My FedSpace Blog

It's kind of weird to write a blog entry about another blog, especially when it's your own because it kind of sounds conceited. In reality though, I'm more just using this new blog I'm keeping as an excuse to promote Federation Space (affectionately referred to as FedSpace.) For those who don't know what Federation Space is, it's an online community of writers who enjoy writing collaborative fan-fiction, also known as role-playing based on the Star Trek universe 38 years after the events of Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and The Next Generation. Each person starts out with an account under the name and rank of their character, but all new players with few exceptions start with the rank of Cadet. They go through the Academy, which is a training area for players who need to learn how to write using the FedSpace standard format. Alternately, a player can opt to test out of the Academy from the get-go, however I personally enjoyed my time writing in the Academy so much so that I didn't mind going through it three times. After a cadet graduates from the Academy they are promoted to the rank of Midshipman and stationed on either a starship or a space station.

Way back in the day, I had a character named Xavier Carlson. He was a doctor aboard the U.S.S. Gettysburg (I don't remember the registry), and after about a year and half of writing I ended up abandoning my character. I don't remember the details surrounding why I did, but I think part of had to do with the fact that at the time I struggled with creativity surrounding the realm of Star Trek. When I returned I wrote for another two years as Xavier Carlson, attaining the rank of Lieutenant and being promoted to Chief Medical Officer aboard the U.S.S. Sheridan, DD-4086. I got tired of writing about Xavier though, especially since I had other ideas floating around in my head that were incompatible with who I had shaped my character into. Xavier was an emotional disconnected human being suffering from two lifestyle choices, that of his human heritage, or that of his Vulcan training. The more he tried to fuse the two together, the more unable he was to function. I was so tired of writing about him that I actually got permission to kill him off and create a new character with the same rank and points. Oh, yeah, the points; we get points based on the frequency and quality of our writing entries (referred to as posts) awarded to us on the first of each month. When a player reaches a certain number of points they are promoted to the next rank.

This new character that I created is named Fayn Desmond. His last name is said and written first, as is the custom with Bajorans. Desmond is the Chief Tactical Officer aboard the U.S.S. Sheridan, DD-4086. By the way, I love the crew of the Sheridan, the players behind each character are great people to write with. Anyway, shortly before I killed Xavier with an elaborate sub-plot (a plot that works behind the scenes of the main plot), I realized that it was very difficult to link to just one post to show to people and almost impossible to search for unless it was written very recently. That's when I decided that my new character would have his own blog, thus The Blog of Fayn Desmond was created. I copy all of my posts from FedSpace into the blog and post them individually as entries. Entries are ordered most recent to oldest and titled with the stardate and location of my character at the time.

Also, if anyone has any interest in joining you can find the site by visiting THIS link. If you mention my name character's name (Fayn Desmond), I get a few points for recruiting, but if you don't I'll just be happy we have a new player on the site. Either way, if you have any interest at all I encourage you to at least give it a try and sign up. Give it a go in the Academy, and if you like it keep at it!

Disclaimer: I feel the need to warn you that I do use profanity in my FedSpace writing. Yes, I realize that's probably disagreeable to many of Christly friends. Frankly though, I tried at first to use allusions to the use of swear words such as, "he cursed under his breath" and then I used swear word substitutes, but they just didn't have the same stylistic quality and realism as actual swear-words. However, I will never use the real F-word. I have in the past and it just seemed unnecessary after the fact. I use frak, a sanitized version of the F-word created for Battlestar Galactica, as a substitute which I think everyone can appreciate is close enough. On FedSpace, most profanities are censored by the filter and appear as red dots (exceptions are hell and damn), but I keep the profanities intact on my FedSpace blog.

Hoc est verum,
De Facto

P.S. - You probably noticed that I changed the title of my blog, and that was for the purpose of using a more grammatically accurate translation of the phrase "truth in practice."