Unofficial Literary Challenge #17 Discussion Thread

starswordc

This is the discussion thread for Unofficial Literary Challenge #17: "STO Thanksgiving".

As usual, be honest and polite.

marcusdkane

Prompt 3 gives me the opportunity to show events leading up to my entry for ULC 15. It might not be a 'prequel' precisely, as it's events which were nearly written, but were omitted in the writing process to save on the length of the entry, and for not being as closely related to the prompts. While it won't exactly explain 'why' something happened, it will show what happened prior to ULC 15, and how that will shape future(set) pieces

artan42

Prompt 1 amuses me. Of 13 or so main characters only 3 are Human and of those, 1 is Lunan, 1 is Turkish, and 1 is Scottish. Also, October the 12th is long past .​​

starswordc

artan42 wrote: »

Prompt 1 amuses me. Of 13 or so main characters only 3 are Human and of those, 1 is Lunan, 1 is Turkish, and 1 is Scottish. Also, October the 12th is long past .​​

Yeah, I'm aware that Thanksgiving isn't celebrated on the same day in every country, if at all. Here in the US it's the last Thursday of November (and usually a couple days before my birthday, incidentally). I've only got two major human characters myself, one of whom is Iranian and the other a colonial of Australian Aboriginal descent. I do have a minor New Yorker, though.

Interesting trivia, despite the rationale of Thanksgiving being originally a harvest celebration, it actually happens a couple months after harvesttime in Massachusetts.

takeshi6

Nice prompts.

I'll see if I can come up with anything, though I still need to finish up my first ULC 15 entry.

antonine3258

Going to try the novel thing this month, but I hope to come up with something.

marcusdkane

Well, I got it finished... Could it have been shorter? Yes. The first two scenes could have been entirely absent, but had I done so, I would have been losing the first real opportunity I have had to share Ael's inner-most thoughts of her log...

--

Ael t'Kazanak - Cobie Smulders
Lee Roper - Chase Crawford
Kam Zubairi - Jim Sturgess
Mu'awiyah th'Shaan - James Marsters
Lyonn - Joey Lawrence
Kauat - Zach Galifianakis
Romax'tansky ch'Ehra - Dougray Scott
T'Reya - Emily Ratajkowski
Heath Fletcher - Simon Baker
Benjamin Kincaid - Colin Farrell
T'Natra - Gal Gadot
Kristen Laing - Rihanna
Macy Nguyen - Yoon Eun Hye
Adam Rivera - Miguel Ángel Silvestre
Tilly Campbell-Black - Helen Flanagan
Rana As-Saleh - Necar Zadegan
Florian Heiber - Alexander Fehling

antonine3258

I like the log bits, and it didn't feel long at all to me.

I know there's other parts that will go into this - but career wise, how does this affect Ael? Is it effectively a demotion or moving to a a smaller effective command at a more prestigious posting?

marcusdkane

antonine3258 wrote: »

I like the log bits, and it didn't feel long at all to me.

I know there's other parts that will go into this - but career wise, how does this affect Ael? Is it effectively a demotion or moving to a a smaller effective command at a more prestigious posting?

Thank you, I know her Romulan perspective can sometimes be less palatable than 'Federation Fuzziness', but that was what she gave me to work with... I'm glad you felt the length was okay

Regarding Ael's career... A full answer would give some major spoilers, but it is essentially, how Delta Rising shapes her career... Hugo needed the promotion to have a Phantom-Class, and having a MACO detachment on board to deal with the potential scenarios is only logical. In the eyes of Starfleet Command, this is intended as a temporary sideways transfer, where her skills as a MACO can be most effectively utilized, without her losing actual rank in any way. A scene which I was tempted to close the piece with (but was in too much of a hurry to complete to transcribe) was a log entry while travelling to ESD, where Ael is glad to lose the 'target practice' (her words, not mine) white shoulder-panals of a ship's commander's uniform jacket, for an all black odyssey uniform...

jonsills

Whether such a transfer could be a career-killer in the real world depends largely on the reason for it. If Ael had, for instance, been reprimanded for her actions as a ship commander, then transferred to command of a MACO unit, that could be seen as a punishment. (For a real-world example, when I was at HQ SAC in the Eighties, my squadron commander was being investigated for sexual harassment of female enlisted personnel. Rather than go through the mess of a court martial, he wound up being reassigned as deputy base commander - at Thule AFB, in Greenland. Assignment as a senior officer at Thule was widely acknowledged in the Air Force as being a sign that you'd screwed up bad, and you could expect your career advancement to stall out at that point.)

