At the request of at least one poster, I'm going to start re-posting this fic, one of my largest and most widely-celebrated (Well, back then). It's interesting to note how differently I've seen people react to some of the elements in this continuity as presented.
And I admit there are some things I'd do differently these days. Am doing differently, when you consider the Undiscovered Frontier multiverse setting.
For elaboration, TGG and UF are linked. Essentially, TGG grew out of exposing the original version of UF to other writers when I did an SD on Spacebattles back in 2001-2003. It's even the origin of that acronym, as the SD became known as "The Great Game SD" due to number of conflicting power blocs and great powers we had. The characters involved, the Alliance, all was greatly altered in transforming what was originally a crazy crossover space-opera into more of a setting for astropolitical thrillers and military SF. Hence, for instance, the character of Robert Dale going from space opera hero to space Eisenhower/Jefferson/Mahan fusion. Instead of straight up Trek-tech style ships, it was more "big gun" warships. And a lot of politicking, strategy, etc.
Of course, starting in 2013 I've reversed that a bit, with the rebooted Undiscovered Frontier being a space opera TV show in prose format and Dale back to being a space opera protagonist.
As for this story itself. Anatomy initially grew out of material I was doing for a fluff piece, The War That Wasn't, which was inspired by the real-life non-fictional work by Norman Friedman, The Fifty Year War. Specifically, I was doing chapters toward one of the big first diversions that the Alliance - that is, the "good guys"/space America/Clancy Competent faction/whatever you want to call them - caused in the history of the Star Trek galaxy. After a long period of tension over Bajoran refugees, resulting in Alliance aid to the Bajoran Resistance in view of growing Cardassian threats, war breaks out between the two powers (circa the timeframe of the Klingon Civil War from the Star Trek: TNG Season 4/5 cliffhanger "Redemption").
This fic is the story of that war and everything that went into it.
After some consideration, I'm going to post the "5th Anniversary Edition", primarily because it fixed typoes and continuity snarls. It is a bit more bloated though as the setting was larger by that time, so I added little chapters here and there covering sideplots I'd not shown before and characters who had appeared or were due to appear in other stories or materials. Altogether, this is about 260,000+ words of story. I do not promise to post daily, but I'll try to post it regularly at least.
It's possible that some of it will feel dated, and I'll come right out and say that I regret some of the cynical deconstruction of the Federation that I pursued in this (my fandom certainly grew divided over it by 2013). But I'm not here to rewrite it, just to re-post it. I hope it entertains you, at least.
As a final note, this fic is very definitely rated R, mostly from curse words and a graphic torture scene I'll likely put in a spoiler box. There are some sexual bits here and there, but I was posting on SB back in 2005 so they don't go to porn description levels, just a kind of generic and brief description or a fade to black.
And I admit there are some things I'd do differently these days. Am doing differently, when you consider the Undiscovered Frontier multiverse setting.
For elaboration, TGG and UF are linked. Essentially, TGG grew out of exposing the original version of UF to other writers when I did an SD on Spacebattles back in 2001-2003. It's even the origin of that acronym, as the SD became known as "The Great Game SD" due to number of conflicting power blocs and great powers we had. The characters involved, the Alliance, all was greatly altered in transforming what was originally a crazy crossover space-opera into more of a setting for astropolitical thrillers and military SF. Hence, for instance, the character of Robert Dale going from space opera hero to space Eisenhower/Jefferson/Mahan fusion. Instead of straight up Trek-tech style ships, it was more "big gun" warships. And a lot of politicking, strategy, etc.
Of course, starting in 2013 I've reversed that a bit, with the rebooted Undiscovered Frontier being a space opera TV show in prose format and Dale back to being a space opera protagonist.
As for this story itself. Anatomy initially grew out of material I was doing for a fluff piece, The War That Wasn't, which was inspired by the real-life non-fictional work by Norman Friedman, The Fifty Year War. Specifically, I was doing chapters toward one of the big first diversions that the Alliance - that is, the "good guys"/space America/Clancy Competent faction/whatever you want to call them - caused in the history of the Star Trek galaxy. After a long period of tension over Bajoran refugees, resulting in Alliance aid to the Bajoran Resistance in view of growing Cardassian threats, war breaks out between the two powers (circa the timeframe of the Klingon Civil War from the Star Trek: TNG Season 4/5 cliffhanger "Redemption").
This fic is the story of that war and everything that went into it.
After some consideration, I'm going to post the "5th Anniversary Edition", primarily because it fixed typoes and continuity snarls. It is a bit more bloated though as the setting was larger by that time, so I added little chapters here and there covering sideplots I'd not shown before and characters who had appeared or were due to appear in other stories or materials. Altogether, this is about 260,000+ words of story. I do not promise to post daily, but I'll try to post it regularly at least.
It's possible that some of it will feel dated, and I'll come right out and say that I regret some of the cynical deconstruction of the Federation that I pursued in this (my fandom certainly grew divided over it by 2013). But I'm not here to rewrite it, just to re-post it. I hope it entertains you, at least.
As a final note, this fic is very definitely rated R, mostly from curse words and a graphic torture scene I'll likely put in a spoiler box. There are some sexual bits here and there, but I was posting on SB back in 2005 so they don't go to porn description levels, just a kind of generic and brief description or a fade to black.
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