Julia & Tania Online Blog

Digging up some of the fanfictions we have written in the past, we were surprised with the ideas and logics within them. Writing stories with characters and plotlines that are as true to the original as possible was seen in these older creative writing pieces: (although at times they were a little off) the characters in our stories always attempts to be canon and attempts to focus on things other than “fluffy” romances.

  However, we noticed that certain details that needed to be there in order for events to exist and move in a believable manner were somewhat missed in some of the more older fanfictions. The Star Trek: Voyager fanfiction, “Every Crew for Itself“, is one example that had such problems and we are currently re-editing it to make better of the fanfiction. It has a (very) basic storyline—one that we wanted to use to further explore the romantic relationship between the two lead characters in the show.

  Briefly introducing the series the story is based on—Star Trek: Voyager, it is about two crews, both on opposite ends, who are forced to work together to get back home to Earth after an alien technology  approximately 70 000 light-years from Earth catapulted the crews of the Federation Starship U.S.S. Voyager and the Maquis fighter ship into that part of space. Captain Kathryn Janeway is the U.S.S. Voyager’s captain and the former captain of the Maquis fighter vessel, Chakotay, is made to be her first officer after Voyager’s original first officer is killed during the mission. Many of Chakotay’s crew is also integrated into the U.S.S. Voyager crew and both crews work together to not only chart the uncharted part of space known as the Delta Quadrant, but also to find ways to survive and cut their 70 or so-year-journey short and get back home to Earth.

  “Every Crew for Itself“ tells a story about this crew’s encounter with an alien crew whose people are in conflict with another race in the region. They board the U.S.S. Voyager and take its crew and ship hostage. But all doesn’t go well when the apparently stronger, second alien crew also boards the ship. The U.S.S. Voyager is turned into a battlefield. The two alien crews go on an all out battle with each other and the Voyager crew is forced to enter into their conflict—forced to fight to regain control and get the alien crews off of their ship so they can continue their journey towards home.

  The original version of “Every Crew for Itself” did move around a bit and it did try to focus on many different characters—it had a storyline that allowed a few battle sequences (again, very, extremely basic ones with basic trek technobabble!); a storyline that tried to focus on more the adventure aspect than the relationship aspect of the show (since Star Trek is primarily about exploration in space than romance and drama); a little character development between the main characters; and there is a beginning, middle, and an end.

  But we found that the story had minor details that needed to be taken into account for the sake of believability; a few loop holes that just didn’t allow certain events to be possible; and there were some illogical and overly-dramatic scenes that could have been swapped for more logical/less dramatic ones. For example, in terms of believability: the Voyager crew was said to be locked onto an explosive device and one step could set it off, but when the ship got attacked by an alien vessel and the ship jolt vigorously, there was little mention of the crew finding it difficult to keep themselves from setting the explosive device off. An example of an overly-dramatic scene, the depressurisation of an entire deck was used to bring out feelings and emotions in the two lead characters. But this scene could have been swapped for a much simpler and less dramatic event which would have subtly provided the tension needed to bring out the feelings and emotions between the characters.

  We can say that we were just starting out on writing back when “Every Crew for Itself” was written. We were somewhat weak both technically and creatively. Through going through the old fanfictions we realise that being technically great (grammar, punctuation, spelling, and descriptive) is only one part to great writing. The other is finding creative ways that allow a story to move and build so that the story is believable, ‘realistic’, and a pleasure to read. We find sometimes that the latter is missing in stories even when the writer is technically great.

  Along with re-editing past fanfictions, we are also currently writing new chapters to our more recent fanfictions. Having been using fanfiction to hone our writing skills, we have learnt to be always aware of writing something beyond the technical aspects. We still continue to make sure that our stories are not only technically beautiful, but also—if we can make a new descriptive word up—logically beautiful.

“Every Crew for Itself” Star Trek: Voyager fanfiction will be posted soon. Look out for it!

For the last few weeks, we’ve been working on a design for a lovely blog site on multiply.com hosted by one of our online friends. She approached us and asked if we could alter a blog template to look a little more “dreamy”. The designing part of the task was easy enough: having been given a feather background and their site logo, we were inspired to create a banner that spoke “dreamy”, “inspiration”, and ”anime”. Now the hard part: implementing the design.

  The site was mainly CSS based so we had no trouble in that area—since we’ve designed many of our own sites using CSS—but figuring out which styles referred to which part of the site was tiring. With no access to webpages it meant we couldn’t create our own CSS code and then use them on the pages; we had to go through each CSS file and search for the styles before adding it to the custom stylesheet they provided then altering it to suit our needs.  But at least, at the end of it all, we managed to achieve the majority of our design concept—we’re actually quite pleased with the result—but as the word “majority” suggests, we didn’t manage to achieve everything we had hoped which was somewhat disappointing. For some reason, we just couldn’t change the colours of certain elements no matter what we tried.

  So what did we learn from this experience? If one is fussy with the way things look (like we are), and if one can help it, it is always better to get yourself a domain or a webspace that allows full control over files. It’d save a whole lot of time and headaches when you reach the implementation stage.

  Still, this was kinda fun. We always enjoy seeing the final result of a site design, and it turned out pretty good considering the constraints—we’re quite pleased with our efforts, our online friend was happy with our design concept, so we consider a job well done. ) ). As for multiply.com blogs, we do think it is a good place to get a blog. Although it does take a while to find the CSS to achieve custom designs, the blog is in fact very customisable. So if anyone is thinking of getting a blog with multiply.com, don’t let your concerns over customisation stop you, because it is quite easily done (after some studying of the CSS).

  Just in case you’re wondering, this is the link to the blog (template) we altered/designed for: http://animspiration.multiply.com/. It was originally orange with a grungy-themed banner. We’re not sure if the group accepts members outside KDU, but maybe sign up if you’re around that area, send them a guestbook message or something! It’s a university anime group who enjoys cosplaying and attending anime-related events. Sounds like fun!

Till next time!

Welcome to Julia and Tania’s blog!

  It may be a little weird for some of you who are used to one person as an author of a blog, but us girls have been writing, working, and talking as one for so long, it almost feels normal. Unless stated otherwise, it will be both of us talking to y’all. Hope you don’t mind! ) ).

  Anyway, if you are reading this, it’s great to see you here. After a long time searching around, we finally decided on a WordPress blog. We’ll be writing on here mostly about our design pieces, what we’ve been doing in terms of creative works, and will be talking about the interesting things of web, graphics, audio, video, and media in general since all this stuff is what we love. You might find us talking about the work we’ve been creating, a wonderful movie we’ve seen, or sharing a discovery of how to do something in Photoshop… As long as it has something to do with the media and creating media, we’ll talk about it.

Well, see you next time.