Coupla ST:AOS recs and a question
Our Emotional History is in the Kitchen by 
raphaela667. K/S with a disappeared Uhura, which GRRRRR!, but this story is 95% about Winona's relationship to Jim, and that part of the story is great. It reminds me, actually, a bit of
astolat's A Beautiful Lifetime Event (in the part about the relationship between a parent and adult offspring, not the accidental babyfic part.)
Ad Astra by
ljc/taraljc. Spock/Uhura. This reworks the movie timeline into something that approaches Earth logic, and builds a new relationship for the two of them based largely on the scenes in the film which mostly cures the icky hot for teacher issues. Also, it's a beautiful story.
So, a question for the general audience. Saw yet another post on my reading page bemoaning the lack of awesome for Uhura and comparing her unfavorably to everyone, including McCoy's malpractice. (What the fuck, fandom, is everything we know about medical care coming from House? Because Greg House regularly does stuff that should cause him to lose his privileges at Princeton-Plainsborough, his malpractice insurance, and his medical license. And perhaps result in a prosecution for assault. He's Not a Role Model, you guys.)
So, I'm asking, because, theoretically, fanwank is what fandom is for: what would Uhura being awesome have looked like? The constraints are these:
Anyone who says, "Well we should have seen her translating stuff!" must identify the parties between whom she would have been translating as well as how that would be made to look interestng in an action adventure film. If one or more of those people is in the crew of the Narada, then you must first rework the encounter with the Kelvin, where, from all appearances, Nero and his lieutenant spoke Standard.
It feels to me like awesome is getting defined as primarily committing violence on our enemies, with a secondary category of running around and being funny. Is that where the community is at?
This entry was originally posted at http://zvi.dreamwidth.org/520105.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
raphaela667. K/S with a disappeared Uhura, which GRRRRR!, but this story is 95% about Winona's relationship to Jim, and that part of the story is great. It reminds me, actually, a bit of
astolat's A Beautiful Lifetime Event (in the part about the relationship between a parent and adult offspring, not the accidental babyfic part.)
Ad Astra by
ljc/taraljc. Spock/Uhura. This reworks the movie timeline into something that approaches Earth logic, and builds a new relationship for the two of them based largely on the scenes in the film which mostly cures the icky hot for teacher issues. Also, it's a beautiful story.
So, a question for the general audience. Saw yet another post on my reading page bemoaning the lack of awesome for Uhura and comparing her unfavorably to everyone, including McCoy's malpractice. (What the fuck, fandom, is everything we know about medical care coming from House? Because Greg House regularly does stuff that should cause him to lose his privileges at Princeton-Plainsborough, his malpractice insurance, and his medical license. And perhaps result in a prosecution for assault. He's Not a Role Model, you guys.)
So, I'm asking, because, theoretically, fanwank is what fandom is for: what would Uhura being awesome have looked like? The constraints are these:
- The skills Starfleet are paying her for remain xenolinguistics and communications technology. Like Sulu, she can have outside, awesome interests/side specialties, but you should be able to provide TOS documentation of their existence (entries from either Memory Alpha or Memory Beta suffice as evidence.)
- The plot remains roughly the same: Spock fails to save Romulus; Nero and Spock travel back in time; Nero destroys the Kelvin; Starfleet Cadets are sent to deal with what is assumed to be a natural disaster but instead turns out to be galactic-scale terrorism; Kirk (with the able assistance of his crew) stops Nero from destroying the Earth, although not Vulcan; everyone gets their field promotions confirmed at the end of the film except Spock.
- While making Uhura awesome may arguably involve killing the underwear scene, you can't just kill the Spock/Uhura romance, you have to explain how that makes Uhura (and not the treatment of women in the film in general) not awesome. You may add female characters without romantic or parental relationships to the main cast in order to restore a more general gender awesome to the whole film.
Anyone who says, "Well we should have seen her translating stuff!" must identify the parties between whom she would have been translating as well as how that would be made to look interestng in an action adventure film. If one or more of those people is in the crew of the Narada, then you must first rework the encounter with the Kelvin, where, from all appearances, Nero and his lieutenant spoke Standard.
It feels to me like awesome is getting defined as primarily committing violence on our enemies, with a secondary category of running around and being funny. Is that where the community is at?
This entry was originally posted at http://zvi.dreamwidth.org/520105.html. Please comment there using OpenID.