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selenakThis year's Yuletide was splendid for me as a reader. As a writer, I got to explore new avenues in old fandoms. The original prompt by tokenblkgirl went thusly:
This one’s the oldest of my fandoms and probably the most shippy. I really loved the Dax/Worf relationship and was kind of heartbroken when it ended. I was also a very big fan of Julian Bashir and while I was all that happy when Dax ended up with him, I would be happy to read a story in which the three of them deal with everything that’s happened. My favorite thing about Dax is her old soul and her fighting ability. I love Julian’s big genetically altered brain and kind of caddish approach to relationships. I love Worf’s gruffness and rough around the edges romanticism.
Now, while I like Dax, Worf and Julian Bashir a lot, I had never focused on any of their relationships with each other before. Not that I had anything against those, they just hadn't gathered my fannish attention as much as other relationships. (Hence an entire "Five Things" abou Bashir and Garak and "Two of Us" about Dax and Quark, among other tales in my DS9 oeuvre.) Moreover, I had never written Worf before, except for a cameo appearance in "Quark's Day", and while I had written Jadzia several times and Curzon once, Ezri was one Dax I hadn't tackled fictionally before, either.
Which is why joining ficathons is good for you; it makes you stretch your fictional muscles and explore. Mind you, I had the best of intentions of focusing solely on Worf, Dax(es) and Bashir, but somehow I couldn't resist a Quark cameo, because I'm me, and somehow Quark being Quark transformed this into getting as much screen, err, pagetime as Julian. When that happened I knew that I might as well give up on anonymity because anyone who had read any of my DS9 stuff before would figure out who is responsible. (Which is why it was doubly sweet whenbimo recced me to myself anyway. It was a lovely Christmas treat and I beamed.) Hence also the Beatles song title, but you know, it really was Worf's hour of darkness, and "the broken-hearted people" is as good a description of my dramatis personae as any.
The other thing I couldn't resist, once the exploring Worf part started, was extensive use of his TNG backstory. It has always irked me that his human adoptive parents, the Rozhenkos, basically were ignored on DS9, not to mention clunker lines like the one from Looking for Par'makh in all the wrong places where it's claimed Worf never had a relationship with a Klingon woman before, which ignores K'Ehleyr (who is as Klingon as Spock is Vulcan and really, really crucial for Worf's characterisation on TNG). Plus I hate it when one Trek show is pinned against another instead of them being regarded as enriching each other. So consider all the TNG stuff in this tale my plea for unified Trek love. (Well, except Jadzia's remark about being open to a threesome with Deanna Troi. That's just Jadzia having good taste.)
Writing Curzon in 2009 turned out to be good training for writing a character recognizably Dax yet also recognizably not Jadzia. I had to rewatch some season 7 to brush up on my Ezri knowledge and to be sure I get her voice right. Which was fortunate because while the episode Prodigal Daughter inspired a mini rant on this very journal when I rewatched it, it also reminded me of something I had forgotten, via Julian's remark to Ezri about knowing what it was like to have difficulties interacting with your family. The Ezri/Bashir relationship in s7 always struck me as very last minute, but said remark pointed out they do actually have things in common that aren't about Julian's backstory with Jadzia.
Still: in the end, the resulting story betrays my gen inclinations in its focus on the interconnectedness of the various characters with each other. I'm glad people liked it. For anyone who hasn't read it yet and would like to, here it is at the AO3:
Let It Be
tokenblkgirl went thusly:This one’s the oldest of my fandoms and probably the most shippy. I really loved the Dax/Worf relationship and was kind of heartbroken when it ended. I was also a very big fan of Julian Bashir and while I was all that happy when Dax ended up with him, I would be happy to read a story in which the three of them deal with everything that’s happened. My favorite thing about Dax is her old soul and her fighting ability. I love Julian’s big genetically altered brain and kind of caddish approach to relationships. I love Worf’s gruffness and rough around the edges romanticism.
Now, while I like Dax, Worf and Julian Bashir a lot, I had never focused on any of their relationships with each other before. Not that I had anything against those, they just hadn't gathered my fannish attention as much as other relationships. (Hence an entire "Five Things" abou Bashir and Garak and "Two of Us" about Dax and Quark, among other tales in my DS9 oeuvre.) Moreover, I had never written Worf before, except for a cameo appearance in "Quark's Day", and while I had written Jadzia several times and Curzon once, Ezri was one Dax I hadn't tackled fictionally before, either.
Which is why joining ficathons is good for you; it makes you stretch your fictional muscles and explore. Mind you, I had the best of intentions of focusing solely on Worf, Dax(es) and Bashir, but somehow I couldn't resist a Quark cameo, because I'm me, and somehow Quark being Quark transformed this into getting as much screen, err, pagetime as Julian. When that happened I knew that I might as well give up on anonymity because anyone who had read any of my DS9 stuff before would figure out who is responsible. (Which is why it was doubly sweet when
bimo recced me to myself anyway. It was a lovely Christmas treat and I beamed.) Hence also the Beatles song title, but you know, it really was Worf's hour of darkness, and "the broken-hearted people" is as good a description of my dramatis personae as any. The other thing I couldn't resist, once the exploring Worf part started, was extensive use of his TNG backstory. It has always irked me that his human adoptive parents, the Rozhenkos, basically were ignored on DS9, not to mention clunker lines like the one from Looking for Par'makh in all the wrong places where it's claimed Worf never had a relationship with a Klingon woman before, which ignores K'Ehleyr (who is as Klingon as Spock is Vulcan and really, really crucial for Worf's characterisation on TNG). Plus I hate it when one Trek show is pinned against another instead of them being regarded as enriching each other. So consider all the TNG stuff in this tale my plea for unified Trek love. (Well, except Jadzia's remark about being open to a threesome with Deanna Troi. That's just Jadzia having good taste.)
Writing Curzon in 2009 turned out to be good training for writing a character recognizably Dax yet also recognizably not Jadzia. I had to rewatch some season 7 to brush up on my Ezri knowledge and to be sure I get her voice right. Which was fortunate because while the episode Prodigal Daughter inspired a mini rant on this very journal when I rewatched it, it also reminded me of something I had forgotten, via Julian's remark to Ezri about knowing what it was like to have difficulties interacting with your family. The Ezri/Bashir relationship in s7 always struck me as very last minute, but said remark pointed out they do actually have things in common that aren't about Julian's backstory with Jadzia.
Still: in the end, the resulting story betrays my gen inclinations in its focus on the interconnectedness of the various characters with each other. I'm glad people liked it. For anyone who hasn't read it yet and would like to, here it is at the AO3:
Let It Be
no subject
Date: 2011-01-01 09:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-01 02:48 pm (UTC)