Crash Course Posting & Discussion Thread

This is the place to discuss the various Star Traks series and stories.
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Crash Course Posting & Discussion Thread

Post by b-guy »

Star Traks - Crash Course

Status - Active

Space, the place we want to work someday,
These are the voyages of Brute Squad,
Their ongoing mission: To survival tyrannic mid-classmen,
To seek out new punisment forms, and strange new traditions,
To boldy be yelled at where thousands have been yelled at before!

Star Traks: Crash Course follows a group of cadets at Starfleet Academy on their 4-year mission to graduation. Roughly based on life at the Royal Military College of Canada, Crash Course is a little more low-key than most Traks series. There are no strange new worlds, no new civilizations, and pretty much all the life-forms kicking around campus have been studied, cataloged and possibly even dissected.

It's just as well, because between dealing with SNAP, alien senior classmen, chip-on-the-shoulder professors and technology capable of accidentally ending life as we know it, the cadets of Antares Sector have enough on their plate as it is!


Posting Schedule

Let's face it: Aside from a few highlights, college just isn't all that interesting, unless you add love triangles, campus politics, vampires, or ridiculous, overblown threats that just don't happen to typical students. As a result, Crash Course has far fewer stories per year than a typical Traks series. Rather than following the standard half-season runs and two-week posting schedule, Crash Course stories are slipped in wherever the opportunity comes up, though where possible I try to time the stories with actual events at the college. I hope to wrap up Year Two and post it before I start my own third year, as writing a year behind is straining my memory.

Comments are, as always, welcome. (Especially now that all past comments have been lost!)
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Re: Crash Course Posting & Discussion Thread

Post by b-guy »

Oh yeah, first 'New Story' post of the new forum!

Crash Course 2.2 - New Arrivals - Round 2

Gell Gallium and the rest of the Antares junior-classmen figured they were done with SNAP. But when a new crop of
lower-classmen arrive, they find that leaving well enough alone sometimes just doesn't work.

http://www.khobrah.net/silver/crash.html

On a side note, as this story is posted, a new year of recruits are arriving at RMC to beging their pre-university Recruit Camp. I'll see them when I head back in two weeks.



Spoiler-filled Comments

OK, not really spoiler filled. I wrote this months ago, and don't really remember most of what I was thinking at the time. I do remember that I wanted to pull the focus of the story away from Veksai, which is why this is more of a Gallium story. I also remember wanted to try to capture the very interesting experience of seeing these brand new students come in and be put through the same sort of grueling exercise we were. I remember how annoyed we were at the new Recruit Camp process, which made the new cadets first week or two at the college seem way to easy. I also remember that it really didn't take long for us to feel really sorry for them after the traditional FYOP process kicked in.

One big problem this story introduces to me is the sheer number of characters. I've been deliberately vague on just how many cadets are in a Sector, but given the size of Brute Squad, you'd have to assume at least 80. I'm torn between wanting to pay homage to last year's first years, who were a very good group, and keeping the series focuses. What I'll probably end up doing is focusing on a few key characters, which means demoting a lot of the original main characters (Wind, Bizkit, Kodene) to recurring or minor characters. Malespere is going to be a big problem too. He was based on a cadet that I thought very highly of...he showed a lot of promise. Unfortunately, that's translated into a lot of arrogance and cocky-ness. That might be interesting to explore a bit in the series, I'm not sure how comfortable I am doing that, or how it might be done without coming off as offensive or degrading if people at school choose to read it.

My final thought is that 2.3 and 2.4 will round off second year, which is over. I'd really like to get those stories done ASAP, so I'm fresh for third year. I guess part of the reason why I haven't really thought about where CC might go after Year 2 is because Year 3 hasn't actually happened yet for me...
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Re: Crash Course Posting & Discussion Thread

Post by Mad Lensman »

Beat me by mere minutes....! ha ha :lol: :lol:
Dr. Allison Reed: It's over, it's over. You did great! Do you need anything? Can we get you anything?
Harry Block: Ice cream... I'd like an ice cream please.
Dr. Allison Reed: Okay, what flavor?
Harry Block: It doesn't matter. It's for my ass.
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Re: Crash Course Posting & Discussion Thread

Post by borgcrazy »

And we're officially back to school it seems. Fitting, as the local schools just went back into session yesterday!
Anyway, it's always interesting to see what colors previous experience can take when witnessing someone else experiencing the same thing for the first time. I've been at my job long enough to know this first-hand, and now the former Brute Squad does too!
There weren't a lot of "sit-up-and-say-whoa" surprises, but there were enough little ones to keep things fresh. That's ok, though, as this series doesn't need a lot of plot twists or sudden surprises to stay interesting. This isn't Lost or Heroes... it's a bunch of kids forging life-long bonds in the fires of Academia (I know it's Starfleet, which is a bit more militaristic than the average college, but it's not exactly West Point, either...) and as that's a fairly universal experience, it's fun just to see them live their lives.
And, honestly, it is refreshing to not have a crisis/alien-of-the-week to contend with in a Traks/Trek story...
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Re: Crash Course Posting & Discussion Thread

Post by Mad Lensman »

What he ^^^^ said....

