Star Trek Mary Sues

1. 'It's fiction, it doesn't need to make sense!'

I also spend ridiculous amounts of time calculating exact stardates of holidays, festivals, and wrestling with the likely time a conversation took so I know what time to tag the conversation in the adjoining scene. Or how long it would take to get from main engineering to the bridge. Or warp between planets.

And here's the thing...the show didn't even do that. The actual canon doesn't exist in reasonable time and space. Turbolifts and warp drives move at the speed of plot. We know this. We know it's not possible to have a single, fully-canonical Star Trek map because they flew around doing what they needed to do in the time needing to do it, not beholden even to their own made-up physics, let alone real physics.

And yet....AND YET....

Here I sit, calculating stardates, plotting out how many days it must've taken to get between worlds versus dates stated in show in the captain's log and accounting for whether or not warp limits are in place following Force of Nature before that issue is apparently resolved later. Here's me poring over the blueprints to figure out where this canon room is, even though I know it had two different deck/room numbers across the series. Here I sit working out minutia that no fic reader will ever notice.

Why?

Because I can no more stop calculating accuracy than Data can.

Memory-Alpha is the official Star Trek wiki, which is exceedingly well run and has articles for everything you can think of.

Memory-Beta is the wiki for Star Trek secondary canon (novels, comics, video games, etc.) and a good resource for finding additional information on something that isn’t covered much in canon.

TrekCore has high quality screencaps from every series, as well as audio clips, ship schematics, and more.

Star Trek Minutiae has a lot of things, including fonts, logos, scripts, a warp speed calculator, and starship size comparisons.

Ship Schematics has more images and schematics for ships than you would ever think existed.

Cygnus-X1 also has a lot of detailed schematics.

Fanfiction is not now nor ever will be a waste of time, uncreative, or automatically inferior to canon. 

It is an invaluable tool that enriches fandom and allows authors to build their creative chops in a setting that encourages feedback and communal discussion. 

In some cases, fandoms with disappointing canon material can be kept alive solely through the work of dedicated fan-authors, fan-artists, and other content creators.

1. canvas flipping good even if painful 

2. draw whatever makes u happy. be self indulgent. draw nonsense that caters to only you personally 

3. just fucking fake being able to draw things like hands and eventually you can actually do it without even thinking about it 

4. take breaks when it doesn’t come out right 

5. remember that you’re the god of this reality and can draw WHATEVER THE FUCK. be absolutely drunk with power. nobody can stop you. unless its like morally wrong like dont draw incest or whatever. incest is bad still

6. use references 

7. originality is a myth and literally every artist started copying their style from something or someone, that’s how you develop your own style. everyone does it. people who make fun of kids for copying the styles of their favourite shows/artists can choke 

go write self-insert fanfiction! draw most bizzare sparkledog fursona! wear that minecraft backpack to your work!