#beta canon

[annikasevenshots]

RAFFI'S GIRLFRIEND SEVEN OF NINE? [SEVEN'S] PARTNER RAFFI MUSIKER???

"they aren't currently a couple" found dead in a ditch

[unholysails]

Hi!! I’m wanting to get into the Star Trek ds9 novels, especially the Garak stuff. Do you think there is a good reading order or should I just start wherever? Sorry if this is random you just seemed to be into them so I thought it wouldn’t hurt :) Thank you!

Hello! my goodness, this is such a lovely question! there is a 'correct' linear reading order if you wish to follow the post canon events without spoiling anything for yourself! (Please note im probably going to get something wrong as there are SO many ds9 books and i have not read them all yet.) An uncommon starting point would be 'Hollow Men' by the incredible Una McCormack, which takes place during the DS9 series. Sisko and Garak go to Earth together to do Starfleet errands. It's referenced several times in the following Garak novels. right after watching the ds9 series, most garak fans (myself included) will run right to Andrew J. Robinson's 'A StItch In Time'. It takes place right after Garak begins making a life for himself on Cardassia post Dominion war and its a perfectly wonderful place to start your beta canon journey! Andy himself even did a recorded reading so you can have him read it to you with his pretty Garak voice!! I highly reccomend it. I think around here we have 'Worlds of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Volume One' By Una McCormack and Heather Jarman!! Does more fabulous Cardassian world building!

Next in the line following Garak's story is actually a play written by Andy and Siddig together! They performed this play called 'The Nexus' at conventions and to my knowledge there are no recordings of this performance, only a dictated script that is available online. The play was heart breaking.

After the play, I read 'The Calling' which is again by Andy himself, as part of an anthology series called 'Prophecy and Change'. The Calling is very important reading.

Next I believe is 'The Fall' series, but most people just read the 3rd book, 'The Crimson Shadow' by Una McCormack. I've yet to read this one myself, I'm dragging my feet a bit by reading the full series.

If you like Julian Bashir there are also novels about him and what he gets up to that tie heavily into Garak's story, but I personally have only read 'Section 31: Control' by David Mack. Garak makes two appearances in this novel and both are devastating. In my opinion this is essential reading for following the beta canon Garak story line. Finally, we have 'Enigma Tales', again by Una McCormack. Another one I am yet to read. As it is the last in the line following this particular series of events, I've been avoiding it so that Garak's story doesn't end the way I know Enigma Tales ends. It was intended to have a sequel to round things out, but alas.... ;) FINALLY FINALLY we have 'The End of This Day's Business' by Una McCormack Eleta_Preloc on Archive of Our Own. It is actively still being published there and it is the official unofficial sequel we've been dying for the last 9 years.

--- I know I already wrote a bunch but there is one more novel in this timeline/reality that I would be remiss for excluding. 'The Never Ending Sacrifice' by Una McCormack. It features Garak towards the end, and takes place from season 2 DS9 and runs into the beta canon. It really builds on Cardassian culture and takes a lot of reference points from A Stitch in Time. It may very well be my favourite betacanon novel so far.

One last thing, there is another novel by Una McCormack called 'Second Self' that is based on a different reality altogether, following the Picard tv series' canon, I believe! Thank you for reading, I hope this helped you figure out a starting point <3 Garak appears in many more novels than these but the books I've named follow the most fascinating (to me) parts of his extended story. Have a great day!

[stra-tek]

With Starfleet Academy launching in 2026, let's have a look at Starfleet Academy in beta canon!

Interplay came out with a PC game in 1997, using greenscreen sets and featuring William Shatner and George Takei in in-between mission briefings. The gameplay itself was space battles. A version came out earlier on Super Nintendo and the ill-fated Genesis 32X add-on ('94 and '95, respectively), with cartoon graphics and text in place of the PC game's video sequences. There was a novelization of the story, which was pretty good.

