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Post by C_Miller on Mar 3, 2022 3:59:01 GMT
I wasn't sure if I should make a thread here or just post on Discord, but my first issues is up! Hope everyone finds something to enjoy in it.
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Post by ericthepilot on Mar 3, 2022 4:27:54 GMT
I really liked this. Definitely felt like authentic Trek.
We're already starting to get a sense of the crew, be interesting to see who settles into the big three or if you even go in that direction. I also like the mix of aliens used, while appreciating you not overdoing it. Too often people go overboard and throw in everyone, including a whole bunch of "first of their kinds". You make the one you include work and is going to be highly relevant in the story to come.
This series promises some really big things, and I'm curious to see where you go and how the story justifies some of the situations that happen here. I'm definitely intrigued to see how the situation unfolds and evolves. Nicely done, keep it coming.
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Post by Centurion on Mar 5, 2022 2:09:49 GMT
A solid first entry. There's a nice sense of camaraderie among the crew, and potential for some very relevant themes to be explored here. I'd have liked to have seen a little more progression in this installment, but it was a satisfying start nonetheless. I look forward to reading more.
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Post by C_Miller on Mar 5, 2022 16:49:34 GMT
I'm with you, Cent. Unfortunately, my first five or six chapters are going to be set up and character development. I tried to think of a way to kick off with some more action, but I felt that it was best to spend the time building up the characters so that when the story proper actually starts a lot of the hard work has already been done.
Still not quite sure that this is the right choice, but I'm hoping you join me on this journey.
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Post by S2D2 / PugScribe on Mar 5, 2022 21:09:37 GMT
First off, I'll mention how refreshing it is to read stuff from this community again.
I'm not familiar with Star Trek at all, but I followed along pretty well. The way you structured and established everything is generally beginner-friendly, but there were a couple of things I wish were expanded on. I know Starfleet is the basic of the basics, but a short, direct explanation would've been good. Regardless, I never got lost. Being an outsider frees me from having any hopes/expectations, which is helpful to my enjoyment.
Don't fear the word "said." Variety of course is never bad, but only sticks-in-the-mud care about the number of "saids" you use.
I'm all for character-centered stuff so I'm glad this issue/chapter/whatever focuses on that. They really do feel like people. I'm excited to see how they'll develop in the future as you say, but I do echo Cent for more plot stuff.
Overall a great introduction, and I'm eager for more.
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Post by C_Miller on Mar 5, 2022 22:10:03 GMT
Awesome. Like I explained in my opening post, Star Trek is very foundational for me, so if you're ever unsure of something, please mention it here and I'd be happy to expand on it. I actually went back and included a little bit of an explanation as to what Starfleet is in my latest issue. Thank you for the kind review.
Also, Chapter 2 is up! It's a bit of a shorter chapter, but it ends with a pretty big event that will change the course of the characters' lives and the Federation as a whole.
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Post by Centurion on Mar 9, 2022 2:05:07 GMT
A satisfying second installment. The character work continued to be strong, and the ending seemed to set up a bit more plot movement going forward which I definitely appreciated. I do feel like these probably could've been combined into a single issue. Especially with how soon this was released after the first. That's probably more of a nitpick than anything though.
Keep up the good work.
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Post by Stardrifter on Mar 14, 2022 0:46:29 GMT
First off let me say that, overall, it was well done. I personally enjoyed the lack of action as it made it feel more like classic Trek. The characters were well defined for the most part. With that said, some nits to be picked...
- There were a couple misspellings and at least one repeated bit in a sentence. Just a general "editing" nitpick.
- You mention the crew is 75 commissioned officers, which I immediately felt was odd. No noncom crew? But then you mentioned that the ship was specifically a training ship, so that kinda made sense. Then you introduce Chief Varner. So which is it?
- I get that you mean it as a result of the war, but any starship not having a science station and crew is just unbelievable. How many science related disasters did the crews of the various shows encounter? I could see the Science team being small perhaps, but having none at all is just asking to be destroyed by the anomaly of the week.
Okay now some real criticism.
- Chief Varner being the captain's personal assistant is...odd to me. No modern captain's have an assistant(besides child Naomi Wildman), and on a ship with a crew of 75 that feels even less necessary. It's made even more odd when the second personal assistant, Misha Broome, is introduced. A president having one makes more sense, granted, but now we're also getting into the fact that both are women and...it just feels off to me.
-She was fortunate enough to be born without Romulan forehead ridges and she wore her hair over her ears. She was proud to be a Romulan, a fact that many humans took issue with.
This makes no sense. You say she's proud to be Romulan after describing that she covers her ears and is "fortunate" to be born without forehead ridges. Something which also comes off as racist as Captain Reyes is the point of view character. Either he thinks she's "fortunate" which is bad, or she thinks she's "fortunate" which goes against the idea she's proud to be Romulan.
