Sapphose on AO3

She/Her. 30s. Check the 'my writing' tag for shorter works not on AO3!

[sapphosewrites]

An AI ship full of frozen colonists must find the best planet to be the new home of the human race.

Browser game recommendation for my fellow scifi fans

[json-derulo]

Whenever they gave us one of those "read through ALL the instructions before you begin!" trick assignments in school where the steps lead you on an increasingly ridiculous goose chase until the final one tells you to just put your name on the paper and turn it in without doing anything else, I was always like, "Okay, but what's the point? Surely the REAL world won't be anything like this." And then I grew up and discovered that not only is the real world often exactly like that, some people won't even read the first line of the instructions even if they make perfect sense. And these people are called "co-workers"

[itsoverfeeling]

ppl on ao3 should use the "this work was inspired by" option more. so many fics out there that put links to other fics in the a/n but theres a better option.....

☝️ use this!!!!!!

[itsoverfeeling]

important addition i forgot that not everyone might know. similar to how ao3 bookmarks work, you can also link to non-ao3 fanworks using this format. so, for instance, if theres some fanart on tumblr that inspired you to write the fic? you can link that fanart to your fic!

[jvlianbashir]

bashir looking for a cure for the jem'hadar's ketracel-white dependence should not have been a one-off episode plot and, if continued and possibly given a conclusion of success, could have added a very interesting and satisfying element to the series finale!!!!

[unheardoracle]

I love characters who are like "I'm a terrible person" but when you look closer it's more like

"I adapted to survive something and now I don't know how to stop being that version of myself."

[abbykmtr-13]

"Spider-Man New York Stories: The Fashion Consultant" ✨️ A funny and lighthearted Spider-Man and The Nanny crossover story, by yours truly✨️

A story for the 90's people! In case you don't know, The Nanny was a 90s TV show, starring Fran Drescher, which took place in New York! So... of course I had to write this.

I started this story almost a year ago 😭✨️ I need to be faster when making comics HAHAHAAHHS

You can read it here or in my zine!

[lostyesterday]

I can suspend my disbelief for a lot in Star Trek, but for some reason one of the things I have the most trouble with is the idea that entire species have one single language. (This is very much not a unique thing in Star Trek and basically all sci-fi does this, I’m just specifically talking about Star Trek here.) How is there one single Vulcan language, one single Klingon language, one single Bajoran language, etc.? I know it’s just done to simplify the writing process, but it’s so unbelievable to me. Even the idea that there might be one “main” language for each species and then a few other dialects which is occasionally hinted at feels unconvincing for an entire species on an entire planet.

I remember there were a few episodes of DS9 that talked about “Ancient Bajoran” which modern Bajoran descended from and I love that idea for the history of language on Bajor, but there should be tons of different languages descended from a language that old! Maybe an old form survives as a liturgical language while another somewhat related language is the primary dialect spoken in, say, the Rakantha Province. Maybe there are different branches of languages descended from Ancient Bajoran that are mutually unintelligible to each other but that can be traced back by scholars to a common ancestor. And certainly there must be other language families on Bajor for which no link to Ancient Bajoran can be established at all. How have Bajoran religious and governmental authorities historically treated these languages? How many small languages might have been wiped out or become endangered during the Cardassian occupation? What kinds of language revitalization efforts might exist after the end of the occupation? To think about any of this stuff you just kind of have to ignore canon, though.

[decadent-trans-girl]

'why is so much politically-focused genre fiction centred on monarchies' many reasons, but one which I think deserves attention: monarchy is an obvious way of tying together the dysfunctions of the domestic to those of the state

[wastrelwoods]

I just fucking love love love when a narrative shows me a character who is an insufferable and badly behaved bully being propped up by an even shittier familal authority figure assuring them that they are a Special Princess who deserves to walk all over everyone else, and then the narrative pulls back a little and shows me that in fact the love and support of that authority figure is Deeply Conditional and Finite and this bully is both aware of it and haunted by that knowledge. Their Special Princess Swagger is PAPER thin

[deep-space-9000]

Deep Space 9 really had the best time travel episodes of any Star Trek. It had the disturbingly close portrayal of the 2020s, Quark's family causing the Roswell Incident, and the senior staff sneaking onto Kirk's Enterprise where they promptly get in a bar fight (and also prevent the Enterprise from exploding). No one was doing it like DS9.

[sapphosewrites]

*immediately after seeing a post on my dash* Don't join discourse about literacy education don't join discourse about literacy education nuanced conversations don't happen over tumblr reblogs DO NOT ENGAGE

[hellostuffedtiger]

What's your favorite Garak relationship (excluding Bashir)?

