basically the best thing any character can do is decide they don't want to be afraid anymore - in fact they never want to be afraid of anything ever again - and take action so drastic they fail to realise that this too is a decision motivated by fear. or to account for the Consequences of that.
[with obvious perverted intent] hey. don't you want to release the safety catches on that character. don't you want to flip off all the switches holding them back and let the control rods go.
The most interesting question you can ask about any character is not what do they want. it's what do they believe they deserve. because those two things are almost never the same and the gap between them is where your entire story lives. a person can want love completely and believe they don't deserve it and that belief will destroy every good thing that comes toward them in ways they won't even notice they're doing. write the gap. the gap is the character.
The reason I reached for genre romance novels for Star Trek is Ive read so so so many of them and I know roughly how most of them convey something about the culture that produced them, in content and structure and what it means for what a culture values in a partner, and in themselves. It’s somewhat easy to use the scaffolding I already know to use existing genre conventions to explain something about the aliens in Star Trek.
I have not read enough murder and thriller novels to articulate what the genre is establishing about culture and values so I can’t be like ‘this is the dime airport novel about women getting sexy murdered but in Vulcan’ because I don’t know which genre conventions are load bearing and which are just more traditional. The murder mysteries i HAVE read are literally just Agatha Christie and maybe a handful of others that are directly inspired by her. I’ve watched a lot of murder television, but that is nottttt the same medium.
Bringing out those tags because so, so interesting, perhaps one of my favourite things, to mess around with patterns of story*. When I sat down with Spock to transcribe his autobiography, we came up with a form for what Vulcan memoir might look like, which he subverts. (There’s some of Sarek’s poetry too.)
Meditations on a Crimson Shadow is described as being set during a future war, so is a Cardassian sf novel. I figured it would surely, at least superficially, tell the story of Cardassian supremacy and permanent conquest, like Orwell’s boot stamping on a human face forever. Except maybe if you were reading it in the basement of your father’s home as your whole civilization implodes around you. Then I thought it might read differently. Or at least you would start the previously unimaginable work of imagining differently.
If historical fiction tries to reconfigure what we think was possible for people in the past, sf tries to configure what we think can be possible to us in the future. They feel very close, in my mind. Can we find sources or traditions in the past that give us succour or hope? What visions of the future are available to us, or do we need to imagine, and how do we map our way there? I think about these things all the time.
Walter Benjamin, On the Concept of History, VI
* Patterns of Story was the title of my MA creative writing module where we read 6 novels and mucked around with them in as many ways as possible. This week we’ll go through one scene in Madame Bovary and see how meticulously it’s constructed. This week we’ll read some post-apocalyptic Kentish dialect and I’ll do my party piece from Ulysses. This week I’ll tell you why Moll Flanders is like the Doctor Who Hartnell-era story “The Sensorites”. This week I’ll explain what I think are the two distinctive modes in the crime novel. And this week we’ll read a modernist novel that you’ll doubt at best or hate at worst but ten years later you’ll email me to ask the title because you haven’t been able to get it out of your head. I loved teaching that class. What an amazing technology novels are. I really do like them, probably nothing nicer than novels.
Oh, just to add that if we go with Harold Bloom (wait! come back!) and read Shakespeare as "inventing" the human, then Garak's blustering that Shakespeare is rubbish and pointless can of course be taken as yet another crock of performative bullshit - not only does he QUOTE HIM TO TAIN (let me throw words learned from my beloved in your fucking face), but Shakespeare represents his encounter with humanity by which we mean Bashir by which we mean the crumbling of Garak's belief in Cardassian supremacy. Shakespeare by which we mean the human by which we mean Bashir rewires (see what I did there) Garak's brain to such an extent that I would not be surprised if Garak regularly catches himself thinking in blank verse.
Hi there, welcome to the Deep Space Halloween Zine information zone Mark II, where I try to give all the pertinent information about the second edition of the zine in one handy post.
Please read this entire post in its entirety before starting to make anything for this zine!
If you have any questions, feel free to send an ask! I will be happy to answer any questions you have. :)
Submission Rules
Fandom
This is a Deep Space Nine zine, so please make sure your submissions focus on Deep Space Nine and its characters. However, characters from other trek shows are welcome as "guest stars" in your works.
