seperis

One day, this will be over, and I will not be nostalgic. Sometimes I totally am about writing; I have fond memories of thete1 in AIM encouraging me through Handful of Dust and happy thoughts about And All the World Beneath.

This is nothing like that.



After chatting with girlnamedpixley about The Trek Fic That Will Never End (I think it would be best that no one ask about the word count at this point; I froze for three days last time I looked), I had this bright idea to make a character list. Because--I don't know. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Keep in mind I have Vulcan Institute on bookmarks because I needed Vulcan langauge questions answered, because this is Trek and I forgot how much I love this.

I mean, here is the thing--I seriously, and I do forget this a lot, love Star Trek. And sometimes, I forget this, and I forget there are many reasons that I haven't been near Trek since Voyager and in fact for about five seconds thought, okay, the fandom is not a good idea. You have met yourself. It's like--I spent hours at Memory Alpha looking for my characters because I want to be canon-compliant and that's kind of insane, I'll be honest. Who the fuck else cares who was the TOS transporter technician through most of TOS? Who else will notice? Why do you need to know which redshirt would most likely have been in security? Why do they need canon names? The girl in the messhall that Kirk talks to for five seconds does not need a life history. And yet. I have a character list and beside it notes to memory alpha and then my own notes added because sometimes, this happens.

This is no longer a story. This is like some kind of insane treatise on who's who while I look at screenshots from the movie and match who might be who by visual compared to TOS pics, because goddamn Abrams didn't give them all names and you have no idea how pissy that made me. Like about as pissy as realizing that there is a surgeon general of Starfleet Medical and I can't find out who that was (ep Turnabout, with Janice Lester, let me DIAF now). And I need that.

In college, I didn't do this much research for major papers, and I started a citation list, because I feel guilty if somewhere, someone, did something like this, which is insane. The problem isn't finishing it, as it turns out. The problem is I have turned into a scary anal-retentive person who threw a goddamn hissy fit when I couldn't find the specs for an Orion slaver ship, or even if they had slaver ships (they do, they are a race that enslaves beings, they've got slaver ships). I don't even recognize myself.

I am ten thousand words from the end, all I really need is to finish thsi section and conclude, and do you know what I am doing? I am going through my crew and making sure they are cross-goddamn-canon-compliant.

Also, I spellchecked. I think poor girlnamedpixley started getting shaky when she saw the massacre I was perpetuating on spelling.



In other news--I have none, did you not see the above? So I'm curious--anyone go into scary research mode while writing? Ways which kind of worry you when your research page starts to resemble a thesis?