- The crew members who belong to the planets leaving the Federation having to be dropped off didn't sit right. I could probably excuse it as another sign of how far the Federation and Starfleet has fallen, but when you have non-Federation species members like Worf and Nog being welcomed in Starfleet why would these people be asked to leave if they're already commissioned officers? Nog needed a letter of recommendation to apply to the Academy, but other than that it's not like he wasn't allowed because the Ferengi weren't members. Or that Worf had to leave when the Klingon Empire started fighting the Federation again.
- Tellarites not allowing female Captains in Starfleet for the first seventy-five years of the history.
As far as I can tell this isn't canon and is your addition? This feels as unnecessary as Enterprise trying to explain the different Klingon makeup. TOS' deal with female captains was an unfortunate result of the time it was made, and addressing it in story rather than hand waving it away makes the Federation, Starfleet, Earth and Vulcan all look like complete assholes from the start.
Which leads me to the final bit. When I heard you were doing a Trek series I was hoping for something exploration driven with maybe some arc to it. Instead this feels more in line with current Trek which is antithetical to hopefulness of Trek that I prefer. And I say that as a fan of DS9. I'm tired of the Federation and Starfleet being full of racists, power hungry assholes, and edge for the sake of edge. I gave up on Picard halfway through season 1 because of that. Which isn't to say there isn't a place for those kind of stories, Babylon 5 is my favorite show, but I don't look to Trek for it.
I'll keep reading to see where things go but if I'm being honest I'm not enjoying the direction this is going. Personal preference, but it is what it is.
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Post by C_Miller on Mar 21, 2022 11:16:17 GMT
First off let me say that, overall, it was well done. I personally enjoyed the lack of action as it made it feel more like classic Trek. The characters were well defined for the most part. With that said, some nits to be picked... There were a couple misspellings and at least one repeated bit in a sentence. Just a general "editing" nitpick. -You mention the crew is 75 commissioned officers, which I immediately felt was odd. No noncom crew? But then you mentioned that the ship was specifically a training ship, so that kinda made sense. Then you introduce Chief Varner. So which is it?
Yeah, I messed that one up. The distinction made sense in my head, but I need to get better at getting my thoughts and feelings onto the page. - I get that you mean it as a result of the war, but any starship not having a science station and crew is just unbelievable. How many science related disasters did the crews of the various shows encounter? I could see the Science team being small perhaps, but having none at all is just asking to be destroyed by the anomaly of the week.
So, I based the Persephone on the Defiant-Class, which had no Science Staff. The Persephone is a war ship that is designed to be ready to go to war or train the next set of Starfleet Soldiers. I probably should have made that clearer, but I was trying to do a "show, don't tell" of Starfleet's current priorities. Okay now some real criticism. - Chief Varner being the captain's personal assistant is...odd to me. No modern captain's have an assistant(besides child Naomi Wildman), and on a ship with a crew of 75 that feels even less necessary. It's made even more odd when the second personal assistant, Misha Broome, is introduced. A president having one makes more sense, granted, but now we're also getting into the fact that both are women and...it just feels off to me.
Completely fair and being honest, I did not think of that. I will say that neither of them will be personal assistants much longer. That said, for me, I devised the role when I was creating “realistic” starship crew manifests. I liked the idea of each department head having an assistant to maintain their schedule, be a point-of-contact for crew rather than taking up the department head’s time. I soon realized that this level of bureaucracy wasn’t going to be much fun to read narratively, so I dropped that idea. Varner stuck around because she was a character that I started to become rather fond of. Admittedly, I could have given her another role, but I would have had to alter some elements of her storyline.
For Broome, I don’t want to spoil too much, but as I said earlier, she will not be a personal assistant for long. It’s probably a spoiler to even admit that she’s going to be a major character beyond those couple of scenes, but she will be. Honestly, her being the President’s personal assistant is just there two set up a couple of her long-term arcs, but after the first few chapters, I assure that you will not think of her as the President’s former assistant. -She was fortunate enough to be born without Romulan forehead ridges and she wore her hair over her ears. She was proud to be a Romulan, a fact that many humans took issue with. This makes no sense. You say she's proud to be Romulan after describing that she covers her ears and is "fortunate" to be born without forehead ridges. Something which also comes off as racist as Captain Reyes is the point of view character. Either he thinks she's "fortunate" which is bad, or she thinks she's "fortunate" which goes against the idea she's proud to be Romulan.
Yeah, that’s a confusing phrasing. I recently saw the movie Passing and wanted to incorporate some of the ideas there. Personally, I don’t think it’s an inherent contradiction to be proud of your race, ethnicity or in this case species while also understanding that in order to exist in society at large, Passing in part, either with your name or your appearance can lead to a better life. Maybe that is a too contradictory for narrative fiction or maybe I should dive deeper into Sorel’s psyche, but I stand by it. I will work on explaining that further in the prose as well as attempting to fix my issues with POV, which I agree with you are problematic here. - The crew members who belong to the planets leaving the Federation having to be dropped off didn't sit right. I could probably excuse it as another sign of how far the Federation and Starfleet has fallen, but when you have non-Federation species members like Worf and Nog being welcomed in Starfleet why would these people be asked to leave if they're already commissioned officers? Nog needed a letter of recommendation to apply to the Academy, but other than that it's not like he wasn't allowed because the Ferengi weren't members. Or that Worf had to leave when the Klingon Empire started fighting the Federation again.
