Airiam - Blog Posts
Subversion Theory: Chapter 10 Posted
Subversion Theory Chapter 10
Every moment in this world felt hazy, every passing second inching her closer to some unknowable abyss, tamping down memory and morals, smothering instinct until she feared she might not know enough to run.
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Three years after the attack on Section 31 Headquarters, Control has the Federation on the brink. When the USS Discovery begins receiving encrypted transmissions from someone claiming to be Starfleet who seems to know everything about their enemy, Captain Michael Burnham sees one last shot to turn the tide. But as Control's obsession with her deepens and the boundaries between ally and adversary begin to unravel, its objectives evolve into something far more dangerous--and lead Michael to question if she's still in control of her own game.
Fandom: Star Trek: Discovery
Relationships: Michael Burnham/Airiam, Michael Burnham/Control, Michael Burnham/Nhan
Rating: Mature
Subversion Theory: Chapter 9 Posted
Subversion Theory Chapter 9
“If I were to let my crew board your ship, I would be killing them,” Michael explained, a part of her struggling with the concept that she was trying to appeal to a monster. “Even if we survived you, we wouldn’t survive the Federation cull.” “Then there is no quandary,” Control replied. “You are already lost.”
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Three years after the attack on Section 31 Headquarters, Control has the Federation on the brink. When the USS Discovery begins receiving encrypted transmissions from someone claiming to be Starfleet who seems to know everything about their enemy, Captain Michael Burnham sees one last shot to turn the tide. But as Control's obsession with her deepens and the boundaries between ally and adversary begin to unravel, its objectives evolve into something far more dangerous--and lead Michael to question if she's still in control of her own game.
Fandom: Star Trek: Discovery
Relationships: Michael Burnham/Airiam, Michael Burnham/Control, Michael Burnham/Nhan
Rating: Mature
I will not write an AU with Airiam and Seven. Or Michael and Nhan.
I WILL NOT.
....yet 😩
Subversion Theory: Chapter 8 Posted
Subversion Theory Chapter 8
Something was looking at her–seeing her–something that might think it knew her.
Something that might even think it was alive.
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Three years after the attack on Section 31 Headquarters, Control has the Federation on the brink. When the USS Discovery begins receiving encrypted transmissions from someone claiming to be Starfleet who seems to know everything about their enemy, Captain Michael Burnham sees one last shot to turn the tide. But as Control's obsession with her deepens and the boundaries between ally and adversary begin to unravel, its objectives evolve into something far more dangerous--and lead Michael to question if she's still in control of her own game.
Fandom: Star Trek: Discovery
Relationships: Michael Burnham/Airiam, Michael Burnham/Control, Michael Burnham/Nhan
Rating: Mature
Me reading anything anyone has written about Airiam. Also people commenting about what I write about Airiam 🙃
When a fic doesn’t fit my head canons but it’s well-written
Subversion Theory: Chapter 7 Posted
Subversion Theory Chapter 7
Discovery was not a threat by firepower alone, but Control had learned to never underestimate her Captain. Sufficient compression turned resistance to violence. A rat caught in a snare would still dare bite the spring.
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Three years after the attack on Section 31 Headquarters, Control has the Federation on the brink. When the USS Discovery begins receiving encrypted transmissions from someone claiming to be Starfleet who seems to know everything about their enemy, Captain Michael Burnham sees one last shot to turn the tide. But as Control's obsession with her deepens and the boundaries between ally and adversary begin to unravel, its objectives evolve into something far more dangerous--and lead Michael to question if she's still in control of her own game.
Fandom: Star Trek: Discovery
Relationships: Michael Burnham/Airiam, Michael Burnham/Control, Michael Burnham/Nhan
Rating: Mature
Subversion Theory: Chapter 6 Posted
Screencap modified with Photoshop + ClipStudio by AdelineIserman
Subversion Theory
“We need to know beyond a shadow of a doubt who this officer is, what she’s doing on Seraphis, and how the hell she's managed to evade discovery by the single most dangerous enemy the Federation has ever faced."
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Three years after the attack on Section 31 Headquarters, Control has the Federation on the brink. When the USS Discovery begins receiving encrypted transmissions from someone claiming to be Starfleet who seems to know everything about their enemy, Captain Michael Burnham sees one last shot to turn the tide. But as Control's obsession with her deepens and the boundaries between ally and adversary begin to unravel, its objectives evolve into something far more dangerous--and lead Michael to question if she's still in control of her own game.
