Hello dear readers, it is I, du Lac, with a bit of a different brain dump today.
I was going to write about IFS3 and why there’s been no development for a while and the state of WordPress, but then I made the mistake of putting on The Rest is Politics and Trump 100 Extended during my train journey this morning. Christ. Half an hour of increasingly dire international news and I’m wondering why I bothered getting out of bed.
So instead of subjecting you to my technical ramblings or something about AI for the hundredth time, I figured I’d ramble about something that’s been rattling around my brain lately: how what we do here at Obsidian Fleet might actually be the mental health break we all desperately need right now. Or at least it’s cheaper than therapy – if you’re in the US. If you’re in the UK, you can refer yourself to your local IAPT service. They’re great and it’s free.
The State of Things (Or: Why I’ve Started Avoiding Certain News Apps)
Right, let’s just acknowledge that everything’s a bit shit at the moment, shall we? I mean, where do you even start? Conflicts that make no sense, politicians acting like toddlers with nuclear weapons, the climate doing things that would make even the most optimistic Vulcan scientist have a quiet panic attack behind a tree somewhere, the very rich people getting richer while everyone else struggles along, it’s a bit grim innit?
And the way we consume this information now – bloody hell. Whether it’s the rolling news on TV, the BBC app with its BREAKING alerts on your phone making you want to crawl back under the duvet or wonder why Dua Lipa’s worthy of a breaking news alert, or some podcast host explaining in excruciating detail why we’re all doomed, or just accidentally opening Twitter (sorry, “X” – still not calling it that) and immediately regretting every life choice that led to that moment, people get a lot of this shoved into their eyeballs or ears and it’s just tiring.
I’ll declare now that I’m not here to solve global conflicts or provide political commentary – that’s way above my pay grade and definitely not what you signed up for when you started reading my thoughts on Obsidian Fleet. But I am here to talk about coping mechanisms, community, and why sometimes the best thing you can do for your sanity is beam yourself up to somewhere better.
Disclaimer: I’m going to use Trek as my main example through this because it’s a comfy subject, but a lot of it applies to every other fandom we write in.
Why Trek Works When Reality Doesn’t
I’ll start with the obvious bit here. I’m not saying Star Trek is some miracle cure for the world’s problems – I’m not completely mental, Ehestri’s had me tested. But there’s something about it that just works differently than other escapism? It’s not like Marvel films where nearly everything gets solved by punching harder, or fantasy where magic fixes everything. Trek basically says “yeah, humans figured their shit out eventually” and then shows you how. Possibly with Treknobabble.
Diversity as Strength, Not Division
In our current world, differences in race, religion, culture, and ideology seem to be driving wedges between people faster than you can say “infinite diversity in infinite combinations.” Turn on any news channel and you’ll find someone explaining why *those people* are the problem – be it race/religion/sexual identity, or more recently, accidentally sending a pic of you in your Furry persona to your workmates and being branded a pervert.
Trek said “nah” to that decades ago. The Enterprise crew includes humans from different continents, aliens with completely different biologies and cultures, artificial intelligences, and beings whose entire existence challenges our understanding of life itself. And they don’t just tolerate each other – they’re genuinely friends, colleagues, and family.
I’ve watched a lot of Berman-era episodes recently on Sky Sci-Fi (Americans, is it still SyFy over there?), and there’s more than a few scenes in TNG when they’re disagreeing and stuff round the conference table in the lounge, and instead of it turning into this massive drama, they just… talk it through. Like proper grown-ups. When’s the last time you saw that happen in real politics? This morning I’ve seen Starmer trying to shit on Farage like its election season, the Tories doing their usual stuff and Trumps going to go off on a tear because the courts said no. Again.
What’s particularly striking is how Trek handles the inevitable conflicts that arise from such diversity. When Worf and Troi disagree about honour versus a more empathic route, or when Picard’s diplomatic approach clashes with Riker’s more direct style, these differences become opportunities for growth rather than sources of permanent division. You see the debate and the morality play out before your eyes. The show suggests that our differences aren’t bugs in the human experience – they’re features that make us collectively stronger and more adaptable.
This raises an interesting question: if we can imagine fictional species with completely alien mindsets working together harmoniously, why do we struggle so much with cooperation between different human cultures that share 99.9% of the same DNA? Ego? Religion? Ideology? Pick a wedge, you’ll find it driven in somewhere.