In my mind, they were affected because they joined Starfleet the "normal" way. Perhaps I should have just had them return home so they could be processed. I probably should have established that they had the choice to either return to their homeworlds or get a Letter of Rec from a command level officer, but they still needed to return to Earth to get it all figured out. Nog would be a little different due to already having that letter of rec and I would assume Worf is an adopted Federation citizen at this point.
- Tellarites not allowing female Captains in Starfleet for the first seventy-five years of the history. As far as I can tell this isn't canon and is your addition? This feels as unnecessary as Enterprise trying to explain the different Klingon makeup. TOS' deal with female captains was an unfortunate result of the time it was made, and addressing it in story rather than hand waving it away makes the Federation, Starfleet, Earth and Vulcan all look like complete assholes from the start. That is actually a piece of Gamma (Fan-Made work) canon that is designed to rectify that continuity issue. I believe it was Star Trek: New Voyages or something like that. Perhaps, I should have ignored it and moved on. Which leads me to the final bit. When I heard you were doing a Trek series I was hoping for something exploration driven with maybe some arc to it. Instead this feels more in line with current Trek which is antithetical to hopefulness of Trek that I prefer. And I say that as a fan of DS9. I'm tired of the Federation and Starfleet being full of racists, power hungry assholes, and edge for the sake of edge. I gave up on Picard halfway through season 1 because of that. Which isn't to say there isn't a place for those kind of stories, Babylon 5 is my favorite show, but I don't look to Trek for it.
I won’t try to go on and say that you’re missing the forest through the trees or anything like that. Based on what you just said, I think you may struggle getting through the first 10-12 chapters. I hope that you find something to latch onto after that point or even during those chapters, but my series might not be for you. I will push back a little bit though. At the very least, I don’t think I’m doing edge for the sake of edge. I think anything that can be considered edge does have a purpose.
Honestly, I will admit that I am finding this series to be a bit of my own personal therapy. I am writing the Federation and Starfleet as someone who is generally pessimistic about the world right now, but there are a lot of things that give me hope. That’s what this series is about. You mention DS9, which is my personal favorite series. For me, this series is the inverse of DS9. DS9 features a lot of stories about individuals needing to sacrifice your morals for the security and quality of life that the Federation provides. The idea of my series is that is about how individuals need to sacrifice their quality of life to defend the moral center of the Federation.
In the end, there will be exploration, political problems, moral quandaries, and mind-bending science and there was a part of me that wanted to start at that place, but for the sake of the ongoing arc, I needed to introduce the characters and their world.I'll keep reading to see where things go but if I'm being honest I'm not enjoying the direction this is going. Personal preference, but it is what it is. |
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Post by Centurion on Mar 31, 2022 1:02:35 GMT
I haven't checked the word count, but this issue felt a bit longer than the first two. At the very least it seemed like the plot had more forward momentum, which I definitely appreciated. On the flip side I noticed a few more grammatical errors. The exchange between Iroh Vox and President Broome in particular seemed like it was perhaps missing some dialogue.
President Broome, may I ask?” Iroh Vox began. “Do you do deny that the
President Broome shook his head.
There's no ellipsis to indicate a trailing off of the sentence, and Broome doesn't respond in a manner that suggests he's quickly cutting Vox off either. It felt like there was supposed to be a question there that was omitted.
Overall I'm continuing to enjoy the story though. I'm also quite impressed with the amount of content you've released in such a short period of time. I'll be looking forward to the next one.
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Post by Stardrifter on Apr 3, 2022 20:34:54 GMT
Standard “needs proofreading” critique.
It was a fine issue. Some interesting developments. The ending was a bit hack tv writer levels of convenient timing.
I get why the mission to Trill has to be secret, but I feel like you never gave the reader sufficient reason WHY it needed to be. You never had anyone articulate why. I can surmise of course, but it felt like Reyes was asking a lot of his crew without going into the why of it.
Otherwise it was a good issue. Keep em coming.
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Post by JoeMongoose on May 31, 2022 1:58:18 GMT
So I'm only partway through, but I don't understand why Sorel is nominally a Federation citizen due to her Starfleet commission but every Vulcan and Tellarite is being forcibly recalled.
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Post by S2D2 / PugScribe on Jun 6, 2022 4:19:52 GMT
I thought I commented on #2 and 3 a long time ago, but it seems I didn't. Woops. #2 was still newbie friendly but #3 was when being knowledgeable starts feeling required. Just some placenames, races, and past events that need expounding. Maybe if I ever find the time, I'll put up a wiki and start studying...but that's a loose if. That said, I don't know what "correct" Star Trek is, so I enjoy the more biting themes and discussions you're tackling. (Lol, calling it now, each of my reviews will mention how I'm an outsider.) I want to know about Iroh Vox's question (or lack thereof)--was it a stylistic thing, or did you just not write anything?
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