space forest

say nice shit about their art. fangirl about it, compliment the art fundamentals or the vibe or the color whatever. share their posts online

it used to be so easy to create an art community online in the past and now it's hellish. fight the algorithms. spam your friends art. they will either rlly appreciate the attention or straight up need it.

theres something slightly heartbreaking about the thought that the people around you don't care about your creations. by all means, you should create art for yourself but also, sometimes that art is a direct window into your inner world and when friends and loved ones ignore that it can sting pretty bad

Sea Trek: Deep Sea Nine

After the island of Bajor throws off its Dutch occupiers, a small force of Siennese troops move into an offshore fortress to keep an eye on things. But before they are unpacked, a supernatural maelstrom opens up offshore that connects to the ocean on the far side of the planet, and Bajor abruptly becomes the hottest piece of real estate in the world! And not just pineapples will come through – a new enemy worse than anything Bajor has ever seen waits on the far side, deep in the abyss.

Beniamino Sevieri: A traumatized but passionate commander, whose hopes of having a quiet life on DS9 are thwarted when the Bajorans declare him their Emissary. (Have you ever actually tried to sit down and describe Sisko in just a couple adjectives? It’s not easy.)

Jacopo Sevieri: Beniamino’s son, an aspiring scribe.

Kira Nerys: A former member of the Bajoran Resistance, now Sevieri’s second-in-command, who is wary of the Siennese presence.

Odo: Like Squidward, Odo is a benthic cephalopod who merges his tentacles into a pair of legs to walk like a humanoid.

Miles O’Brien: pain and suffering incarnate

Bashir Julani: A brilliant young doctor from the Mamluk Sultanate.

Cork: A greedy, devious, and untrustworthy sea goblin who operates a seedy wine-den.

Jacinth: A member of the Witches of Troy, a cult founded by Cassandra that are able to move their minds between bodies.

Worf: A reserved, socially awkward, unintentionally intimidating great white shark with a heart of gold.

Admiral de Cloet: The commander of the Dutch occupation, who shows back up now and again to make life difficult.

Elias Gerritsen: The last Dutchman left on DS9, a tailor.

Keiko: O’Brien’s wife, who is fascinated by the unique flora of Bajor and teaches some of the children on the island.

Nog and Rom: Cork’s nephew and brother, respectively an ambitious cadet-in-training and a jumpy schlemiel.

Weyoun: Jeffrey Combs

Gowron: Leader of the Shark Empire, a bigeye thresher.

Martok: A respected shark general.

I have to say, Lord Occtis Tachonis has an incredible aesthetic. This style is so new to me but I had the best time drawing it! (Round of applause for the 1-2-THREE RIBCAGES I HAVE LEARNED TO DRAW, pls 💀).

Part 1/14 of my @critical_role Campaign 4 series! Inspired by the Dragon Age tarot cards. Occtis has been an absolute delight this campaign I totally get why he’s a fan favorite. 🖤💜💚

Now, I’m not following the official tarot decks, but for funsies which Major Arcana do you reckon he’d be?

Wick knows his family is doing terrible things and hurting people; he hates his grandmother for doing these things and keeping him in the dark about them while smothering him in conditional affection to keep him compliant, but he still thinks there's good things in his family that are worth preserving. You can see this when he encounters his mother Iris and his brother Lioran again. He clearly loves them both dearly, even though Iris was not only an active participant but the architect of him being kept in the dark about the Creed. Seeing them again was a bright spot in an otherwise extremely tense and fraught homecoming for Wick, because even as he's realizing what harms his family is causing both to the world and to him, he still cares about these people.

Much the same can be said of Occtis. As horribly as he was treated by his entirely family and in spite of the fact that one of his own brothers killed him on his father's orders, he's still holding out hope that if he can talk to one of his siblings he can get them on his side. He read Petra and Ryah's letter and interpreted their reticence to rush ahead with Deva Vindicta ritual as them not wanting him killed. In spite of having just been in a fight where he was trying to kill him Occtis still took a moment to create a memorial for Frons. He repeatedly (though to no avail) asked Julien to spare Koral. When Julien asked as part of that exchange how he can still possibly extend any trust to any member of his family after what they did to him his answer was that they're his family. Despite everything that's enough for him to still have some faith in them.

