Thanks for that, Saria! That's excellent. (And that little aside about her Intel instincts is very interesting, I hadn't caught that aspect about her dynamic with the crew.) I quite dig that you've put so much thought into Jaya's particular command style and its relationship to her having come up by an unorthodox route -- it gives her a pleasingly out-sized personality and defines her command uniquely, as befits a Captain, but in so doing makes space for other's spotlight and also, although I know I said we weren't going to take the full-bore<em>sexism</em>of TOS Trek on board, helps her to function as a woman in what is nevertheless still a quite<em>masculinist</em>milieu without sacrificing her femininity. That is a tremendously impressive multiple-axis balancing act.<br/><br/>(Incidentally, I am assuming there will be little overt discussion of Starfleet Intel at any time with Jaya or in her presence. Starfleet must surely have such a thing, so I have no trouble including it in the setting, but it will be the kind of thing people are incredibly uncomfortable to even hear mentioned aloud in much the same way that, say, Britain for a long time would not openly admit the existence of MI-6 -- indeed still has not done so.)<br/><br/>A couple of quick things:<br/><br/><div class="quoteheader"><div class="topslice_quote">Quote</div></div><blockquote class="bbc_standard_quote">If Talya won't go toe-to-toe with Jaya and tell her to fuck off when Jaya is pushing her around (which seems likely from what I read from the profile), Jaya will push her around. In her mind, Jaya will see it as "toughening Talya up", rather than just being pushy, because she values officers that will tell her when she's crossing a line.</blockquote><div class="quotefooter"><div class="botslice_quote"></div></div><br/>Looking back at the description, I could see how you get this impression, because it is mostly about the things Talya is uncertain/anxious about. But (of course Poppy can tackle this question far better than I can) I don't feel like that's all there is to the character; at minimum, you don't get to be a Commander at her age without some steel in your spine. It also occurs to me that a lot of the supposed uncertainty seems likely to be internal, not outwardly expressed; she has empathic abilities and thus the ability to read and anticipate those around her, it's perhaps more a question of how confident she is in her interpretations, being still after all quite young.<br/><br/>(This probably is a good time to mention that, as I'm working on the Vanguard's backstory a bit to integrate everyone's character histories, I've proposed a backstory element for Talya to explain both her unusual advancement and the unusual need at this moment to bring so many new officers on the ship. I decided to use this to kill two birds with one stone, so that backstory is that Talya was in fact a Lieutenant Junior Grade on the<em>Vanguard</em>during the last year of her last voyage -- during the final mission of which the ship encountered a deadly ambush in which the Captain and much of the senior crew were killed. She therefore originally reached the Commander position as an "acting" field promotion that Starfleet later signed off on. Poppy has agreed to this and is working it into a Mk. 2 charsheet for Talya, which should make a little clearer that despite her sweet nature, she has Seen Some Proverbial Shiznit and come through in clutch situations.)<br/><br/>At any rate, the kind of interactions you mention with Talya are just the sort of boundary-pushing I would prefer to be mostly in our rearview -- excepting only if useful to the plot -- when adventuring commences. So it's great to be discussing this off the top.<br/><br/><div class="quoteheader"><div class="topslice_quote">Quote from: Joslyn</div></div><blockquote class="bbc_standard_quote">This is something I'd enjoy since I would have a different take on it than the stereotypical "grr, I'm a mean old skeptic!" stuff. Marah is definitely a metaphysical naturalist, humanist (so to speak--one might need a different term for that in this setting!), and all around empirical person, but when faced with superstition she's still polite (though maybe a little baffled).</blockquote><div class="quotefooter"><div class="botslice_quote"></div></div><br/>This is cool; I likewise wouldn't expect Miguel to be all McCoy-style-"you-ungodly-inhuman-Smurf" about things either. So it wouldn't be in the style of open sniping. Maybe more in the style of dry, slightly vexed humour when something vexing to one or the other sensibility comes up?