Reviewer: SLWalker Signed [Report This]
Date: 03 Jul 2013 23:38 Title: Aftermath

I read this yesterday when Jes recommended it for kes7, actually. XD First things first: I was honestly expecting the sea to have swallowed McCoy as a malicious attempt, as some sort of lifeform; your description of the event was fascinating and definitely lead me to conclude that there was something behind it, some greater hand in it. I think it was the descriptions -- the 'relatively calm' -- that led to that conclusion, and the 'snap and crackle,' which sounds wholly alien. But so it turns out to just be one of the one-third significant peak wave heights. The speed of the tide surprised me a little, too, but then again, you're looking at an alien world with an alien moon, which doubtless has different gravitational pulls.

If I were to make a recommendation, right off it might be to change your descriptors of the ocean a bit. It's never really a snap or a crackle; it's roaring, it booms, it pounds, it literally hits the shore hard enough sometimes to feel it through the ground. It is a terrifying, loud, powerful, overwhelming force. And if wave heights are what they had to be to sweep McCoy, he would have been getting a heck of a pounding while he was trapped there; he regularly would have had his head submerged, slammed into by a whole massive force of water -- which hurts, lemme tell you, if you're not turning shoulder to it and trying to cut through. Just from the perspective of someone who very recently swam under a yellow flag warning... it's like having mountains march on you. In the trough of the wave, it pulls your feet out to sea, and water level falls to like, your knees, and at the exact same time you're looking at a tall mountain, way taller than you, of water coming at you. When you have buoyancy, you go up as the wave comes (provided it's not breaking too late) and over top, then back down the mountain -- but, in McCoy's situation, he would have been tumbled, hammered, beaten and probably suffered broken bones if he didn't outright drown pretty damn fast. And if you do get hit just as that wave is expending its power, breaking, it kicks the Hell out of you even when you can move. I got held down a few times, and while I never panicked, I was never actually trapped, either.

Feel free to take it with a grain of salt, but I think reworking that early part could really drive home the depths of terror that man must have been feeling right then.

It was refreshing to see them actually studying someplace with an ocean, though; Trek doesn't do that all that often.

I liked how you handled McCoy's flashbacks after the fact. I mean, just because every week the episode 'resets' doesn't mean these people aren't human and don't suffer from various traumas they have to live with or overcome. McCoy empathizing with his friend, and the death of his friend, was really touching, and his PTSD reaction to nearly being in the same kind of situation all over again is very real and visceral. I like how Christine approached Kirk, I liked how Kirk then approached McCoy.

Though: "McCoy nodded his head, unwilling to trust his voice at the moment. Damn, that man’s a good judge of people he thought idly. He’d have made a great psychiatrist."

HA! Yeah, no. I've an engineer who so soundly, and very validly, disagrees. However, you write Jim with a sensitivity that he only rarely showed in canon, and make me like him a whole lot more than I probably would have been inclined to, otherwise.

The end is very sweet, and I'm glad McCoy came to the conclusion he did. You write this trio with such obvious love and tenderness, and your love of them shines out of the prose. Thank you for writing this, forgive me my long dissertation on wave dynamics, and I can't wait to see what else you come up with. XD

Author's Response:

Hi Steff!  Sorry it took me a few days to get back to you, but I wanted to wait until I had time for an adequate response.  First off, let me say thank you, thank you, thank you for the heartfelt concrit. :-) I’m still learning, and hoping to hone and improve my skills, and I can only do that when readers point out what they see as areas of weakness in my prose.  I’ll try to explain what I was thinking.

As for the initial wave, it was meant to be a rogue wave, much higher and stronger than what they saw before.  I doubt either McCoy or Rodgers would have ventured out onto the narrow finger of rock if large waves were breaking over it with any regularity.

Rogue waves, while not particularly common, do occur due to a variety of factors including wind, waves ‘piggybacking’ on one another, underwater currents and differences in water temperature merging together, seismic events and contours of the ocean floor – troughs and gullies below the surface lend themselves to causing these types of waves.  In a nutshell, it was meant to be only one gigantic wave that came out of nowhere with frightening speed – as they are known to do.

As for the blanket reference, I was imagining the small crests and peaks of waves that ripple across the surface of the water farther out from shore.  To me, that can look like someone snapping out a sheet or blanket prior to covering a bed with it.  As a rule, blankets don’t thunder and boom, but they do snap and crackle when assisted by human hands, much like snapping a towel.  As that was the image I was going for, those are the descriptors I chose, rather than using the conventional, clichéd themes of roaring, thundering and booming when describing the water.  Also, this was not meant to describe waves breaking on the shore or against the rocky outcropping, but the shifting, changing surface of the water farther off shore.