There's also Vaelus and her complicated relationship with Sylandri. As much as she has stated that she hopes she can maybe bring her back it's clear it's less for the sake of having her goddess back, as she admits to Hannan that she hasn't prayed to her in a long time and quite readily hears him out and agrees with him about Sylandri hating the elves underneath her purported love for them, and more because her life with Sylandri is inexorably tied up in the things she does want back. Her memories of living in service to Sylandri are happy despite the limits and control (as seen in her memory of Sylandri refusing magic to Arthas for swearing) because her family is there. The world without Sylandri is also one in which she found herself utterly alone, in particular it should be noted that the death of Sylandri and the death of her sister Maywyn were near simultaneous. She's never known a world without Sylandri but with her family. She wants the happy life she knew with them back, and as Sylandri is a part of that, she considers bringing her back too. That life wasn't freedom and as she eventually agrees with Hannan about, was in many ways not her own, but it had something she has been grieving for 70 years, so it's little wonder part of her thinks that maybe that was better.

There's also something to be said about the orcs' ultimate decision to bless the Conqueror. He ruled and enslaved them with an iron fist and used them as fodder in his endless wars with his siblings, but when the orcs finally won their rebellion and their freedom and one of Azgra's war priests demanded a farramh for him, it was not only granted but granted easily. Agari Shadow, who lead the rite and was not only an orc but an orcish druid (and thusly a member of a people who were harmed by Azgra across multiple axes) said nothing could be easier than giving a blessing for the Conqueror, and lead a blessing that while it did not forgive him, acknowledged who he was to the orcs and how that effected who they became, and that who they became was ultimately what they are celebrating now.

Gosh, that's a huge question! I might ask folks reading this to make recommendations as to the best place to start.

You won't go wrong with Diane Duane, Vonda McIntyre, and Barbara Hambly. Kirsten Beyer for Voyager. Andrew Robinson's A Stitch in Time for Garak.

First of all, I will start by saying what I say when someone asks me which Star Trek show they should watch first: It depends on what you want out of the experience. The person who loves DS9 is not always going to adore TNG, and the person who adores SNW might bounce hard off TOS. The same is true with the novels (though, if you are reading Star Trek novels, I assume you are a hardcore fan and have more of a tolerance for poking around in stuff you might not enjoy in order to find the stuff you do enjoy).

That being said, it's helpful to know what you're looking for before you dive head first into 60 years of tie-in literature spanning hundreds and hundreds of books. Personally, I like my sci-fi to have minimal space battles, great character moments, and imaginatively alien worldbuilding, so my recommendations are going to skew toward novels that contain those. If you're more into the hard sci-fi and/or space battles and/or alien-of-the-week plots, take my recommendations with a grain of salt and DuckDuckGo some "best of" lists to supplement them (here are two to get you started).

Generally speaking, I would recommend entering the tie-in fiction universe by way of your favorite series (provided it has books). TOS, TNG, DS9, and VOY all have numbered and unnumbered novels, while ENT, DISCO, PIC, and SNW are all unnumbered (ENT is an edge case and shouldn't really be lumped in with those others, but I'll get to that eventually). There are also truly staggering amounts of OC/backstory/spin-off/tie-in fiction exclusive material housed in series like New Frontier, S.C.E, and Titan, so if you love the Star Trek universe but aren't necessarily attached to a specific set of characters, these are great offshoots to explore.

The numbered novels usually do not need to be read in order unless they're part of a mini- or cross-series arc; they tend to be stand-alone and don't do anything to disrupt canon (a lot of the TNG, DS9, and VOY novels were published during the shows' runs so they literally couldn't disrupt canon). There are some really good books in these lines and some really bad books also and a lot of three stars fine books in between, so if you strike gold on your first try don't get discouraged if the next one you read is garbage. It happens. There's another amazing book just around the corner, I promise.

If I were to over-simplify it, I'd say that the quality of the numbered novels falls off the further they go on (early TOS numbered novels have some astonishingly creative worldbuilding, especially before TPTB got really tight-fisted about what could and couldn't go in licensed fiction; meanwhile, pick up a Voyager numbered novel and you're almost certain to have a bad time) BUT THAT IS NOT A HARD AND FAST RULE. For example, Andrew Robinson's A Stitch in Time (DS9 #27) is widely regarded to be one of the best Trek books ever written, and I would love to second that opinion but unfortunately I can't get my hands on a physical copy for less than $100 and don't read ebooks, so I'll continue to pine.