YA Next Generation novels featuring Worf (as well as several characters that would go on to feature in the New Frontier novel series), Picard, Data, Geordi, Troi and Beverly on adventures in their academy days. The success of these led to TOS academy novels about Spock, Kirk and McCoy and even a Cadet Janeway one!

Marvel launched a comic book series about Cadet Nog and friends in 1996, which was pretty awesome but sadly cancelled when Marvel realised the Trek license was so dear their chances of making any profit were zilch. The Andorian character would return in the Titan novel series, as part of Riker's crew.

Pocket Books tried a one-off Starfleet Academy novel, presumably to test the waters for a book series. It was published under the Next Generation banner, despite clearly being academy based and starring new characters.

In 2007 William Shatner co-wrote a novel about a young Jim Kirk joining Starfleet Academy, based on a pitch for a television series (which would have been literally Smallville Trek but ten times more insane). Comes with a weird disclaimer at the start basically calling it non-canon because it's clearly re-imagining things, and features Kirk stealing a police car, getting caught and joining SFA as the alternative to going to prison. There was supposed to be another novel but Trek was about to reboot and since the novel and movie covered some similar ground (i.e. Kirk at the aacademy), the novel was cancelled not to confuse the public who somehow seem to be fine with like 4 concurrent versions of Batman.

That 2009 reboot of Star Trek gave us more YA fiction, this time filling in Kirk's 3 years at SFA. Because several of the characters (most notably, Kirk and Spock) don't meet until the events of the movie, they keep just missing each other in these books. One of which features an advanced Borg scout, a very different depiction of them from the usual which blurs the line between "is it meant to be an edgy rebooted version of the Borg?" and "have these people ever watched Star Trek?"

Starting 2015, IDW have published six academy focused issues of their Star Trek comic, with the Enterprise crew mentoring a new batch of cadets who find a long-lost NX-class starship.

I've probably missed out on loads of stuff, like a story in old DC Trek comics riding the hype of the then-recently cancelled 25th anniversary Starfleet Academy movie, but I think that's all the big stuff.

[sofiadragon]

How old is Suika?

Look, I get it. It's nice if she's 18. She can be shipped with anyone, it makes things simple, and the encyclopedia says that's how old she is, and that she was only petrified for 2 years.

Here's the thing: we have 3 winters in that time lapse montage before she revives. Not just in the anime, but the manga panels too. Those winters are of places in Japan, and the anime shows the passage of time by following her pets. It's extremely cute, a good counterpoint to how sad the situation is, and makes it clear 3 Northern Hemisphere winters have passed. This is important since March is the very beginning of spring in the northern hemisphere, but autumn in the southern one.

Both can't be true.

Let's talk about that, but first let me tell you about promotional material like that encyclopedia and how canon it is or isn't for a while:

A published fan book or encyclopedia is great for keeping a timeline and adding fun details to the characters, but humans are fallible and even the authors can get things wrong in a time crunch. Maybe their notes said one thing but they ended up saying something else in the actual book/show. The Dragonball Z fan books are famously incorrect and inconsistent. Merch fun facts and promotional images, even if the text copy on packaging/in the magazine/etc. is approved by the author, from a host of franchises is full of mistakes. It's a common problem. So what do we do?

Well, not this:

Let me introduce my dear mutuals to the idea of Alpha and Beta Canon. (No relation to A/B/O.) We Trekkies know this one from way back! The Apha Canon is the primary source: the actual media itself and nothing else. Even if it was written by Gene Roddenberry or said by Leonard Nimoy, anything that isn't the actual episodes of the Star Trek show is Beta canon. Think how some authors tried to sprinkle some LGBTQ into the cast of their books in the 2010's well after their publication. For the most part none of that contradicted anything, but none of it was even hinted at by any detail in the original media.

To say it another way: Death of the Author enthusiasts will ONLY ever consider Alpha Canon. To them, everything else is fanfic even if it came from the author.

