lostthehat:

Cardassians, how draw?

I don’t

know.

sobs

flies away into the sun

When I have to draw a new thing, I resign myself to filling up at least two shitty pages with it.   I have a sketchbook with two shitty pages of pieces of Jamie and the Doctor’s faces, and I have two pages of weird looking Bashir and and anatomical adventure that is Garak’s face.   It helps me to make notes all over everything?  I like to talk to myself in doodles, as you have no doubt noticed, but they do serve a purpose sometimes! 

I will share, even!  Not that I’m like ‘HERE, this is how you do it!’ because, uh, making sarcastic comments about Garak being a shampoo commercial are probably not the way to do it, but perhaps you can see what a train wreck all the first page of stuff was, and then that it improved even into the second one?    There are even some I like a lot on the second page, but I thought they were maybe too complicated for the style I generally use?   I am talking so much oh my god.

Uh, I can upload this scary shit bigger somewhere if you actually DO want to look at my notes to self about his face. 

waldorph:

First: welcome! Or for some of you, welcome back (hahaha, god why are we like this?).

So, Trek canon. It’s expansive and extensive and there’s the original series (TOS) and the movies and then the subsequent series and then the reboot (AOS) timestream and that’s a lot of shit to manage and a lot of history to navigate. The good news is: you are totally fine ignoring ALLLLLLLL of that other shit and just writing whatever the fuck you want to write. But, if you’re like me, you’re insane, and having been through this already, I thought I would offer you my handy link round-up!

Things Waldorph Finds Useful When Writing a Bazillion Trekfics:

• Warp Drive Calculator. I know it always seems like people are whizzing around, going from Earth to Vulcan in seconds, but this gives you a sense of how long things will actually take. The movies do a lot of hand-waving with this, but it’s good to know. This one has a “Classic” option. Granted, the appearance of Nero probably accelerated tech quite a bit, and Spock!prime certainly did, so you have a lot of wiggle-room here (especially given that it should have taken the Enterprise almost 2 weeks to get to Vulcan, and I’m pretty sure they were there in 6 hours, tops). This chart is also super-handy. 
• Star Trek Distances tells you how far away things are from Earth so that you can use the Warp Drive Calculator more easily without digging through memory-alpha.
• Memory-alpha. This is the canon wiki for Trek, and excludes all of the novelizations and add-ons. This is your home base, it has everything you could possibly want as well as external links.
• Memory-beta. This includes all of the novelizations, and sometimes gives you interesting facts like in TOS Winona Kirk gave birth to Jim Kirk after tripping over a pig. It also includes more of the behind-the-scenes facts and data from cut scenes and cast/crew interviews
• Stardates. The Trek universe measures time in stardates, which is nicely non-Earth specific until you realize the calculations are all based on Earth. Anyway, trekguide has both the mathematical breakdown and a calculator. They also explain how the AOS verse calculates stardates the same way the TOS verse did, so you can use their calculator without worrying you’re cocking something up (that might just be me, though).   
• micathemineral’s astrophysics guide for trekwriters - easy to understand but super-helpful.
• trekguide has all of the episodes of all of the series, and lists the races involved, the stardate, ships, and some character-notes. Actually extremely handy if you’re AU’ing a TOS episode. 
• But, waldorph! Where are all the ladies? No fear! The LJ comm where-no-woman  laid out all of the women we see in STXI (and will hopefully be doing the same for this movie). 

So yay! You’ve gotten all your resources and your inner-geek is satisfied and you’ve written your fic. Now what? Well, that depends on where you’re posting to. Those of you who post to tumblr, you can ignore this bit! I’m also not going to list EVERY comm here - these are the biggies and they all have links in their user-info to their affiliates. I write Kirk/Spock so I’m giving you the two I use :)

LJ Comms To Post Your Fic To (you can find dreamwidth counterparts for most of these, I just happen to use LJ comms): 

• where-no-woman is an LJ comm and the place for all your lady-centric fic. It can be gen, het, femmeslash, but the main character has to be female-identified and, as of right now, it can’t be a genderfuck (so Jane Kirk fics need not apply). 
• kirkspock is an LJ comm for that pairing. note: these guys are super-serious about tagging
• kirk-mccoy is a LJ comm for kirk/mccoy (I know, I’m rocking your worlds with these explanations). It
• trek-het (and it’s dreamwidth mirror) is for all your het needs.
• st_reboot is a LJ comm that collects both fic and art, regardless of pairing.

Okay, you don’t want to write, but you do want to read. Or you read a fic ages ago and you’re not sure where it went. 

How To Find the Fic You Want to Read:

• st_ficfinder comm on LJ. Read it, want to read it - these guys are AMAZING at finding the fic you mean from really super-vague details. 
• star trek (2009) tag (or the Star Trek Alternate Original Series tag) on the AO3 lets you sort by popularity of a fic, pairing, date posted, all that jazz, and is probably the most centralized place to find fics, though when STXI came out not everyone had an AO3 account so there’s a lot of inconsistency about what’s posted where, but that’s life in fandom, so you’re not allowed to complain, okay? 
• the ksarchive is an old-school kirk/spock archive. You’ll find some AOS but a lot of TOS fic here, and it’s pretty cool. 
• Any of the comms listed above are great places to find fic and/or recs
• crack-enterprise - recs recs recs! 

I hope this helps! I’ll probably reblog myself when we get closer to release date, and if you have any questions at all drop me an ask or find me on twitter @waldorph. I also have all the resource links rounded up at my pinboard here, so you can bookmark that if it’s more convenient. So. Go forth, read, write, enjoy, and welcome to the fandom!

I just want to be excited that warp drive and star date calculators exist.  I mean for real, holy shit, that is the best.

(via goddamnshinyrock)