A key component to enjoying numbered novels is to read them out of order. Jump series. Fuck around. Find an author you like and follow them through their tie-in lit career and lose your mind because you can't talk about how good these books are because no one in your circle of friends knows what the hell you're talking about.

Some personal favorites to get you started: Uhura's Song by Janet Kagan (TOS #21), The Three-Minute Universe by Barbara Paul (TOS #41), Doctor's Orders by Diane Duane (TOS #50), Q-in-Law by Peter David (TNG #18), Emissary by J.M. Dillard (DS9 #1--YES the novelization of the pilot, YES it's just as good), and literally anything by Vonda McIntyre (the Star Trek II-IV novelizations are my favorite, but TOS #2: Entropy Effect is also awesome).

Unnumbered novels can be set pre-, post-, or firmly during canon (or sometimes all 3). Sometimes they are standalone, sometimes they are trilogies or duologies, sometimes they're co-written by William Shatner and you have a great time poking fun at his very specific vision of Kirk (read the Odyssey trilogy, I beg you, it's ridiculous and so fun). Similar to the numbered line, TOS has the most titles, then TNG, DS9, and VOY. Some personal favorites are the Millennium trilogy (DS9), the Legacies trilogy (TOS), String Theory: Cohesion (VOY), Section 31: Shadow (VOY), Imzadi (TNG), The Captain's Oath (TOS), and Revenant (DS9).

If you're more of a post-canon enjoyer, the relaunch novels are your friend. These began with S.D. Perry's Avatar duology in 2001 and stretched all the way to the Coda trilogy in 2021. There is a totally awesome and overwhelming flowchart to guide you through it (be sure to click the image to enlarge), though you will not -- and I cannot stress this enough -- be able to read it all. I've been working on this sucker for 7 years and I've only barely scratched the surface. Pretty much every Trek series pre-DISCO gets pulled into the mix at one point or another, and there are an ungodly number of crossovers, but TNG, DS9, and VOY all have individual offshoots that occasionally weave in and out of each other (the Destiny trilogy, for example, is a bonkers-ambitious ENT/TOS/TNG/DS9/VOY crossover that does a lot of stuff you might hate and a lot of stuff you might love). I highly recommend starting with the DS9 novels as they, in my humble opinion, are the shining star of the relaunch 'verse.

Modern Trek lit functions quite differently from the 80s/90s lit and entirely differently from the relaunch novels; for one thing, the mass market paperback has died an undignified death (RIP) and there's Canon to contend with once more. Furthermore, we're in a weird pop-cultural late-stage capitalism space where things that were once firmly viewed as "beta canon" are being treated as essential pieces of Canon despite them requiring a significantly larger amount of time and money to invest in. I shan't dispense an opinion on that because that's not what I'm here to talk about, it's just an interesting bit of context.

Tl;dr, Trek novels these days are a different beast. Still quite fun though.

Beginning with the 2020 PIC novel The Last Best Hope by Una McCormack, the post-canon litverse "reset" to adhere to onscreen events. Despite the vibe shift, I have quite enjoyed the books I've read in this new era of Trek lit. I've mainly focused on PIC and SNW and really haven't read a bad novel from any of them. Of PIC, Second Self and Rogue Elements were my favorites; of SNW, Asylum by Una McCormack holds my whole heart, but really all four have been awesome (Ring of Fire does stray into s3 territory, so if you are as tired of the Chock/La'ock stuff as I am, beware) (still didn't detract from my overall enjoyment that much though). The Lower Decks tie-in fiction is exclusively comics/graphic novels and I cannot recommend them highly enough. SO damn fun. (Comics are a bitch to navigate but the trade paperbacks linked here and here are easy entry points.)

I have not read many DISCO novels, but The Enterprise War by John Jackson Miller was a wonderful prelude to SNW s1 and Desperate Hours by David Mack was a fun DISCO/SNW crossover. (The DISCO novels are a fascinating microcosm of the shift from beta to semi-prime canon and as a result occupy a strangely liminal space that's really fun if you like to see what happens when established canon knocks up against still-forming canon before the tectonic plates have settled in place.)

ALL OF THAT TO SAY, for everyone there is a Star Trek novel and for every Star Trek novel there is someone. You can wade as deep as you want or hang out in the shallows, it is totally up to you. I've been reading these books for 16 years and still haven't gotten to some of the most famous, but that's just part of the pleasure. Some resources I have relied on heavily in my endeavors are:

Memory Alpha's novel index

Memory Beta

The Relaunch Novelverse Flowchart