Alara Rogers' Writing Journal

Mad World 1/?

Chapter 1 (Teaser): Unreliable Omniscient Narrator

I know everything that's happening here. That makes sense, if you think about it. I used to be God, after all. Of course I know everything that's going on in the city.

Dixon Hill is walking to his office, because the cross-town bus has square wheels today and Dix can't afford a taxi. Giant flying dogs don't come cheap. On his way, he tosses a handful of minnows at the newspaper vendor. "What's going on in the world, Will?" he asks.

The bearded newspaper vendor grins at him. "Absolutely nothing, Dix. Absolutely nothing." He takes Dix's minnows (two of which are still wiggling, fresh-caught) and hands him a sheet of newsprint with nothing whatsoever printed on it. Dix takes it, scans it, and hands it back to Will, reassured that there's no news. No news is good news, after all.

On his way, he passes Geordi LaForge. LaForge has a large, stale loaf of Italian bread in his hands. He's swinging it against the side of a building, and tiny bits of it crumble, the breadcrumbs falling to the ground where they vanish, devoured by invisible pigeons. "Hello there, Geordi! How's it hanging?" Dixon Hill shouts.

"Ah, you know, Dix. Same old, same old." The bread cracks in half. LaForge picks up a new loaf. "It's not exciting, but it keeps the fish coming in."

"That it does, Geordi, that it does."
( The Dancing Doctor meets Spot the Cat and his/her muscle; Durango the gunslinger meets Worf the landlady; and Dixon Hill meets God. I mean me. I mean I am God. )

Posting this older fic in part because of the existence of st_genderswap and their apparent lack of any TOS (as opposed to AOS, which they have tons of), in part because I hope to get to the next fic in the series next year.

I should preface this a bit. TOS is an extremely sexist show. It was created in 1966 so this should surprise no one, and we know Roddenberry pushed the boundaries as far as he could, but I'm not interested in making the argument that the lack of any women in commanding roles except for Number One and Spock making comments that sound a whole lot like he thinks nearly being raped by Kirk would be good fun for Yeoman Rand and the fact that a crazy woman was able to argue that Starfleet excludes women from being captains and *no one contradicted her*... and so on and so forth... was all an artifact of the time period we should just pretend didn't happen for the sake of believing that the 23rd century is the utopian sexism-free future. It's *not*. TNG-era's a lot closer... and to be frank, ENT-era is closer, and this makes *sense* because of backlashes and cycles. The Victorian era repressed women a lot more in many ways than the Elizabethan era. The 2000's weren't as good for women as the 1990's, and the 1950's weren't as good as the 1920's.

So in this genderswap series, in which both Kirk and Spock are female (we haven't met female Spock yet), I actually took the observed sexism of the 23rd century seriously. Now, in AOS (the movie), I wouldn't do that. Even though there is only one woman shown doing anything important in the movie, she is much more of a BAMF (it stands for bad ass mother f*****) than she was in TOS, and her intellectual chops and status are much visibly higher. There is very little evidence of systematic sexism in AOS, so if I did an AOS genderswap like everyone else is doing, I would not use it to explore sexism nearly so much. But TOS is sexist, and I can't pretend it's not, and the thing about a society that does sex discrimination is that it creeps into your bones, so you can get things like feminists who take no shit from anyone *still* believing that space is noplace for a pregnant woman. THIS DOES NOT REFLECT MY PERSONAL OPINION, and it never has.

I don't think the TOS Federation is a utopia. Hell, I don't think the TNG/DS9/VOY Federation is a utopia, and I think they've gotten closer to it. So if you see weird skeevy bullshit that bugs you, like totally patronizing attitudes toward women who are giving a child up for adoption, or an unserious party guy making captain before a massively more qualified and ambitious woman... it's there on purpose, and it's supposed to be weird skeevy bullshit.

( Jane Kirk's Enterprise: Sacrifice )

For the matrithon, prompt "Silva LaForge, saying goodbye".

( Goodbye )

For the matrithon, prompt "Lwaxana Troi, loving the alien".

( Loving the Alien )

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

Written for Ad Astra's "Haunting Challenge", turned upside down. Like the entire West series, this contains spoilers for the Pocket Books Star Trek novel "Before Dishonor" by Peter David, and even a detailed summary would be a spoiler, so: Janeway and Seven meet again; also, Janeway contributes to the education of a baby Q. Strong J&7, implied background J/C but that one's not going any further. Sorry, J/Cers.

