Winged pigs, blue moons, hellrinks

[kathleen_dailey]

Unbelievably, I'm going actively in search of Trek fic once again, hoping to be inspired to revisit at least one of the bunnies (now sadly aging hares, long of tooth, sparse of fur, and very very crotchety) hanging around my hard drive. What_Alchemy's new T'Pring story "On Restless Pinions" was welcome reading, and made me glad that someone else has recently been contemplating the character's backstory and fate.

For me, the definitive T'Pring story is still Rabble Rouser's "Sympathy for the Devil":

www.fanfiction.net/s/452636/1/

"On Restless Pinions" couldn't be more different in plot, subplot, characterization, and style:

what-alchemy.dreamwidth.org/9474.html

Both stories have their structural and stylistic strengths and weaknesses. But they share a deep respect for, and understanding of, the complexities of the principal character.

My own very drafty (as in so full of holes it's gossamerly threadbare) draft of "Aria da Capo" is now in its tenth or so year of non-completion. Every now and again I pull it out and reread it, hoping that an actual story might lurk somewhere beneath all the character exploration. But where the Romulan Commander's story arcs virtually wrote themselves (how could they not, with such a dramatic character and so many galactic-scale events--not to mention a hundred years of rich and malleable canon--at their centre), I find that my T'Pring story is really all about What Makes the Lady Tick. That topic might be fascinating to me, but it's guaranteed to put a reader to sleep in five minutes. As yet, I have no genuine story and very little prospect of one unless lightning strikes.

Part of the problem (maybe most of it) is that I have a hard time writing in any universe that doesn't (at least on its fringes) incorporate my OTP. And while I'm not writing ADC just so I can reunite T'Pring and Spock romantically (too much polluted water under that bridge, prolly), I'd like to know that I'm not automatically closed off from the possibility if the story should happen to head in that direction. I had a minor triumph a couple of weeks ago when I managed to write the last sentence of the story, which is what I've always had to do before I can even hope to get to that point. The line is a poor thing right now, and weak, and a world-class cliche, but at least it's there, which may help. Or possibly not.

I've never forgotten Claire Gabriel's advice from decades ago. You need SUSPENSE--line after line, scene after scene, chapter after chapter. The reader has to be invested in turning to the next page or reading the next paragraph because she just has to know what's going to happen there. I tried to put that advice into practice with every one of my stories, and if I didn't always succeed at least I knew that I'd made my best effort. With my T'Pring story, the only suspense lies in the fact that the protags are older and have had some mighty interesting experiences since their wedding-day; those two things just aren't enough, unless I can convince the reader that  the protags are (1) much wiser, (2) not any wiser at all, (3) even less wise than they were in "Amok Time," or (4) mad, bad, and dangerous to know--at least for each other, and in some dramatically interesting way. 

I believe that the only potentially productive plot thread in ADC is the last one, and that even if Spock and T'Pring have both gone all respectable and establishment in their middle age, they weren't always like that. I don't want to say too much more about that through-line in case it doesn't pan out, but canon is canon, and even when it's frustrating on its surface, it's still there for the deep and delicious retconning.

Maybe I'll take yet another (sigh) look at ADC and search for some evidence of lightning, or at least faint, distant thunder.