Otter's Rock

Title: Processing
Author: beatrice_otter 
Fandom: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Rating: PG
Characters: Data, Deanna Troi
Warnings: none
Episode Related: Descent, I & II
Word Count: 1,900
Written For: winged_mammal in help_haiti 
Betaed by: newsbean 
Summary: Sometimes having a thing is not so pleasing as wanting. Data, after Descent.

( 5.6 seconds after Data pressed the door chime, he heard Deanna Troi's voice. )

The first draft of my help_haiti story is done, and I need a beta!  It's 1900 words of Data gen, post-Descent.

Right now I'm at a seminar that's just absolutely wonderful.  The class has been great, and there's been free time to wander around Seattle and do touristy things.  Also, this afternoon I was able to go out with my brother and sister-in-law, and we had a great time.  The problem is, my left hip has never been quite right, and all the walking I've done this last week has it screaming.  (It's gotten worse since I was a kid and all it did was make learning to do the breath-stroke harder than it should have been in swimming lessons.)  I know, I know, if I were a better girl and did more exercise, it would not hurt as much now.  And there are a lot of people who have worse problems than me.  It is still Not Fun to get back to my host home at 9:00 at night and have to hold both the wall and the rail to make it down the stairs.  Not-quite-thirty-year-olds aren't supposed to have these kinds of problems.  But the class has been absolutely wonderful.

Also, winged_mammal won me in help_haiti and has several very interesting Data gen prompts to choose from, which I am looking forward to writing as soon as I'm not in a seminar anymore and have time to re-watch episodes and think.  (BTW, does anyone know if TNG episodes are available online anywhere?  I only have season three on DVD, and the eps I need are later in the series.)

It's a Reboot Spock/Uhura piece, set on the new Vulcan homeworld.  It's been done for a while but the person who was going to beta it never got back to me, and I'd like to post it, but I'm worried that it's too talky and dense.

So, school has started, and since I'm taking classes for grades this semester instead of pass/fail, my schoolwork is taking more time than it has in the past. (My seminary is not geared towards academics, it's geared towards people who want to be in parish ministry their whole careers, I'd say more people take their classes pass/fail than for grades. Not that I ever used the pass/fail thing as an excuse to slack off; but I wasn't obsessive, you know?) Anyway, my writing time is much curtailed.

I'm still excited about in_the_beginning but I'm definitely only going to be writing one of the two prompts I claimed. Moses and his identity issues will have to wait; Miriam and Deborah and the Word of God need to be finished ASAP so they can get sent off to beta.

sg_rarepairings is going to be run on a prompt-claim basis this year, which is both slightly disappointing and slightly relieving. I'm looking forward to it. And to the knowledge that I definitely won't be writing Sarah Gardner/Daniel Jackson this year, having written that two years running due to being assigned to the same person. But given its timing, it will be overlapping with yuletide, and both of course overlap with the end of the semester and the Christmas rush, and gah. It'll all work itself out, right? Right?

Meanwhile, I've got a Reboot Spock/Uhura piece dealing with some harsh Vulcan realities that's almost certainly going to have one of those completely open-ended 'endings' that I like because they're realistic and other people don't like because they don't give closure sitting on my harddrive. It needs a scene and a half, some tweaking, and a betaing, but between classes and my in_the_beginning fic, it's not going anywhere soon. (Okay, okay, I only like the open endings in my own fic, it drives me crazy in other peoples', and part of it is sheer laziness: I don't want to have to write the years of relationship and career exploration they're going to have on the Enterprise's mission that will have a huge effect on what choices the two of them make together and separately about where they're going and how they're going to live the rest of their lives taking into account Spock's biology and the pressure to repopulate the Vulcan species.)

... scientists claim to have created transparent aluminum!  Is that not cool?  Star Trek is just around the corner!

I was working on my treknovelfest story tonight, just adding a few lines before going to bed. (I got distracted yesterday, and stopped writing in the middle of a sentence, and I wanted to finish that paragrah, basically.) And all of a sudden my short little Reboot twist on The Pandora Principle took a left turn at Albuquerque. And that scene is going to be the end of the story, and the scene I had all plotted out that I thought was going to be the heart of the piece isn't even going to be written, and now the story's got a theme and everything that I now have to go back and make sure is actually present throughout, and possibly re-watch an episode of Babylon 5 to pick out a quote to use as a title. (Hint: see icon)

Also, my remixredux09 beta has reappeared, and that's taken care of. I can't wait for the reveal, and I hope that this year everyone gets their stories done by the date the archive is supposed to open.

So, I've been saying since the movie came out that if you want to understand Vulcans, you need to read Spock's World. And people have been replying that the books aren't canon, and I've been replying that Spock's World may not be technically canon but it's been influential for generations of fans and showrunners, but I lost the link to the main article (for reboot purposes) that mentions that, but it was sent to me again. Kurtzman and Orci consider the novels to be canon, particularly Spock's World and Best Destiny, both of which were very influential on them.

Here is a summary of Vulcan history interludes from that book.

Title: No Place Like Home
Author: beatrice_otter
Fandoms: DCUniverse/Star Trek.
Word Count: 2,346
Written For: Multiverse 2009 multiverse5000, June 11
Prompt: Kal-El, Amanda Rogers—Stop me if you've heard this before: an alien child with superpowers turns up in Kansas as an orphan, and is raised by humans until learning of their true nature as an adolescent...
AN: In the course of writing this, I realized that another DC/Star Trek crossover that absolutely cries out to be made is Q and Mr. Mxyzptlk. Please tell me that this has been done somewhere.

( The first time Clark Kent met Amanda Rogers, he didn’t pay much attention. )

There's been a lot of really great Star Trek fic written recently.  There has been a lot of discussion about Vulcans.  There have been a lot of people going back and re-watching the original series and re-reading the major books.

The Word for World Is -- by laurajv is the absolute best of it.  She writes about what it looks like for Vulcans to grieve, and to rebuild.  She writes Vulcans who are truly themselves, and not just humans with pointy ears.  They have a depth and realism and vitality that is breathtaking.  She also writes a Spock and Jim Kirk who are a little out of their depth, trying to feel their way in the new reality with the new insight they have into what they can become to one another.  The writing is spare, lyrical, and perfectly fits the story.  You really, really need to read it now.

( An excerpt: )