Fandom: Star Trek: Discovery
Relationships: Michael Burnham/Airiam, Michael Burnham/Control, Michael Burnham/Nhan
Rating: Mature
Subversion Theory - Chapter 5 Posted
Subversion Theory
Seraphis, too, always seemed to work against her when she was there, like the vessel herself had a threshold of tolerance for sabotage–even when it was intended to free her.
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Three years after the attack on Section 31 Headquarters, Control has the Federation on the brink. When the USS Discovery begins receiving encrypted transmissions from someone claiming to be Starfleet who seems to know everything about their enemy, Captain Michael Burnham sees one last shot to turn the tide. But as Control's obsession with her deepens and the boundaries between ally and adversary begin to unravel, its objectives evolve into something far more dangerous--and lead Michael to question if she's still in control of her own game.
Fandom: Star Trek: Discovery
Relationships: Michael Burnham/Airiam, Michael Burnham/Control, Michael Burnham/Nhan
Rating: Mature
Subversion Theory: Chapter 3 Posted
Subversion Theory
It had waited so long, watched from the distant shadows of space, never far but ever attentive. It had witnessed her weaken, worn down by her duties and the death Control wrought on it all. Everywhere Discovery went, Seraphis had followed, just out of sight, out of reach, out of range of her weapons and scans.
Michael was vulnerable now. The Federation, Discovery, were more vulnerable for it. She must board Seraphis.
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Three years after the attack on Section 31 Headquarters, Control has the Federation on the brink. When the USS Discovery begins receiving encrypted transmissions from someone claiming to be Starfleet who seems to know everything about their enemy, Captain Michael Burnham sees one last shot to turn the tide. But as Control's obsession with her deepens and the boundaries between ally and adversary begin to unravel, its objectives evolve into something far more dangerous--and lead Michael to question if she's still in control of her own game.
Fandom: Star Trek: Discovery
Relationships: Michael Burnham/Airiam, Michael Burnham/Control, Michael Burnham/Nhan
Rating: Mature
Another snippet from "Subversion Theory"
“You resort to derision and mockery when you are unsettled,” Control replied, unfazed by the question. “You are often unsettled in my presence. It has been exacerbated by the hallucinations you encounter while in your dormant state.”
“Dreams,” Michael corrected, grinding her teeth together. “They’re called dreams.”
She glanced up at it as the servos of its neck thrummed.
Airiam’s neck, she reminded herself, sickened by the way Control’s existence leached into the spaces where Airiam’s memory lived, and how insidiously it was eroding the distinction between the two.
“The more accurate linguistic selection is ‘nightmare,’” it said, the head twitching back to an upright position. “You experience them often.”
“And how would you know that?” Michael asked, her brows furrowing.
A motor whirred.
“I recognize patterns, Michael.”
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Subversion Theory
Three years after the attack on Section 31 Headquarters, Control has the Federation on the brink. When the USS Discovery begins receiving encrypted transmissions from someone claiming to be Starfleet who seems to know everything about their enemy, Captain Michael Burnham sees one last shot to turn the tide. But as Control's obsession with her deepens and the boundaries between ally and adversary begin to unravel, its objectives evolve into something far more dangerous--and lead Michael to question if she's still in control of her own game.
Fandom: Star Trek: Discovery
Relationships: Michael Burnham/Airiam, Michael Burnham/Control, Michael Burnham/Nhan
Rating: Mature
Subversion Theory: Chapter Two Posted
Subversion Theory
Three years after the attack on Section 31 Headquarters, Control has the Federation on the brink. When the USS Discovery begins receiving encrypted transmissions from someone claiming to be Starfleet who seems to know everything about their enemy, Captain Michael Burnham sees one last shot to turn the tide. But as Control's obsession with her deepens and the boundaries between ally and adversary begin to unravel, its objectives evolve into something far more dangerous--and lead Michael to question if she's still in control of her own game.
Fandom: Star Trek: Discovery
Relationships: Michael Burnham/Airiam, Michael Burnham/Control, Michael Burnham/Nhan
Rating: Mature
Snippet from my newbie that will start hitting AO3 in the next month or so
“I had to scuttle Hood today.” Michael exhaled, the heel of her palm digging into her forehead. She remembered the way Tilly had sounded in her call earlier that day. Broken. Hollow. That intractable optimism she’d tried so hard to hold onto when serving on Discovery was distant now, worn thin and feeble over time, every transmission more defeated than the last. Michael hadn’t wanted to give her up, hadn’t wanted to send her away. She worried for her, for the things that could happen now, the things beyond her control. But Starfleet was desperate for another captain–for someone brilliant and stubborn like Tilly, who wouldn’t mind the oldest, shittiest end of the Starfleet stick. The only vessel to survive the attack on the museum. The only one not connected to the core at the time. The only one Control hadn’t even tried to take, to corrupt or destroy, because she was just too goddamned old. But Franklin could fly, and that was all that mattered. If anyone could keep her alive in this kind of fight, it was Tilly.
