I have a quick house rule that I’d like to share for slash:
Amnesty.
So there’s sometimes a problem with slash, where maybe a character is a little too obscure for even your pop culture obsessed friends to recognize. Enter amnesty.
First, a couple of rules about Amnesty. Amnesty is not about nerd shaming. Amnesty is about sharing and learning. In that respect, here is how I’m implementing Amnesty in my games of slash: Continue reading
Lieutenant Karina Prax, of the USS Lockheed.
Captain’s log, supplemental.
Our assignment was simple, scan Gorn facilities in this remote asteroid belt to make sure that they weren’t stockpiling weapons of mass destruction of any sort.
The Gorn, of course, were having none of it, and we found ourselves on the receiving end of a volley of disruptor bursts after attempting to scan the first outpost. Calling on my background as an engineer I rotated the shield frequencies before the impact.
The Lockheed’s shields held gracefully. Rotating the frequencies had the desired effect and managed to mitigate most of the damage to the shields.
But there were still three ships. I ordered engineering officer Ensign Kort to reroute EPS systems to boost the shield systems while I sounded the red alert.
Shields were holding, but I could see that there was another incoming volley of disruptor fire, plus photon torpedoes. I reinforced the fore shields and told tactical to open fire on the lead Gorn cruiser.
The Lockheed’s heavy disruptor cannons locked onto the Gorn ship and opened fire. Their shields dropped quickly, and without shielding the disruptors quickly ate through the rest of their hull. The Lockheed was too close, and the shockwaves from exploding cruiser shuddered through the ship. Thankfully there were no major casualties.
We moved to three quarter impulse and engaged evasive maneuvers. Full power to starboard shields soaked a torpedo volley as we brought the Lockheed around in an arc to end up behind the second cruiser.
My science officer Ensign Sadi jammed the targeting sensors of the third Gorn cruiser, preventing them from targeting us for some of the fight although she warned that it was but “a fleeting dream that wouldn’t last forever.” She could have just told me nine seconds.  I forget that her previous host was a poet.  Note: I need to speak with her regarding combat expediency.
My tactical officer, Ensign Noros prepared a high yield torpedo burst to impact just as their facing shields were dropped. Commendations for Ensign Noros for her impeccable timing.
To this day, many Starfleet officers protest the academy’s admission policies from some of the more controversial systems, such as Ferenginar, but every day, new recruits like Ensign Noros continue to prove them wrong.
One on one the last cruiser was no match for the crew of the Lockheed. We scanned the installation and moved on, although it was not the last of the Gorn we would see that day.
It’s always the same, the facts.
The retelling of them, not so much. A detail here and there is added or removed. Not out of deliberate editing, but for the simple reason that each retelling is different.
And so, there are a lot of “maybes.” This is a story then, about a girl who broke my heart. Maybe.
One day, when I was younger, a beautiful girl broke my heart. One of my friends, taking pity on my situation, and no doubt sick of my moping, asked me to help him DJ at a party near his house. This was when DJs actually needed people to carry discs. It was a paying gig, so I said yes.
On the way there, I rolled down the passenger side window on a lonely stretch of road alongside a valley. I took a deep breath and shouted about how she was the only one for me and that I still loved her.
I remembered the cool breeze across my face, his laughter at my defiant act, the brush whipping past us and the the smell of the desert air.
At the party, while bringing in the third milk crate of vinyl, I met a different beautiful girl that night. She wrote down her number on a post it note and gave it to me.
Later, after the party was over, along that same lonely stretch of road alongside that same valley, my friend stopped the car and looked at me expectantly.
I rolled down the window, took a deep breath, and shouted that perhaps, well, maybe, possibly. . . she wasn’t the only one for me.
Perchance.
I remember very clearly.
It’s a colder spring day in 1996 and I’m shivering in my long wool coat. Despite living in the District for three winters, I still haven’t learned to layer.
I look over to my girlfriend, and she’s occupied with driving. She shifts matter of factly in the stop and go traffic on Rockville Pike. It’s a slightly misty rainy sort of day and the intermittent wipe of the blades punctuates our conversation. It’s about everything and nothing at all, the kind of conversation that two lovers have when they’re not entangled in each other.
We should be in class but we’re not. We do this more often than we should. Even though our grades don’t suffer, I know that every time we skip class, a part of us rips away. A little bit more, every time, we step further and further away from being the perfect son or daughter that our parents want us to be. But we don’t care.
It’s a long trip in the rush hour traffic, longer still because we ache to get to our destination. We know what awaits us there. We long to hold it in our hands, to be complete.
We arrive and we get out of the car. I wait, in the rain, feeling small droplets through my too short hair. She locks up the car, takes my hand and we walk through the doors together.
We walk slowly, window shopping at first, stopping at every counter to look at the tiny, expensive objects under glass. Every now and again, I ask a salesperson to bring an item up from behind the counter. She nods her approval or disapproval and we move on, taking great care to thank the salesperson each time.
Finally we stop at what feels like the last counter. The final one for us. The reason we came all the way out here, in the rain and through the traffic, together. Continue reading
As a big video game nerd, I was surprised to see the design of the Venture Bros. 3rd season set.
It’s a love letter to the Atari 2600 box art. It’s got the hideous background color, the fonts, and the action packed style that resembled a dynamic movie poster, but in no way resembled the blocks, bits and bleeps of the actual gameplay.
They even have faux aging on the box. I have it in hand now and it’s just incredible looking. Great job.