( West: Ghost In The Machine )

( Everything You Ever, ending )

Oh my God I'm finally done with this thing. I have no idea why it took so bloody long -- I've had the outline of it since I started it, the day after finishing "Game Over", but for some reason Scorpius refused to talk to me. You'd think that a "Q and Scorpius" story would just flow out of me, given that they're two of my top four characters (the other two being Xavier and Magneto), but I had to struggle to get this thing out.

This takes place in the same universe as my other two Multiverse fics featuring Scorpius, Perfect Imperfections and Resistance. Of course, in the old Multiverse format, you couldn't reveal your identity in your fic because it was secret for a week, so I couldn't actively tie those two together, but I always thought of them as part of the same universe. And now that Scorpius is dating Seven and has held off being assimilated by force of will (for a few hours, anyway), now Q has taken an interest in him. :-)

( Everything You Ever, pt. 1 )
Continued here.

The "West" series takes place in the Pocket Books bookverse, or the parts of it that I'm choosing to consider "canonical" for purposes of this series, anyway. Its entire premise is a massive spoiler for Peter David's "Before Dishonor", so don't click on the link unless you're okay with that. I will say that it features Janeway and the Q Continuum, and that this particular story is one of Janeway's logs about the unusual place she's ended up.

( Spoilers within )

( You are about to view content that may only be appropriate for adults. )

Written for multiverse5000, for the prompt: ST:TNG/Firefly, Wash becomes a Q. I apologize to any actual Chinese speakers for what is probably really crappy Chinese -- I was pulling it from The Firefly-Serenity Chinese Pinyinary, but I know enough about languages to know that just grabbing phrases that sound like they would fit might actually not work nearly as well as you think. Also, it's been too many years since I've watched Firefly to *really* get the speech patterns down, and I apologize for that as well.

The majority of this story is built around the plot of the Serenity movie and contains major major *major* spoilers for that movie. It hasn't really got much in the way of Star Trek spoilers at all, though having seen the Voyager and DS9 Q episodes would probably help.

( Game Over )

Footnotes:
( translation 1 )
( translation 2 )
( translation 3 )
( translation 4 )
( translation 5 )

( You are about to view content that may only be appropriate for adults. )

( You are about to view content that may only be appropriate for adults. )

Yeah, this is more of a teaser than a complete story. It's sort of the AOS (ST reboot) rewrite of my story "Dance of Chameleon and Mirror", although it takes place thirty years before that story would have. I'll expand this later but I have to finish Judgement Day 13 and two Q crossover fics I have deadlines on first. Also, I have to re-read "Countdown", though I *think* no part of my explanation for the "supernova" contradicts it.

The backstory for this sorta kinda almost treats "Spock Vs. Q" and its sequel as canon. Kind of. Knowing TNG would also be real helpful, although this is AOS timeline.

This is slightly rewritten from the version in qcontinuum's journal that I linked to from alara_r.

( Quid Pro Quo )

( You are about to view content that may only be appropriate for adults. )

And this gets me to the 13K I'd intended to get done for the finishathon. Nowhere near done, though.
( More of Churchill's Black Dog )

Normally I don't post incomplete Judgement Day fics. But this one was done for the Finish-A-Thon, which means it's due today. I originally thought this fic would come in at 13K... ha! I'm at 9.5K and Picard hasn't even gotten to Paris yet.

I cannot promise to finish this this week. I *can* promise to get my originally planned 13K in, and I can promise that aside from ficathon stories I've already committed to, this will be the only story I work on until it's done, but the damn thing wants to be much, much longer than I expected, and because of all the logistics, not to mention that I've never been to France and have to look everything up, it's going slower than other stories have.

So here is the first part of Judgement Day 13: Churchill's Black Dog. (The significance of the title won't become apparent until parts I haven't written yet.)

( Judgement Day 13: Churchill's Black Dog )

Written for the lgbtfest. I was supposed to post on May 4th along with the Q Jr one, but that one ended up twice as long as expected, so you're getting this one during amnesty days. Thanks go to lt_kitty and wemblee for last minute beta-ing.

( A Kiss Before The War )

Mentioned this on alara_r, as well.

I jumped ahead to write a scene (it'll have dialogue marks and non-speech parts when it actually appears in the story, but right now it's a first person monologue) because it fit a prompt for realmof_themuse. This will be close to the end of Working In Groups.

Praying to the Continuum