McCoy being stuck along the side of the outcrop as the tide came in was drawn from many, many weekends as a kid fishing off the jetties along the Jersey shore with my dad.  It was not uncommon when the tide was coming in for it to rise by several feet in half an hour or so.  And I was very careful to indicate that McCoy had no idea how much time had passed:  He had witnessed a man die, relived the death of his friend in childhood, and was starting to suffer the effects of hypothermia.  Essentially, he was in shock and not completely aware of how much time had elapsed.

Also, the water tended to lap at the sides, with the majority of the waves breaking over the end farthest out to sea, or traveling farther inland to break against the shore. Again, drawn from personal, eyewitness experience.

As for the difference of opinion between the chief engineer and the doctor with regard to their captain, IDIC is all I have to say.  Each man is entitled to his opinion, but there is nothing to say that one (or either) is correct. ;-)

Thank you again for the thorough, thought-provoking review, and for pointing out the strengths and weaknesses in this piece.  This feedback helped tremendously. :-D

Reviewer: Gumnut Signed [Report This]
Date: 10 Dec 2011 14:21 Title: Aftermath

Wow, there were some chilling moments in this one. The descriptions of drowning and the little boy and his father were particularly frightening.

You've done a wonderful job of illustrating the relationships of the big three. The caring balanced by the professionalism. A lovely piece of writing.

Thanks for sharing. I'm looking forward to reading more of your work.

Nutty
(you are seriously drawing me back into ST fandom :) )

Author's Response:

Thanks, Nutty.  Like I said, a bit darker than what I usually do, but I've always suspected there's more to McCoy's backstory than just his divorce that contributed to the gruff, curmudgeonly, sometimes cynical personality we have come to know and love.

And at this point in their lives, none of them can get by without a little help from their friends, so it only seemed fitting that Kirk and Spock, each in their own way, could help to pull McCoy through this trying time. ;-)

Reviewer: Miranda Fave Signed [Report This]
Date: 10 Dec 2011 00:16 Title: Aftermath

Ok, so I have of recent raved about your way of being able to write Spock and Kirk, their frustrating ability to deflect and to read one another. Here it seems, I have to now step up and again remind myself and yourself how great you are at not forgetting that when it comes to Kirk and Spock there's the third wheel that is McCoy.

Of course, they are something of a tricycle, working together, better and stronger and more able to understand the other party or come to understanding of the third party by way of the second party and in turn face up to something in themselves. It's the complexity of those undercurrents, the lines between duty, friendship, concern and the want to protect and help one another because they know one or the other helps the three of them in turn, even though they tend to think ... ugh ... not sure how to put it all in words ... but basically the whole three of them are something of a package.

Yes, they parcel up into pairs nicely. But, as a triad they enhance, help, support one another even more. It is McCoy who fixed Kirk and Spock up in Learning Curves. Here, even though it is Kirk who is acting to help McCoy, Spock can clearly read the need to excuse himself to give them privacy but of course manufactures a scene between him and McCoy to give even further cause to depart, an exchange of words to brighten McCoy's mood as well as (I wager, given his logical, scientific mind) to gauge McCoy's recovery from his poor spell, using their verbal gymnastics as a test to check whether McCoy is up for the argument. As for Spock's talk that he preferred or enjoyed the peace and quiet on the bridge without McCoy's interruptions - yeah right. I ain't buying it! LOL.

Then we have Kirk and McCoy, and I think it might actually be harder to write their friendship/relationship. There's no gimic to hide it behind - word sparring/green goblin diatribes - or human/Vulcan brother bond. I dunno, maybe you can better answer whether you find that to be the case. All I do know is that you write them very well and yet still it is all framed within the context of the three of them and indeed the larger crew but especially between the three of them.

Great stuff LBD. Interesting as well being fascinating for how you weave this into canon, with nods to certain things as well as into your evolving personal canon with these characters. Truly another rich piece to add to your wonderful tapestry.

Author's Response:

Speechless; completely and utterly speechless...

All I can manage is profound thanks for being able to readily grasp my perspective on their relationships exactly!!  If I can make even one person see them as I do, then I've accomplished something indeed.