The Thing About Fictional Problem-Solving
Then there’s how they actually solve problems in Trek. Real-world diplomacy currently seems to consist mostly of a small bunch of people shouting at each other on social media and then acting surprised when nothing gets resolved or someone replies telling them to do one. Trek diplomacy is Picard sitting down with some alien species and listening to what they’re angry about instead of just assuming they’re mental, or as I saw on Reddit yesterday “this sounds like a chatbot wrote it”. Instantly dismissing someone’s view because you think it might not be real’s the new one on the block.
“Err dulac, real life is more complicated than TV?” Yeah, obviously. But is it though? Most of the time when I’m reading about some international incident, I find myself thinking “Nobody’s listening to the other person” – usually because there’s some mad ideological bent that’s obstructing that person from seeing things from another perspective.
Take our Discord server as a good example – we’ve got people from all over the world, different ages, backgrounds, political views, and somehow, we manage not to have massive rows every five minutes. Mostly because when someone’s being a bit of a dick, we talk to them instead of immediately declaring them the enemy of all that is good and holy. Revolutionary stuff, that.
I know it wasn’t always that way btw, and I do regret that some people do feel excluded from it because of it, but I would also encourage people to give it a try and see how different it is now.
Why Writing Stories Isn’t Just Fannish Nonsense
Is Fannish a word? I just made a new word maybe?
Here’s where it gets interesting though – and why I’m not just suggesting everyone binge-watch DS9 and call it a day (do that, then watch Babylon 5 and play compare the series). There’s something about actually writing in the Trek universe in particular, especially the collaborative stuff we do in the community, that’s genuinely helpful for dealing with the current state of the world.
When you’re writing a story where your character has to negotiate with hostile aliens or figure out how to resolve some crisis without starting a war, you’re not just playing pretend. You’re actually practicing a different way of thinking about problems. Instead of “who’s the bad guy and how do we beat them,” you’re asking “why is this happening and how do we fix it.”
I’ve been doing this for… Christ, over twenty years now, and I’ve noticed it changes how you approach real-world stuff. When someone’s being difficult at work, instead of immediately assuming they’re just an arse, you start wondering what’s actually bothering them. When there’s some political situation that makes no sense, you sometimes find yourself thinking “what would <insert character> do?”.
Here’s where I need to be careful not to suggest that collaborative writing is a complete substitute for real-world engagement, nor should you always resort to doing what Spock would do – nerve pinching doesn’t work and you will get into a convo with HR for touching someone. It’s not, and it shouldn’t be, your go-to. But it can be a crucial part of maintaining the mental and emotional resources needed for that engagement.
Think of it like this: pilots need simulator training before they can handle real flights. Collaborative writing can serve as training for the kind of thinking, cooperation, and problem-solving we need more of in the real world. You practice diplomacy, compromise, creative thinking, and seeing situations from multiple perspectives – skills that transfer to everything from family conflicts to workplace disagreements to civic engagement. There’s a lot of transferrable skills you pick up along the way which help you become a better employee and if you go down the route of being a manager, a better manager.
The Recharge Factor
Honestly, sometimes you just need to spend an evening writing about your chief engineer figuring out how to reverse the polarity of something rather than reading about the latest international crisis or economic uncertainty. It’s not denial or irresponsibility – it’s maintenance. You can’t keep pouring negativity into your cup, and constantly consuming negative news without any positive creative outlet is a great way to fill that cup fast.
There’s also something to be said for practicing optimism, even in fictional contexts. When you spend time in mental spaces where problems have solutions, where people can change and grow, where cooperation is possible – that builds psychological resilience for dealing with real-world challenges. You can take a mental break and come back refreshed.
The Last Bit
Using collaborative writing communities like Obsidian Fleet as refuge from global chaos isn’t about pretending problems don’t exist or avoiding responsibility for the real world. It’s about maintaining the kind of hopeful, solution-oriented mindset that real-world problem-solving requires.
Trek’s vision isn’t naive optimism – it acknowledges that the path to a better future involves struggle, setbacks, and genuine effort. But it insists that the better future is possible, and that’s a belief worth maintaining even when (especially when) current events suggest otherwise.
As with any coping mechanism, it’s important to find balance and avoid complete withdrawal from reality. But if you need permission to spend less time doom-scrolling and more time crafting stories where humanity figures out how to do better – consider this your official order to touch some … space? Grass? Warp Plasma? Maybe not the first or last one.
The real world will still be there when you beam back down to reality. But maybe, just maybe, you’ll return with a little more hope, a few more problem-solving tools, and the kind of perspective that comes from spending time imagining better possibilities.
It’s fair to say the world needs more people who believe in Star Trek’s vision of cooperation and progress. So, keep writing those stories. Keep building this community. Keep practicing the kind of thinking that believes complex problems can have constructive solutions.
This’d also make a good roundtable or podcast topic. Hmm …