Given that Ael's being assigned to command the MACO contingent aboard an Admiral's flagship, though, the transfer carries some prestige with it - Admiral Danner is saying that Captain t'Kazanak is being trusted with his safety and that of his command. This would probably wind up being very much to her credit, being seen as adding breadth to her command ability (a particularly valuable thing during a time of war, and as I understand it this is taking place either during the Iconian War or the War of the Masters).

marcusdkane

jonsills wrote: »

Whether such a transfer could be a career-killer in the real world depends largely on the reason for it. If Ael had, for instance, been reprimanded for her actions as a ship commander, then transferred to command of a MACO unit, that could be seen as a punishment. (For a real-world example, when I was at HQ SAC in the Eighties, my squadron commander was being investigated for sexual harassment of female enlisted personnel. Rather than go through the mess of a court martial, he wound up being reassigned as deputy base commander - at Thule AFB, in Greenland. Assignment as a senior officer at Thule was widely acknowledged in the Air Force as being a sign that you'd screwed up bad, and you could expect your career advancement to stall out at that point.)

Given that Ael's being assigned to command the MACO contingent aboard an Admiral's flagship, though, the transfer carries some prestige with it - Admiral Danner is saying that Captain t'Kazanak is being trusted with his safety and that of his command. This would probably wind up being very much to her credit, being seen as adding breadth to her command ability (a particularly valuable thing during a time of war, and as I understand it this is taking place either during the Iconian War or the War of the Masters).

Yes, essentially this... She's being given the assignment due to her skills, rather than as a disciplinary sideways transfer, and Command are only intending for it to be a temporary assignment (to say more would give Major spoilers...) And yes, following on from Academy Daze, it's written as Masterverse Compliant, but as the Masterverse hasn't reached that point yet, it was necessary to 'redact' the date for pre-consistency

antonine3258

Sorry, I'm not really up on the Masterverse - I didn't realize it was to a flagship, I simply thought the other Admiral was involved from an administrative perspective, sorry.

marcusdkane

antonine3258 wrote: »

Sorry, I'm not really up on the Masterverse - I didn't realize it was to a flagship, I simply thought the other Admiral was involved from an administrative perspective, sorry.

That's okay If you read my entry for ULC15, this piece essentially is other scenes which I didn't write then to save on the length of that entry. This piece would be inserted between the first and second scenes of that entry, and doesn't rely heavily on MasterVerse awareness (although if you have read Academy Daze, that would cover a few references...)

jonsills

A "flagship" is any ship that regularly is commanded by an Admiral (referred to as "flag rank"). It's said to "carry his flag", a term dating from when infantry/cavalry formations would have a "van" where the army's commanding officer would be, along with his adjutants, messengers, senior officers not otherwise assigned, and the young man whose duty it was to carry the army's flag into battle. (As an example, which I ran across while doing research on ship names, at the Battle of Midway during WWII, Task Force 16 was commanded from Adm. Frank Fletcher's flagship, USS Yorktown CV-5; the Task Force itself was under the command of Adm. Raymond Spruance, using USS Enterprise CV-6 as his flagship.)

antonine3258

I'm aware of the definition, but I didn't realize it was to the Admiral's ship, I thought he was overseeing the transfer.

gulberat

For anyone reading the Masterverse, the Tiburon and the Akellen Macet would also be examples of flagships (for ConOps and the 77th Fleet respectively).

marcusdkane

antonine3258 wrote: »

I'm aware of the definition, but I didn't realize it was to the Admiral's ship, I thought he was overseeing the transfer.

I can see how your confusion came about, as no one in this piece specifically says that the Xiphos is Hugo's ship... I suspect that is simply because Ael knew it without having to elaborate, beyond saying that she felt Hugo deserved the promotion and the new command. Had the scene been incorporated in ULC 15, the context would have been clear. I should have remembered that I was posting it as a seperate piece and made that clarification clearer in a line of narrative...

jonnaroslyn

I might write something for prompt #3, (or #2?? could be a chance to flesh out some minor characters) but none of them gave me an immediate amazing plot idea. Which is good because it means I can concentrate on finishing my entry for ULC16....

@marcusdkane I started to read your entry, and enjoying it so far! Just wondering, is there any kind of Masterverse index/masterpost/blog anything?

marcusdkane

jonnaroslyn wrote: »

I might write something for prompt #3, (or #2?? could be a chance to flesh out some minor characters) but none of them gave me an immediate amazing plot idea. Which is good because it means I can concentrate on finishing my entry for ULC16....

@marcusdkane I started to read your entry, and enjoying it so far! Just wondering, is there any kind of Masterverse index/masterpost/blog anything?

