#northstarfan

[curator-on-ao3]

First Line Challenge

Big thanks to @northstarfan for tagging me in the first line challenge! ❤️

So, um, tiny detail, but I don’t know the rules of the first line challenge. Therefore, I’ll make my own rules to choose a story at random and share the first few lines:

The siren always seems to sound just before daybreak.

Maybe because that’s when particulates in the planet’s atmosphere coalesce. At least in autumn, and it’s been autumn for almost three weeks — five weeks to go — which means the piercing whine yanks Una out of sleep, bedsheets thrown aside, her feet landing on the wood-plank floor before her eyes even open.

“Go. I’m right behind you.” Seven is slower, ocular implant glitches worse when her rest is interrupted like this, human biology nourished by sleep but xB technology still hungry for a regeneration alcove.

Even after all these years.

That’s from The Melody of You (and Me), a T-rated Una Chin-Riley x Seven of Nine one-shot.

Tagging without pressure (or knowledge of the actual rules of the game) — @starrybouquet, @deadheaddaisy, @elephant-in-the-pride-parade, @cnroth, @theredheadedcaptain, @fiadorable, @enterprise-come-in, @emilie786, @pc-corner, @grissomesque, @procrastinatorproject, @regionalpancake, @lorcaswhisky, @caladeniablue, @cicaklah, @divinemissem13, @coffee-in-that-nebula and anyone else who wants to play.

[dreamerinsilico]

1, 6, and 13 for the music ask?

A song you like with a color in the title

😂 I kind of can't not say Blue (Da Ba Dee) (Eiffel 65) here given how much it marked my middle/high school dances. But also, Blue Monday (New Order, linking the voordeel Star Wars edit because why not, it's a masterpiece, but since that's done with a cover, linking the original also).

A song that makes you want to dance

Moooooost songs that I like? I love to dance and can regularly be seen rocking out in the lab while I'm waiting for the centrifuge or something. However, I will highlight an extremely fond memory of one particular Dragon Con rave where it was about 5 AM and I was just about to turn off my lights and call it a night, and then I heard the first few notes of Living Dead Girl (Rob Zombie) and it suddenly didn't matter how tired I was.

One of your favorite 80’s songs

(You're getting 3, whoops.) Well, the aforementioned Blue Monday, for one, definitely also Head Like a Hole (NIN, and I'm mad that I apparently didn't take any video of that one at the concert I went to with @mlobsters this year) and for something rather different, Samain Night (Loreena McKennitt - she held the title of Dae's Favorite Musician pretty solidly for several years when I was a teenager. It apparently took my dad a decade to want to listen to her stuff again after I left for college.).

Music ask meme questions here.

[yiddishfisting]

re watching Picard - Keep your expecations for S1 low. Very low. There was a lot of tug-of-war between Stewart, the showrunner, and the suits, plus the writers didn't have scripts for their "ten-hour movie" finished before they started filming, so the pacing and tonal shifts are all over the place, and none of the dozen or so new concepts get explored in any depth. But there's still good stuff in there, and it's got the best cast of any first season Trek (including my beloved DS9). Sorry to say, S2 is a bigger mess, with even less to recommend it.

oh nooooo 😭 why must this always happen. i'll have to try out the first season at some point anyway just for the cast but i do remember seeing some. not awesome stuff about it

why is it that the parody cartoon show is written better

[trek-tracks]

My dash did a thing

(Post above by @northstarfan, which didn’t fit on my screen)

[ourinquisitorialness]

WIP Meme: Elnor watched the Captain usher his daughter away, his mien proud and protective as she turned her head up to ask a question. A momentary sadness echoed through a place in his heart that was more knowledge than memory now, an old loss that could never be mended. He pushed it aside and turned back to Hugh.

This is from that new Star Trek show Picard, right? I haven’t watched it yet, but I keep meaning to! I’ve heard it’s fantastic. I love that second sentence: “through a place in his heart that was more knowledge than memory now.” I can feel that in my bones, ugh.

Here’s an excerpt from a ridiculous thing I started writing about Allegria Hawke and her, uhh, dalliance with First Enchanter Orsino lol.

--

There were few perks to which the First Enchanter was entitled. One of them, fortunately, was the privilege of a private office and well-appointed quarters. The center of the room was dominated by a desk of solid Antivan oak, its surface strewn with research notes and half-answered correspondence. Bookshelves lined the walls from ceiling to floor, housing his personal collection of Chantry-approved histories and arcane tomes. And in the corner, by the fireplace, was the plushly upholstered divan gifted to him by the Grand Enchanter, on which the naked Champion of Kirkwall now reclined, sweaty and shameless and spent.

Orsino glanced at her, his own hands trembling as he re-cinched the belt at his waist and straightened his heavy robes. “You had best make yourself decent before Meredith decides to barge in here and sees you like that.”

Allegria grinned and threw her head back against a velvet cushion, her eyes holding his gaze in that impish way of hers. “You never know, maybe she’s into that sort of thing. We could always invite her to join us next time.”

--

Send me a line or two from your current WIP and I’ll share one of mine!

[fontainebleau22]

-pounces!- M7: What We Reap In The Harvest, please?

OMG this one is sitting over there in the green folder! It’s the last in the Winter’s Lease ‘verse, picking up on what happened to the Seven once they’ve all settled down. It’s about half done, but I keep coming up with stories that fit in between (see Varaday’s Lease) so it keeps getting pushed back.

I’ve posted a lot of snippets from it already over time, and I may in the distant past have posted this very section, but here it is again:

Josh. Faraday, Quality Horseflesh. Goodnight squinted up at the sign above his head, paint still bright in the autumn sun. The effect of commercial respectability was somewhat marred by the vigorous cursing which drifted across the yard in his direction: Faraday and his apprentice Henry were in the corral wrestling to control a wildly rearing black stallion. Goodnight leaned on the rail at a safe distance to watch as Faraday shouted something to Henry and they gradually guided the horse around, Henry skipping smartly out the way of a lashing hoof; with his shadow behind him the stallion calmed, still fighting the bridle, but without the eye-rolling panic.

Faraday stood back eying him critically, then caught sight of Goodnight standing there, passed the reins to Henry and came over. ‘Thought you said he was intended for a carriage horse?’ asked Goodnight curiously. ‘Seems optimistic to me.’

Faraday ran a hand over his head. ‘Yeah, well, early days.’

He was sweated through his shirt, covered in straw chaff and red-faced from exertion and sun; Goodnight leaned lazily on his elbows. ‘You look like you’re doing a day’s work.’

‘Some of us do,’ grinned Faraday, looking him up and down, and Goodnight grinned back.

‘Touché.’  

[lazaefair]

🍉 self love time! tell me which one of YOUR fics you like the most then send to five other writers to do the same 💕

Oh, gosh. At the moment it’s probably My Modus Operandi Is Amalgam, for being both completed and entertaining, according to commenters. Thank you for sending this!

[dalishious]

Zevran and Mahariel for 1O, please?

Neck smooches