Womgi

You have an entire hell week of simulation drills and somewhere in there amongst the improbable scenarios, you get another distress call scenario.

You've been running ragged for days facing one impossible situation after the next. Your mind is full of protocol and decision trees and trying to remember things like proper steps to handle a warp core breech while in spacedock, the correct way to de-escalate a dispute with a ferengi daimon, how to avoid falling for pakked scams and a thousand other things.

In between you get this one distress call situation. That ship sounds familiar?

But you don't have time to worry about that.

You're Starfleet. And you need your head in the game.

You've been running dozens of these things. So you settle into the seemingly easy drill. Distress calls are the bread and butter of Starfleet. It's saving lives. You can do this.

You try to remember what the treaty says you can do next to the neutral zone.

But you can't.

Your mind is thinking about warp breeches and first contact protocols. So you go in by the seat of your pants and find yourself over your head.

You try and pull every last trick you can to pull it off, but your ship fails.

Your crew fails.

Starfleet fails.

You fail.

It's an impossible situation.

And then you come out feeling like the worst cadet in starfleet history. The instructor comes in and pats you on the back. You didn't too bad, they say. It was an imposssible situation.

But you can't linger because you need to remember section 3 in the Treaty of Algernon and you need it right now!

Two days later you realize that you have taken the Kobayashi Maru test.

You've failed, but that's ok, because everyone fails it. And a little note in your file will tell your captain how you do under pressure. And you did your best.

At least you think you did.

Your mind is still figuring out which class of shuttle is appropriate for diplomatic visits to that one planet they covered last year. You go back to the simulator. It's an away mission to investigate a cave for sentient crystals. You can't remember what the last scenario was. You just have to get through this one. And the next. And the next.

And the next.

You graduate and you can barely remember what all the tests were. But somehow the Kobayashi Maru strikes a chord, because it was somthing you had been dreading before and after the testing.

But it's over anyway. So you join the other cadets, commiserating about what you had done, could have done, and what you didn't do.

You graduate.

The test has become a nostalgic memory now. You don't worry about it anymore.

But the lesson stays. Things can and will go wrong.

Starfleet doesn't always save the day.

But that's fine too. You're still gonna do your part.

*furiously scrolling through the wiki timeline so you can figure out if the scene you just wrote is even possible

*furiously searching for reasons to justify your AU because what you wrote is no longer canonically possible

*endlessly searching the wiki page for that one character to find a detail that only the most dementedly obsessed fan will notice just for the satisfaction of getting that specific detail right

*googling for prices of stuff from decades ago so that your flashback is not only canonically accurate but historically accurate as well

*rewriting scenes because stuff is not invented yet for your scene set hundreds of years in the future(looking at you star wars)

*writing up an entire backstory for that one thing that doesn't have an exact timeline because consistency dammit!

*searching through the backstory you wrote so that you don't shoot yourself in the face by contradicting your own fanon

*reading through your own fic for the tenth time because you've forgotten what one character was doing five chapters back and now need to figure out where they ended up at this point

*reading through your own fic for the tenth time because you forgot what you had intended to do with that one character who was going to be plot significant, and now you're stuck sherlock holmesing your way through the plot so you can remember enough to complete the next chapter's draft

*rewriting half the story because you just read this super amazing fanfic that is fifty times better than anything you wrote but it has this super sensible point that you hadn't thought of but can't ignore

I hear you brothers and sisters.

It's a pain so many of us share.

Don't give up hope!

Fortitude!

I haven't given up, and so neither can you!

Worf gets depressed at losing his opportunity to become captain and decides that he will establish his legacy by raising warriors....all the warriors.

Introducing.....Councellor Worf of Starfleet Academy! Starfleet officers will know no fear! And they will appreciate the qualities of prune juice!

Also starring:

Boothby!

Picard!

Q!

Seven of Nine!

Garak! Because why not!