The interviews and front matter fact sheets that say Gen Asagiri has poliosis and Sistus Inversus Totalus are beta canon - it is an idea that was meant to be plot relevant, but in the end that plot was changed and Gen's abnormal medical situation, which is hinted at in how certain scenes are drawn in both the anime and manga, never comes up explicitly. The poliosis is beta canon based on how he's drawn, the SI is arguably alpha canon because of the lie detector scene. It's a bit like how we have to keep track of what is a headcanon and not correct the show using a fan theory - even if there is, canonically, a big fat plot hole there. When two sources disagree, Alpha canon always wins when talking about what the media actually said.

For Dr. Stone, that means the manga and the anime. The encyclopedia and official website, no matter how helpful, are Beta canon. If the encyclopedia or promotional fact sheet contradict the manga or show content, the encyclopedia or fact sheet is the one with the error. It's supplemental material to the main series, merchandise not main content. If the wiki is based on the encyclopedia or an interview that contradicts the episodes, then the wiki is wrong to do that. The beta canon is only correct as long as it doesn't contradict the anime or manga. Everything in the encyclopedia is accurate and canon, unless it contradicts the show. We call those contradictory bits a retcon or a mistake.

So how old is Suika, ignoring the encyclopedia?

Well, we meet her at 9 in the spring. Her birthday is September 9th according to a fact page printed in a manga volume and she does state her age in the manga at one point. So she's 10 for the Grand Bout, 11 on the Treasure Island trip, and turns 12 on the ship while in the Pacific ocean well before Xeno is kidnapped at the beginning of December. The encyclopedia agrees on that chain of events, so she is 12 when Joel's petrification beam arrives 100 days after Xeno is captured.

100 days after that slightly vague date brings us to sometime in March. 3 winters in the northern hemisphere from March is going to be at least 3 years, maybe a few months more. Subtracting just 3 whole years from the time Senku counted during his second petrification is going to give us the oldest she can possibly be. She could canonically be a little younger if she gets revived later in the calendar year, and we have no indication of what month she wakes up in because it's the Amazon.

(Tiny rant: in a belligerent DM I was told by someone who was quite sure Suika had to be 'legal' with how she's drawn so sexy that the pyramid shaped place we saw in the time lapse and manga panels was not Roppongi Hills, the Kingdom of Might camp location, but the Medusa pyramid, so these were Southern Hemisphere winters. Allow me to point out that it never snows in the Amazon Rainforest. No, not even with climate change reversed. It's like 7°C for an hour on the coldest night of the year, and Senku didn't put a flag pole or radio station on the medusa pyramid. That's in Japan.)

Senku says he was petrified for 7 years in the anime, I haven't gotten there yet but I've been told in the manga he gives a more precise date of about seven and a half years. So that's 4 or 4.5 years Suika canonically lived alone at max for the anime and manga respectively (our poor baby girl!)

12+4=16, and half a year from March gets her to 17 tops. If she was petrified for a couple extra months that means she's certainly still 16 chronologically even if we pass her birthday before Xeno gets woken up. 16 is how old Senku was when he first met her. How poetic, how pure, it's so beautiful. Why are you trying to ruin that with gooning? (Ignoring the incredible psychological damage that much isolation would cause like OMG this manga ignores that whole thing, her social development should be so stunted.)

We're missing a year off the encyclopedia's assertion at best. Considering how long building a ship will take, the author could have easily confused the age she is when she revives Senku with her age when they leave South America. Inagaki is a human man with a job, perfect machine accuracy is not a requirement for him to be a fantastically creative author.

But some people will say she is 18 because that's the top Google result and what the AI says is the correct answer. Don't be that guy on reddit about it and badger someone for hours if they don't have the same head canon about it as you do.

[purpleenma]

Little random and fun piece of info I ran into while researching for my TarsusIV shallow dive and Kirk (link here).