A nice change not to have to deal with the errant life form/ship crisis forumla which tends to colour a lot of our writing. I can see where your recent military training experience is shining through with the former Brute squad members own life experiences. Also, it's a good thing to look at someone else getting the hind end of training and to think, "man was I that dumb once?" it kind of gives you a real insight into how far you can come in such a short period of time. (I know I did when I looked back at some of the numpties taking basic once I'd finished!!!!) Good job B and onto the next one...! 8-)
Dr. Allison Reed: It's over, it's over. You did great! Do you need anything? Can we get you anything?
Harry Block: Ice cream... I'd like an ice cream please.
Dr. Allison Reed: Okay, what flavor?
Harry Block: It doesn't matter. It's for my ass.
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Re: Crash Course Posting & Discussion Thread

Post by b-guy »

New Crash Course:

2.3 - Baby Steps

What happens when certain cadets have a bit too much free time on their hands? Well, depends on the cadet, I suppose. But when Gallium starts poking around in Lt. Wellington's private business, he finds something he just can't ignore...


http://www.khobrah.net/silver/crash.html
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Re: Crash Course Posting & Discussion Thread

Post by b-guy »

New Crash Course:

2.4 - Assembly

As junior year heads into the homestreth the former Brute Squad cadets find themselves fighting to see just who will be King of the SNAP Hill. Throw in a minor morale issue and a beer explosion and you know it's Antares Sector you're dealing with.

Check out the final story of Year 2 at

www.khobrah.net/silver/crash.html





COMMENTS

I think the hardest thing about writing this story was trying to talk about the competition for the SNAP positions that were open without completely overpowering the other characters with Veksai's perspective. Part of what I tried doing was telling the story with more of a Kumari spin, in a effort to give her a little character development time. Cutting down on the number of characters I was dealing with made writing a bit easier, but it's not necessarily a direction I want to take. Unfortunately for me then, based on what I've experience of third year so far, I know that Year 3, at least the first half, is going to focus almost exclusively on the SNAP staff.

One downside here is that I don't really feel that I really explained why the SNAP staff position was so important or why the cadets cared about it so much. I think that's probably going to come up near the beginning of Year 3, when the staff is preparing for the new lowers to arrive.

The Antars morale problem was something that I thought could bring in the bigger picture. The series started off so focused just on the cadets in Brute Squad (the Brute Squad at the series launch, anyway) that I think the whole concept of the cadets working together as a Sector needed to get a bit more attention. Interesting (to me anyway) is that all of the things that Ahnk tried in the story are the same things that our own CSL tried last year. Successfully, I might add. And while our power failure was due to a blown transformer, the idea gave me the chance to have some fun with Baxter, Quarterman and Kodene, who I sort of feel have become the 'party crowd'.

In terms of what comes next, I think I want to experiment with a more traditional Trek/Traks model for at least 3.1. I think it's reasonable to assume that two years into their training they'd start learning how to handle situations that typical Starfleet Officers have to handle. I have a few ideas for how that might work. The bulk of Year 3, however, will probably focus on SNAP from a staff perspective. I can tell you, two weeks in, I could already write a book on the thing. :P
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Re: Crash Course Posting & Discussion Thread

Post by b-guy »

New Crash Course!

CC 3.1 - Inter-Mission

Nothing bad ever happens to cadets, right? But when Kumari, M'kr'gr, Gallium and Veksai are send off on a minor training cruise, they find themselves in a situation they never expected to face. Who's crashing the training party, and why does the whole situation seem so...familiar?

www.khobrah.net/silver/crash.html
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Re: Crash Course Posting & Discussion Thread

Post by b-guy »

Inter-Mission Comments

OK, with this one, I think it's pretty obvious that I really wanted to start putting the cadets into situations a bit closer to what they'd face in the Fleet, as opposed to another 'Basic Training' type of story. My own summer training had little to do with my own specific profession (future profession?) but was a still a good chance to go out and actually do real army-type stuff. Anyway, this is what led to the idea that the cadets should be going on a Starfleet-style training cruise.

This, however, left me with the problem of 'How the hell do you make a training cruise interesting?', which led to me wondering 'When have we ever seen an interesting training cruise in Star....OH! OH! WRATH OF KHAN!!!' So I thought it might be fun to incorporate that and to write the story as sort of a cadet view of TWOK...which, come to think of it, would have been very interesting to read in the actuall Star Trek universe, IMHO.

It didn't take much trek-nology to turn the USS Gagetown into basically a giant, flying simulator, and things just flew from there. I wanted to introduce the idea that the situation was, in fact, a simulation relatively early, as the whole thing would have become far too dark otherwise. So it was sort of a balance between wanting to put the kids in a dangerous-seeming situation without really killing any of them. I really enjoyed the chance to play with these characters outside of the Academy, and to hopefully show that they've grown up a bit in the past two years.

This story is by far the most fictional Crash Course story ever written to date. Oddly, it was also the easiest and possibly the fastest-written. I think I'll be putting a bit more fiction and bit less fact in future stories, especially after some of the dissappointments that have hit in reality this year...

Hope you enjoyed it!
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Re: Crash Course Posting & Discussion Thread

Post by b-guy »

New Crash Course

ST:CC 3.2 'As the Table Turns'

It's back to the Academy for another year of fun & frolic. Verone, M'Kr'gr, Bahred and Veksai are now
mid-classmen, ready to show the ropes to a fresh group of lower-classmen. But they're about to find that things at the Academy have started to...change.

Available at http://www.khobrah.net/silver/crash.html
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