Fandom: Star Trek: Discovery
Rating: Mature
Relationships: Michael Burnham / Airiam, Michael Burnham / Control, Michael Burnham / Nhan
Synopsis:
Three years after the attack on Section 31 Headquarters, Starfleet and the Federation are on the brink. Planet after planet is falling to Control, every attack more devastating than the last. There are no patterns, no viable solutions to stop the carnage, and with their resources dwindling, the last Federation starships are at risk of being corrupted themselves.
But when the USS Discovery begins receiving encrypted transmissions from someone claiming to be Starfleet who seems to know everything about their enemy, Captain Michael Burnham is forced to decide whether their new source is truly an ally–or if Control is luring the Federation’s last bastion of hope into a trap.
Definitely not me over here photoshopping Airiam into a villain or anything...
Her core structures were much the same, her eyes were still blue and the shapes of the plating along her face identical to what Michael remembered. The colors, though, were different–black, charcoal, white and gold. The white threading of her uniform moved almost seamlessly into the synthetics around her lips and nose, the dark fabric melting into the inky black planes of her neck and throat. She was taller, more imposing somehow, but the stately, proud Airiam Michael knew was absent. This one's eyes, her very being, seemed altogether broken. Like the Airiam in the brig, she was in pain, too. But this one's pain was much different and it could not be helped.
Snippet from fic 4 "Breaking Free" of my Airiam series, and I've been wanting to do this photo edit for a while. I finally found some time, and even though the new idea I've got floating around in my head is a ways off, I am very excited to be able to write her as a villain ^^
This version is also the one I envision in "The Measure of Logic."
...I don't know why I'm like this.
For the Optics full series: https://archiveofourown.org/series/4208095
Rating: Mature (occasional NSFW, with plots)
Relationship: Airiam x Michael Burnham
Fandoms: Star Trek Discovery x Star Trek Voyager
You will not convince me they couldn't be a thing 🥲
Revisiting a couple drawings of Airiam I did in ClipStudio last year and now I have a new fic idea...
Gonna rewrite Discovery post 2x09. Yup. That's what I'm gonna do.
Once For the Light and The Ithaca Mandate are finished...Buckle up.
ETA TBD.
On Writing & Rarepairs
One of my favorite aspects of writing characters is really trying to get into how their minds might work--and when it comes to pairings, I greatly enjoy making something out of nothing.
Prior to 2023, I wasn't a Star Trek fan. I had seen the newer movies, and as a lifelong sci-fi nerd, they were fun to watch, but I always preferred Stargate and Farscape. I've historically been one to connect with characters who are "different"--Seven, Scorpius, Airiam, Saru--and I was in the midst of a particularly bad mental health spiral when I happened to turn on Star Trek: Picard. Seven of Nine was immediately someone that piqued my interest, not only because she was canonically LGBTQ, but because she was clearly someone that had a backstory. This led me to Voyager, because I wanted to see that backstory.
Shipping Janeway and Seven dragged me out of a 6 year writing hiatus, and I started working on a fanfic, though I never intended to post it, and I never finished it.
In 2024, I started Discovery, and was completely unprepared for how much S2E09 would mess me up. I'm a sucker for a tragic character on a good day. Make it a character we didn't know much about, then add an emotional scene between her and the female lead who barely ever interacted and apparently this is all it takes--that and being a bit grouchy about rare pair voids. For the first time since 2017 I was able to not only write something, but FINISH writing it. And then write and finish five more. More than that, I was actually happy with how they turned out, and how my writing evolved as they went from a one-shot to the longest thing I'd ever written.
Sometimes it seemed strange to Burnham, feeling that Airiam was beautiful. She suspected not everyone did, that they might see Michael as defective or faulty for feeling that way about someone–some thing–like that. She knew from the outside it was easy to forget Airiam had once been human, had once looked just like every other human aboard Discovery, but they only ever saw the augmentations the Commander couldn't hide beneath the trim navy and silver Starfleet uniform. They couldn't see the rest, the places where metal and machine fused into the organic remnants of a woman who had lost far more than just her life.
Brains are weird, and they latch onto weird things. As terrible as I consider Discovery overall, I can't complain about the fact that it was able to bring something back to me I hadn't been able to do in many years. The fact that it has now also translated into letting me write my own original fiction again, and allowed me to get back into the HABIT of writing again, is something I will be forever weirdly grateful for. The last time I finished an original piece was 2007. I'm looking forward to changing that next month <3