Tank

James Tank Kirk

[garaks-sewing-gun]

so I finished Crimson Shadow a few weeks ago and now I'm about a third of the way through Enigma Tales and I have only one bone to pick with una mccormack's excellent, iconic worldbuilding for cardassia:

in no possible world do I believe that working class urban cardassians drove skimmers.

but the good news is: this is giving me a lot of ideas about cardassian public transit, especially as a new yorker who's already trainpilled

like I think the idea of an authoritarian state has to be accompanied by mass transit, individualized means of transport would be so inefficient for surveillance and mass transit is such an easy 'see all the good the state (tm) can do for you!!!' this happens so much irl. obviously rich and powerful cardassians have skimmers, but so many of our protags in those books should've been on trains and buses.

there's mentions of trams (and admittedly these books are all explicitly post-canon, I'm not actually shading mrs mccormack i'm just cooking), I feel like aboveground trains must be the way to go for the home planet, knowing what we know about its general inhospitable geography. but then underground could also be interesting for temp regulation purposes?

the new subway cars they've been deploying in NYC are really nice. they're well engineered and bright. and they all have multiple visible surveillance camera lenses.

thinking about the train cars in cardassia city having those broadcast ovals built in. thinking about the inherent collectivism of travelling together, and the way central command can easily spin that into an us vs them. thinking about undercover young garak getting stuck on long commutes in whatever identity he's trying to pass as. thinking about even younger garak on a long train ride out to the country, the one nice day with the riding hounds. much to ponder.

[respocked]

I feel like you guys are not appreciating the Star Trek Log Two (1974) fragments I have provided you with. FUCK THE COMPANION SPEECH this is the real deal

[lady-lazarus-13]

I finished Enigma Tales by Una McCormack and I have thoughts. Spoilers below:

Since this book is technically an enigma tale I was trying to figure out who was guilty of what. One joke I sent earlier to Tinyfaust (he's not tagged cause he hasn't finished) was "What is Kelas guilty of, huh? Loving a married man so much?"

Genuinely every bit we got of Garak yearning was so so so good. Seeing the relationships he'd built on Cardassia was also so fascinating. I really appreciated all of these new characters and the layers added to Lang.

But I did not like Pulaski or Alden. They grew on me by the end but kinda like a mold on soft cheese. Couldn't even cut it off and hope for the best.

Cause Pulaski was running her mouth about racing hounds and got Lang worried about why the castellan doesn't like her. Then miss kitty cat got rude about Julian. Why are you bringing that up around all these randoms? She assumes Garak is secretive and nefarious because he's ex-Order and not because he's the HEAD OF STATE.

It makes more sense for Garak to be private. Like for once he was not being sketchy and yet everybody was up in his business.

It was sad seeing Garak mourning for Ziyal, but him wanting to keep her memory alive was so beautiful. I also realized probably would have been easier for Garak to mourn Julian if he was dead and not just upstairs catatonic. How awful. The guilt must have started to gnaw at him so I could understand his unwillingness to see Julian empty like that.

"My poor Julian." And Garak cryiiiing because he got shook up by Telek's story. That killed me. Garak heard "genetic experiments on children??? Just like my main man Bashir."

Also, Kelas getting a small note with "Baby, I'm coming home - G xoxo" was shocking enough but the [sent] personally sent me to another planet. Like just send Julian his letters omg. (I hope Kelas pulls a "To all the boys I loved before" and sends them for Garak.)

I have to say though I'm slightly disappointed in the ending. It was just kind of lame for the whole thing to be caused by a rogue Starfleet agent deep undercover. Maybe if he'd lost it AND had reason to do all this it would have made sense. But instead it was to...help Lang gain power? Maybe I need to reread that part so feel free to correct me. It just didn't carry enough weight. But I suppose that's an enigma tale for ya.

I love how Garak was like hahaha why be the president of a school when you can be the next Castellan. The description of him in black walking away into the darkness when Lang stepped into the light? Iconique.

Anyway, the last chapter with Julian as Garak read to him? The twitch of his fingers over Kukalaka? So worth the ride.

Now time for me to be delusional and pretend Julian wakes up and he's like oh hey boo and they live happily ever after. And have freak nasty sex ten plus years in the making.