish, a decision has to be made. I'm only ever pleased by 60-90% of writing stories. I'm never pleased over the last 10-40%. If I just did whatever I wanted, I'd never have a single story finished. That would also ultimately be displeasing.

For the most part I choose Careful Stories, though I have to say with HP fandom it was id-pleasers. And I have to say that I feel the id-pleasers were better received. I felt like they got more love and attention than other things I've written in fandom, and love and attention is of course very pleasing. But in the long run, I feel less satisfied with those sorts of stories. When I look back on them they don't make me very happy; maybe it's because they give you so much there's nothing to chew on later.

So then there's this constant pressure of but-if-you-just-wrote-that-Tony/Bruce/Pepper-D/s-it-would-make-you-so-happy-and-you'd-get-so-many-kudos-and-then-maybe-more-people-would-read-your-other-stories, and I feel like I have to turn it off because it's not what's going to make me happy in the long run. But then I find myself almost being too careful and not writing anything I want, just because I think it's "better" for me. That happened with Let's Stop The Time Warp Again, which got very difficult and depressing for me to write. Which makes me sad, because I was having a lot of fun with both it and the series, and trying very hard to write only what pleased me, but now what pleases me is very fraught with being careful and good enough and whether people like it or not.

Wow, that was a whole lot of angst, but it felt very good to say. I do recognize that all of this matters very little in the scheme of things.

sisi_rambles did a podfic of my fic, The Long Way. I've never had anyone podfic one of my fics before. This is amazing (and short). She's a fantastic reader; go and give her love.