Valjiir

[Buster's Uncle]

I just got word yesterday that Cher has posted several new things on the Valjiir site.

[Mylochka]

Yes.  There's a new vignette from me and an alternate universe story.

[Valka]

I'm on part 3 of "A Little Bitty Bit of Treachery."

I am reminded all over again why Jilla is not my favorite character...

[Valka]

Okay, I've finished reading the Noel/Calaya vignette. Is there another story with the character who died that I missed? 


As for the 'Treachery' story, the link to Part 8 leads to a "404 Not Found" message. Is Part 8 still coming, or is there a technical glitch on the website?

[Mylochka]

There's not another story about that character... at least not yet, any way...

Uhm... yeah... Part 8 is missing.  I'll say something to Cher.

Been working on more illustrations for "Sweet Fire."  Had some problems getting the "Chuztpah" texture for the Galileo shuttle to work correctly...

[Mylochka]

I'm on part 3 of "A Little Bitty Bit of Treachery."

I am reminded all over again why Jilla is not my favorite character...

Jilla goes pretty intensely "Ice Queen" in that part, doesn't she?

[Valka]

I found Jilla likeable in the earlier stories, but yeah, there are times during the Shadow Captain arc that make her seem far icier than mere frozen H₂O. I can't stand people like that in RL, so when Jilla puts on these judgmental attitudes, I don't find her likeable at all.

[Mylochka]

At least she does get over it... unlike some people in RL...

I don't usually do "ship" pictures, but here's one from "Treachery."  The Enterprise is pursued through a space anomaly by a couple of Klingon vessels. 

[Mylochka]

Page 8 of Treachery should work now.

Here's another battle scene from that story...

[Buster's Uncle]

Three bits of shipporn in a row! 

They'd look more realistic if you turned down the color saturation on the models 30% or more...

[Buster's Uncle]

...Now mind you, these are exactly right, IMAO, for the Poser art-based version of the cartoon you've wanted to do for a very long time.  I mean, that really nails the sort of look you ought to shoot for for that...

[Mylochka]

The Poser re-do of Star Trek Animated would totally, totally rock.... unless an artist who sucks does it...

The first render I did of these ships went too blue... too boring.  So I switched to a copper colored lighting scheme.  It made the Klingon ships a little green-ish, but they don't fade into the background. 

I don't seem to have saved any of these too blue renders of the Enterprise and the Klingon ships, but here's a before and after of one with the shuttlecraft that I had to struggle with to keep it from being just varying shades of blue...

[Valka]

Okay, I've finished reading Treachery. Interesting alt-universe take on it, but then to me even the regular online stories are different from the ones I read in In a Different Reality.

I do have to ask this, however: Was this necessary:

THE SAD, TERRIBLE EVERYONE-GO-SLIT-THEIR-WRISTS END

?

It's a sad fact that some people do suffer from depression, and there may be other reasons why they might have "triggers" to do with suicide. Personally I find this a disturbing, unnecessarily flippant way to say "The end."

[Mylochka]

I'm sorry you found that tag line disturbing. As a person who suffers from PTSD, I know triggering incidents can be quite unpleasant. I'm sure the line was just meant as an ironic recognition of how downbeat the ending was.

And yes, the online versions are re-written --sometimes quite extensively-- from the versions that appeared in print. I think some of these revisions are due to the break up of the writing partnership of the original authors and others are due to Cher's evolving perceptions of the characters.

Although Cher and I split the writing of the scenes for this story, the plot of this alternate version was almost entirely my creation.  I write a lot of the material that features Noel DelMonde now (although not all of it by any means) and was interested in how some of the "Shadow Captain" stories would turn out if he was playing a more active role.  I liked our action scenes and how some of the character bits turned out -- like the conversation between Spock and Jade Han when he tells her about the breakup of marriage or the exchange between DelMonde and McCoy when Ruth is brought back from the Klingon ship.

[Valka]

I'm not complaining about the rewritten stories at all - just making the point that for me, some of them have 3 different versions! I know that the online material is what the authors now consider to be canon, and I'm very glad to see so much more.

The only thing that bothered me was, as you say, the tag line. I've got a link to the Valjiir stories in my sig at TrekBBS, and I know that there are a few people there who have expressed suicidal thoughts at times. I myself am on anti-depressants, so these are the reasons why I found it disturbing.