Post/Pre-Canon works are welcome so long as they focus primarily on characters from the show (including side characters)
Theme
This zine will be (very loosely) Halloween themed! The works can be about halloween itself, or they can be spooky, or even just fall themed. This is a very, very loose theme, so don't stress out too much about it!
Format and Cost
This zine will be released digitally and be completely free on the Deep Space Halloween Zine itch.io page (where you can also download the first issue of the zine, wink wink)
Acceptable Mediums
Fanfiction (up to 5000 words)
Fan art
Comics (up to 4 pages)
Photo Manips/Collages
Poetry/Original Song Lyrics
(Photos of) sculptures, dioramas, cake art
Basically if it can be put on a piece of paper, it can be eligible!
Zine Cover
If you would like to submit a cover for this zine, please do!
If you submit a cover, it must include the name of the zine (Deep Space Halloween Zine) the issue number (Issue 2) and the year (2026). It should not include signatures or watermarks (credit will of course be listed inside the zine itself).
Covers can be your own art, or can be a photo manipulation.
In the case that multiple covers are submitted, all covers that don't make it to, well, the cover, will be featured as full pages at the end of the zine as "alternate covers," like collected editions of comics do!
Qualifications
You do not need to be an experienced artist/writer/cake decorator/whatever to contribute to this zine!
In fact, beginners are both welcome and encouraged to participate!
Rating
To keep this zine friendly for everyone, we will not be accepting explicit content.
Please keep your works to a rating of Teen+ or lower, or PG-13.
Since this is a Halloween themed zine, blood and gore is allowed, as long as it fits a PG-13 rating (use your favourite search engine to find a list of PG-13 horror movies if you need a reference point).
Ships
You can feature ships in your work, or no ships at all if that's more your style.
Ships between minors and adults should be avoided.
AI Generated Work
AI generated work is strictly not allowed.
Don't do it. I will know. And I will find you.
Exclusivity
All works submitted must not have already been posted elsewhere.
All works submitted should remain unposted until the zine is released on Halloween, after which you are allowed to share your work on Tumblr/AO3/Wherever.
Deadlines
Submissions are due on 30 September 2026!
The zine will be released on 31 October 2026!
Submitting Works
Please email your submissions to [email protected] using the form linked below.
Submissions that do not include a filled out form will not be accepted.
Art/Collages/Photos should be in png or jpeg format. Zine pages will be 2550(W)x3300(H)px. Your image does not need to match these proportions, but please make sure that your image can be scaled to fit within these boundaries.
Written works should be submitted as a PDF.
Submission Form:
💬 0 🔁 0 ❤️ 0 · Deep Space Halloween Zine Issue 2 Submission Form · Please include this form with your submissions and email it to spacedog
I'm deleting this obvious spam comment but wanted to share it with y'all because it's so stupid. This isn't a comment that applies to any of my work, but especially not to a 100 word drabble about two cops having sex in an unspecified location.
Okay maybe I'm just missing something here, but if everyone on ds9 is gonna complain about the Cardassian mattresses, can't they just like, get new ones?? Sure mattresses aren't the cheapest thing ever but I'm on season 3 rn which means it's been a few years in the span of the show, and they're still complaining. Surely they could've done something about it by now.
"I'm lying to you but this sentence is technically the truth without context" is such a good trope. Like yes the way that I am spinning these words forms a lie but if you squint I'm actually not lying.
I wonder if there's not as many first person pov novels in English, because I've seen many people dislike that pov in fanfics. In Korea, many novels are in first person, especially the older — like in 20C — ones. I grew up reading first person novels in school textbook.
I can't say if it's more or less frequent than in Korea, but definitely first person pov is very common in English language novels! I think the aversion is specifically a fanfiction thing.
Something so funny about rereading one's own unfinished fics. Like wow this is pretty good! Almost as if was written exactly according to what I personally like in fact! Someone should finish it!
turnnoffyourmind
origamiaround
pixelskylines
stormborns
gummygunk
titsay
areudirty
