melannen: Commander Valentine of Alpha Squad Seven, a red-haired female Nick Fury in space, smoking contemplatively (Default)
melannen ([personal profile] melannen) wrote2021-10-04 10:50 pm

100 days of enemy recs: 57. Picard/Q

Ah, Picard/Q. A ship that is so very, very, very canon, so very much in its own way the core of Star Trek: TNG. A relationship between a fairly ordinary human Starship Captain and an immortal pandimensional near-omnipotent trickster, in which the starship captain is somehow always the one with all the power anyway.

It's very very good.

It was so self-evidently good that they tried very hard to set Q up first with Picard's ex and then with a female starship captain instead, but it of course did not work, because he is also pretty clearly an immortal pandimensional near-omnipotent trickster who believes in the idea of One True Nemesis and he has definitely already picked his, and it's Picard.

It's one of those pairings that hit its peak on the 90s internet, not only pre-AO3 but also pre-LJ and pre-FF.net and to some extent pre-WWW. A lot of the older fic has gathered back to AO3 anyway, which is really amazing, but there's always the haunting feeling that there's a lot of fic I can't see. In particular I have this distinct memory of having had my mind blown by one particular Picard/Q fic, at least fifteen years ago, but all I can remember is that it was set after "All Good Things...", it wasn't particularly trope-y, it ended with Picard and Q being together if not forever than an implied very, very long time, I am pretty sure I read it as a series of ASCII files, it was via a recs page, and it was long, in the hundreds of thousands of kb if not words. (Remember when you knew how long a fic was by its filesize and not its wordcount? There's still some Picard/Q sites out there like that.) Anyway the odds I will find it based on that when I haven't yet are very, very low, so here are some other good Picard/Q stories!

  • A Kiss Before The War (6795 words) by Alara J Rogers
    Fandom: Star Trek: The Next Generation
    Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
    Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
    Relationships: Jean-Luc Picard/Q
    Additional Tags: Romance, Community: lgbtfest

    Humanity reaches the end of Q's tests - they passed! - and now that they're on more equal ground, Picard realizes he finally has a chance to get some truths from Q.


  • A Touch of Eternity (20345 words) by Anonymous_Ostrich
    Chapters: 5/5
    Fandom: Star Trek: The Next Generation
    Rating: Explicit
    Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
    Relationships: Jean-Luc Picard/Q
    Characters: Jean-Luc Picard, Q (Star Trek), Data (Star Trek), Beverly Crusher, William Riker, Deanna Troi
    Additional Tags: Developing Relationship, In Character, Q being vague and lovesick, picard being done with him as always, time-travelling first dates, fluff and eventual smut, romantic schmoop
    Series: Part 1 of See You Out There - Picard/Q series

    It starts with a riddle, and ends with a date.


  • Love Reign O'er Me (63045 words) by internetname
    Chapters: 1/1
    Fandom: Star Trek: The Next Generation
    Rating: Mature
    Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
    Relationships: Jean-Luc Picard/Q

    Picard should probably be more taken aback at being suddenly and mysteriously transported to a paradisical desert oasis, but honestly, it's the sort of thing you get used to after awhile when there is a Q in your life.
minoanmiss: A detail of the Ladies in Blue fresco (Default)

[personal profile] minoanmiss 2021-10-05 04:17 am (UTC)(link)
*is swamped by waves of nostalgia*
ageorwizardry: water rippling over stones (Default)

[personal profile] ageorwizardry 2021-10-05 05:22 am (UTC)(link)
Ah, I also remember reading some of those text-only file stories! In fact, I'm pretty sure your third rec was one of them. (As soon as I read the phrase "the Temple of the Green Moons," I also remembered the phrase "what ritual means to me" from later in the story. Amazing what scraps the brain will hold onto.) I shall enjoy revisiting it!
petra: Captain Picard (original flavor) making fists of joy with his eyes closed. (Picard - Yes)

[personal profile] petra 2021-10-05 10:32 am (UTC)(link)
*draws pandimensional hearts on them and all their bizarre fitting together* I don't have time to read many of the things you're reccing, but I enjoy your pairing manifestos immensely. This one made me beam my face off with fond memories of the measured-in-KB stories.
stellar_dust: Stylized comic-book drawing of Scully at her laptop in the pilot. (Default)

[personal profile] stellar_dust 2021-10-05 12:57 pm (UTC)(link)
Did you see they’re bringing Q back for the new season of Picard? The preview has a very end-of-DW-s3 vibe.
stellar_dust: Stylized comic-book drawing of Scully at her laptop in the pilot. (Default)

[personal profile] stellar_dust 2021-10-06 01:22 am (UTC)(link)
I watched the first episode of Picard back when it was free and wasn't super impressed, but if anything can get me to pay for CBS plus or whatever it is, it might be Picard and Q frolicking together.
Edited 2021-10-06 01:22 (UTC)
pauraque: picard proposes to riker and says engage (st engage)

[personal profile] pauraque 2021-10-05 01:48 pm (UTC)(link)
There is a strong chance that Picard/Q was the first slash pairing I ever read. I definitely read a lot of it in the '90s when I was first getting into fandom. I was delighted to realize a while back that Alara Rogers was still active and on AO3, because she was one of the earliest writers whose stuff I would just binge-read because it was all good.
oracne: turtle (Default)

[personal profile] oracne 2021-10-05 07:17 pm (UTC)(link)
ZOMG BLAST FROM THE PAST.
peoriapeoriawhereart: Doctor Crusher facing center, in holodeck garb (Hard Boiled Picard and Bev)

[personal profile] peoriapeoriawhereart 2021-10-07 03:49 am (UTC)(link)
I would think a lot of TNG fic would originally have been on usenet. No idea how many archives it would have had elsewhere besides.