So, basically, one day a few years ago I was re-watching a bunch of Chuck's VOY reviews in particular order because I was bored, and I got this silly little idea in my head while watch his review of "Bliss" (episode thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=64).
The idea went something like this; Frankly I'm tired of TV shows feeling they have to pair off all their female characters anyway and there's no reason Seven of Nine had to be WITH anybody by the end, but I'm pretty sure she had more screen time with Naomi than with Chakotay. Why not have her have a thing with Noami's Mom, the one Chuck thinks is dead?
And so it began.
All 3 Published Parts on Ao3: http://archiveofourown.org/series/404320
Part 1 on FanFiction: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11705664/1 ... han-Sirens (sorry, no easy Series links there)
All 3 Published Parts on WattPad: https://www.wattpad.com/story/84332091- ... f-devotion
Part 4 is in progress as of this writing. In fact just last night I (finally) finished the chapter based on "Workforce"; all that's left is adapting "Author, Author", "Friendship One," and "Homestead," than a compeltely new finale and a denouement.
So close, you guys. So close.But ho, the idea for the pairing of Seven of Nine and Ensign Wildman (Sam7 as my readers have taken to calling it) was not the only place where I borrowed ideas or occasionally even lines from SF Debris.
Here now is a short list, because I can't remember them all off the top of my head;
A prequel story of sorts title Jetrel: Redux (not up at WattPad but connected to the ZeusParker username at FF and AO3) uses some of Chuck's ideas including retconning Neelix as a conscientious objector to an unjust war started by the Talaxians. This will actually play into the events of my re-write of Homestead when I get to it.
Having Harry Kim remember the Year of Hell
Getting Seven into a proper Starfleet uniform fairly early on
Correctly calling the Omega Particle a particle instead of a molecule like they called it on the show
Giving Joe Carey more to do (which pays off in a big way when I do "Friendship One")
Turned the Parody Janeway line "I played craps with Harry. He won so he got to keep his hands" joke from Chuck's "Dark Frontier" review into a joke that Janeway says to see if Seven is paying attention because the former thinks the latter looks distracted.
Use the Equinox survivors more (or perhaps I should say "at all" since the show pretty much forgot they existed after "Equinox Part 2"*)
I (hope I) did "Memorial" better, based on Chuck's comments about it.
Had the resistance us giant robots to step on the Borg in "Unimatrix Zero" (easily the hardest episode from to make "work" within the context of my universe.
Speaking of, while I kept the Borg as comparatively weak on Voyager as they were compared to on TNG, I not only came up with an in-universe explanation for why the Borg, to put it bluntly, got stupid, I had the characters notice this, and win by taking advantage. I know the hardcore Borg fans wouldn't like that, but fuck them they aren't the ones writing this, are they?
Janeway's boyfriend from "Workforce" sticks around. This will also be important later.
But enough about that.
If any of you in the SF Debris fandom have read AFoD, or if you plan to read it now, I'd love some feedback. Praise, constructive criticism, etc.
In the interest of fairness I will admit two things; yes, I probably should've waited a LITTLE BIT longer to have Seven and Sam get together, and two, I also hate how I handled the revealing of the relationship to the rest of the crew. I found myself unable to choose between something weighty & dramatic, or something cute (one of them calling the other "Honey" on the bridge by accident or something) so my compromise with, um, myself was to go for anti-climactic. :/ Looking back I should've gone for cute.
* In the "I did not see that coming" category, one thing I had never planned to do, but just sort of happened while I was writing was I ended up having Marla Gimore (the Equinox's engineer) and Vorik become platonic friends. Not sure where that came from, but hey, so far it seems to work.