Garak and whatever is going on between him and Benjamin Sisko

Garak and whatever is going on between him and Kira Nerys

Garak and whatever is going on between him and Odo

Garak and whatever is going on between him and Dukat

Garak and whatever is going on between him and Tain

Garak and whatever is going on between him and Quark

Garak and whatever is going on between him and Miles O'Brien

Garak and whatever is going on between him and Ziyal

Garak and whatever is going on between him and Damar

Garak and whatever is going on between him and Ezri Dax

Garak and whatever is going on between him and Nog

Garak and whatever is going on between him and Mila

Voting ended onJul 15

[hellostuffedtiger]

Amazing, the final vote tally ended at an even 600! Odo squeaked out a win by 0.1%, but was neck-and-neck with Sisko the whole time—they actually swapped being in the lead multiple times. I truly expected Sisko to win, even though “Improbable Cause” is one of my all-time favorites (maybe my all-time favorite DS9 ep), but this may inspire me to write something for Garak & Odo. I voted for Kira and was saddened to see her % tally drop to a little over half of what Dukat got. I’m also surprised that Quark did better than Tain. But there are a lot of rich choices here. Thank you everyone for voting.

EDIT: It took me a minute, but I figured out the math. Odo got 140 votes and Sisko got 139. So Odo won by one vote.

[lakariancityamusementcenteradult]

Having Sisko and Bashir be the ones to get stuck in the sanctuary district in Past Tense was such a good call. Julian's characteristic optimistic naivety (at least in the earlier seasons) makes him this weird kind of audience stand-in, but instead of literally representing the audience watching the show, it's like he's representing the view of an imaginary audience from a place where things that are normal or acceptable in our own society are shocking, and it's one of the things that makes the episode work as really biting social commentary. In Star Trek you often get a character who plays an audience pov who asks the kinds of questions the audience might have, especially as a way of explaining away technobabble. To have a character ask "Why isn't anyone helping this person with schizophrenia??" in the same way Riker asks Geordi what's up with the warp core is pretty uncomfortable to say the least.

Julian's constant outrage, disbelief at what he's seeing, and refusal to accept things as they are is also great. He never lets you forget how messed up this is, and I think it was a good opportunity to develop his character as well. It's one of the first really traumatic things that happens to him and the way he reacts to everything really shows it, along with the strength of his convictions and his stubbornness for doing what's right which he carries on right to the end of the series. His kindness also shines through when he helps the woman injured boy (against Sisko's objections) and the woman with diabetes in the processing centre.

Then there's Sisko, who tempers Bashir's outrage with (kind of paternal) pragmatism. He doesn't accept that things had to be that way and understands the wrongness of what he's seeing to its fullest extent, but unlike Julian, he knows what he can and can't do about it, and chooses to accept that there are some things he personally can't change but does everything he possibly can with the influence he has. This Includes taking a bunch of hostages at gun point (and it's actually crazy they had a Star Trek protagonist do that lol), which Julian is visually extremely uncomfortable about, and being prepared to give his life to ensure things get better. For me, he's the very image of a great Starfleet captain in these eps.

I have to also mention the obvious fact that both characters are people of colour who, despite being a decorated commander and a doctor, find themselves immediately written off as worthless by a white guard and discarded into a concentration camp. Meanwhile their white colleague ends up in a penthouse.

[deepdwellingsteamboat]

STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE 1993 – 1999・1x14 The Storyteller

[klaipeda-witness]

Garak risking his life by going into the gamma quadrant to rescue Tain in hopes that he will be grateful for how Garak has spent his entire life trying to please him and finally forgive him and maybe acknowledge him as his son even and let him come back to Cardassia

[sapphosewrites]

Sometimes children will tell you things that just quietly break your heart. I started working with a new group this week, and part of my practice in this program is to check in with each child privately that I have the correct name and pronouns before using them publicly. I went up to one child, and asked if X was the preferred name, and she grinned and said, "You said it right!"

"Yes?" I said. "It's pronounced just how it's spelled?"

She told me, "Last year one of the teachers couldn't pronounce it, and so she just called me something else all summer."

What! What!!! You can't just do that with a child's name! You can't just decide to call them something else!

[subatoism]

“I courted and won the heart of the magnificent Jadzia Dax”

[flashbacks to Jadzia flirting furiously with him while Worf goes on about how far beyond all other women Grilka is]