Title: Surefoot
Author: Surefoot
Rating: R for violence, sexual content (no smut)
Fandom: Star Trek, occupying the time before and now into the Dominion war.
Genre: Drama, Character focused
Status: WIP
Pairings: All OCs.
Summary: A Caitian Captain takes on the role of teaching a new class of soon-to-graduate cadets on a series of simple supply runs. This being Star Trek, several things go wrong.
Link: http://usssurefoot.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-universe-had-other-plans.html


Star trek to me is optimism, morality, and finding ways to become better for yourself. While this is more true for Original, TNG, Voyager, and the first half of DS9, there are certainly counterpoints to be made in DS9, and especially the new series. This story is tries to have both, the serialization and longer story arcs of later trek, and the more positivity and optimism, set against a more realistic perspective on trauma. It veers back and forth between them, trying and succeeding to keep a balance between them.

Highlights:
1)Its good trek- it has character drama, it has teachable moments, it has plenty of unresolved sexual tension (and many times resolved sexual tension), it has space battles and away missions and junior officers getting in over their head and older officers wrestling with their morals and choices.
2) Each chapter reads like a single episodes, with more focus on the characters than the story for a large portion of it.
3) Psychology plays a large roll. We see trauma, we see the impact of trauma, and we see how hard healing is, and that it is never complete. Sometimes this goes into saturday afternoon specials levels of explaining what different traumas are, but nothing really overstays a welcome.
4)Its funny. It has cute one liners and moments of embarrassment and other areas of lightheartedness that again, fit the Star Trek mold.
5) It runs in parallels to canon. Our focus is not on the best warship in the fleet, but a supply ship. People do great deeds but it doesn't turn this into an AU or change the course of the war. The focus on cadets and turning those cadets into good officers keeps the scope and scale small.
6)Remember when we would read fanfic on someone's blog? the 90s are back baby!

4.5/5. It has enough flaws to keep me from giving it a 5/5, but I haven't had a chapter I hated, and the Occupation arc had me staying up for hours to try to reach its conclusion.