I'll definitely look forward to seeing what you might come up with, and sometimes minor characters can give surprising results

Glad you're enjoying the entry I think there might be, but I'll have to scour the forum before I can provide a link...

marcusdkane

Hawku, that is a typically off-the wall but awesome entry Love it

hawku001x

Thanks! Likewise, nice work with yours. There's a lot of depth with Ael.

marcusdkane

hawku001x wrote: »

Thanks! Likewise, nice work with yours. There's a lot of depth with Ael.

Thank you, and yes, it was the first time she's actually given anything near that level of introspection and intimacy to work with

starswordc

jonsills wrote: »

A "flagship" is any ship that regularly is commanded by an Admiral (referred to as "flag rank"). It's said to "carry his flag", a term dating from when infantry/cavalry formations would have a "van" where the army's commanding officer would be, along with his adjutants, messengers, senior officers not otherwise assigned, and the young man whose duty it was to carry the army's flag into battle. (As an example, which I ran across while doing research on ship names, at the Battle of Midway during WWII, Task Force 16 was commanded from Adm. Frank Fletcher's flagship, USS Yorktown CV-5; the Task Force itself was under the command of Adm. Raymond Spruance, using USS Enterprise CV-6 as his flagship.)

Like many things military, Star Trek muddies the definition, too, with its thing where the current Enterprise is referred to as "the Federation flagship", even though there's no admiral aboard and it doesn't lead a fleet. StarDestroyer.net theorized they were using the marketing definition of "flagship", as in a company's "flagship product". I.e. the Enterprise is meant to symbolically represent Federation prestige to other nations rather than actually act as a flagship in a traditional naval sense.

Additionally, a fleet flagship isn't actually commanded by the admiral, he just has his offices and C&C facilities aboard. He still defers command of the actual ship to the CO, who in turn is sometimes referred to as a "flag captain". (Which is another reason the "everybody's a fleet admiral" thing is stupid: the admiral doesn't need to be splitting his attention between directing the fleet and fighting the ship; you can only pay attention to so many things at a time.)

gulberat

I'll fully admit I blur the line some with Admiral Berat in the way I treat him...because the Vesta is a carrier, I do give Berat more control over what the Macet does, and treat him as its CO.

That said, Cdr. Redmond also has her fingers in a lot more pies than you would usually expect for someone of her rank (and one gets the feeling Engineering is almost functioning as CIC the way she runs things...she does things ranging from normal engineering to intelligence and electronic warfare, sciency things, and even some things she's...technically not cleared for), so I guess it does sort of balance out when you consider the scope of what each of them is really doing. That and Berat does not have full command of the 77th Fleet as a whole...that's ch'Harrell's role. (And ch'Harrell DOES have a captain under him to run the starbase). Berta's job is to oversee sensitive or major field ops in person.

starswordc

gulberat wrote: »

I'll fully admit I blur the line some with Admiral Berat in the way I treat him...because the Vesta is a carrier, I do give Berat more control over what the Macet does, and treat him as its CO.

That said, Cdr. Redmond also has her fingers in a lot more pies than you would usually expect for someone of her rank (and one gets the feeling Engineering is almost functioning as CIC the way she runs things...she does things ranging from normal engineering to intelligence and electronic warfare, sciency things, and even some things she's...technically not cleared for), so I guess it does sort of balance out when you consider the scope of what each of them is really doing. That and Berat does not have full command of the 77th Fleet as a whole...that's ch'Harrell's role. (And ch'Harrell DOES have a captain under him to run the starbase). Berta's job is to oversee sensitive or major field ops in person.

I do something kinda similar with RRW Bloodwing. In my reading of Diane Duane, the rank of khre'riov, which is equated to the rank of rear admiral, but directly translates as "commander-general", seems to in practice be the equivalent of a modern-day commodore. The modern US Navy doesn't have a literal rank of commodore anymore, but it's still in use as a ceremonial title for an O-6 put into a role that would normally be filled by an admiral (which is how I rationalized Tom Paris commanding a task force of a half-dozen ships, incidentally). (This is all coming from my dad, a retired USN engineering duty officer.)

So what I did was have Morgan, with the rank of khre'riov, be CO of Bloodwing in most respects. But sometimes, like in Beat the Drums of War, she takes command of a small squadron. In those instances she typically delegates fighting the ship to her titular executive officer, Sarsachen tr'Sauringar, who is ranked a riov (Romulan commander, equivalent to Starfleet captain).

Incidentally, as a carrier (albeit not a full carrier but something more like a destroyer with an aircraft complement), a Vesta-class would probably also have a CAG (also referred to as the "air boss") to handle the fighter group. In a full-size carrier the CAG is likely ranked an O-6 (USN carriers often have three or four O-6s on the senior staff, including the CO, XO, CAG, and often the chief engineer), though on a Vesta he's probably lower-ranked, and may even pull double-duty on the senior staff.

gulberat

The way Cardassian ranks work in my head (based on my personal take on canon) is not that far off from khre'riov. Senior guls...not really an official title, though in my continuity you could easily rationalize Dukat being so thrilled with his own power that he treated it thus when making log entries!...can and do go back and forth between more typically "admiral-y" duties, and field command. And they may still command their own flagships in at least some capacity. Legates, on the other hand, are always clearly in the upper echelons of power and in the old dictatorship wielded actual political power over the Union itself, as well. They don't do that now, postwar, but the distinction still remains in the way I treat it, that a gul is space-based or over a particular starbase, and will be seen in the field, up to and including flying into battle, nwhereas a legate pretty much always flies a desk and minds overall strategic considerations. "Gul" can be equivalent to O-6, even up through O-8, whereas with "Legate," you're talking upper admiralty.

Watching canon senior guls in action (I take both Macet and Dukat to be such), that's the impression I got...it even explains Gul Dukat's apparent command over the entire Bajoran system as well as "just" Terok Nor.

So I guess for my own work I could always excuse the arrangement as being CDF-influenced. Not a bad idea, actually, and fits with the ethos of the 77th, where we know Cardassian culture has exerted an unusual influence.

marcusdkane

starswordc wrote: »

jonsills wrote: »

A "flagship" is any ship that regularly is commanded by an Admiral (referred to as "flag rank"). It's said to "carry his flag", a term dating from when infantry/cavalry formations would have a "van" where the army's commanding officer would be, along with his adjutants, messengers, senior officers not otherwise assigned, and the young man whose duty it was to carry the army's flag into battle. (As an example, which I ran across while doing research on ship names, at the Battle of Midway during WWII, Task Force 16 was commanded from Adm. Frank Fletcher's flagship, USS Yorktown CV-5; the Task Force itself was under the command of Adm. Raymond Spruance, using USS Enterprise CV-6 as his flagship.)

Like many things military, Star Trek muddies the definition, too, with its thing where the current Enterprise is referred to as "the Federation flagship", even though there's no admiral aboard and it doesn't lead a fleet. StarDestroyer.net theorized they were using the marketing definition of "flagship", as in a company's "flagship product". I.e. the Enterprise is meant to symbolically represent Federation prestige to other nations rather than actually act as a flagship in a traditional naval sense.

Additionally, a fleet flagship isn't actually commanded by the admiral, he just has his offices and C&C facilities aboard. He still defers command of the actual ship to the CO, who in turn is sometimes referred to as a "flag captain". (Which is another reason the "everybody's a fleet admiral" thing is stupid: the admiral doesn't need to be splitting his attention between directing the fleet and fighting the ship; you can only pay attention to so many things at a time.)

I always took the referral to the Enterprise as being the flagship of the fleet as indeed representing the Federation, never the other context... Equally, with regard ranks, I think they compare nicely to the retail environment:


Fleet Admiral - Upper Management (Stays at Starfleet Command/Head Office)
Vice Admiral - Area Manager (Responsible for a handful of ships/shops but rarely engages in day to day store operations)
Commodore - Relief Manager (Covering for a handful of ships/shops but actively fills the role of a store's manager)
Captain - Manager (In charge of the ship/shop)
Commander -Assistant Manager (In charge of the crew/staff)
Lt. Commander - Key Holder (Department head/has opening and closing duties)
Lieutenant - Till Supervisor (Department specialist who supervises junior officers/Assists till staff)
Lieutenant jg - Till Staff (Functional Officer/Directly customer dealing)
Ensign - Saturday Staff (Learning the ropes/Part-timer who sometimes gets called on to fill unanticipated absences)
Enlisted Crew - Cleaners (Whatever the role requires...)

Given that a player can have several ships, the Vice-Admiral rank makes sense in terms of scope, just not in terms of speed of attaining said rank

artan42

I still have something coming for this.​​

grylak

In my mind, Trek in general doesn't celebrate things like thanksgiving, Christmas, Divali, Guy Fawkes Night or any of the others. I'm sure there are some families that will, but en masse, no. And as a Brit, I find it difficult to do an American holiday specific prompt. But, I managed to write something. Also managed to write out one for prompt 2 with Imzavia. Can't post them yet as I have no internet at home for a few weeks, but hoepfully I'll remember to put them on a memory stick and post them from work.

grylak

Finally got my entires for prompt 1 and 2 posted. Can't find my cast lists for those crews at the moment though.

antonine3258

]Nice short stories. Sorry - will try to say more later.