We’re here with another interview with a newer member of our community. The title of this column is “Lower Decks,” hearkening back to the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode titled “Lower Decks,” in which junior officers aboard the Enterprise-D speculate on the reasons for recent unusual actions taken by the command crew near the Cardassian border.
This month’s interview is with the writer behind Lieutenant JG Sylvie Doucet playing a Human Nonbinary Medical Officer assigned to the USS Chin’toka.
Read more: Lower Decks interview: Lieutenant Junior Grade Sylvie Doucet, USS Chin’tokaFianna: Tell us a little about the writer behind the character — where in the world do you hail from? Anything you’d like to share!
Doucet: Born and raised in Texas, specifically the area south of Houston. I live in San Antonio now.
What was your introduction to Science Fiction in general and Star Trek specifically?
I think the first Star Trek I watched was TNG and DS9 was running on TV too. Babylon 5 was also on there and I’m also a huge Star Wars fan. My grandpa had all the Star Trek movies and I saw the Star Wars movies, first the original trilogy probably on video tape and then the rest as they came out. I devoured the sci-fi section of the school library – Dune, Asimov’s stuff (including the Asimov magazine), and the Star Wars books. I never did get into the Star Trek books.
What is your experience with roleplaying?
AOL chat rooms back in the day, about the time I entered high school so 2003 or 2004. After that, got into the PBeM groups hosted on AOL and Yahoo! Groups – Omega Fleet and AQSG are the ones I remember. Beyond that, I wrote a lot on forums – GiveUpAlready.com being the main one there. That was primarily fantasy. I even ended up being a moderator there for the RP section. I’ve written a variety of characters. My first one was a fighter pilot in Omega Fleet and my favorite was a pacifist fairy healer on a fantasy forums.
What brought you to SB118?
After AQSG and Omega Fleet fell into inactivity, I didn’t have any outlets for writing anything Star Trek for years. Real life and fantasy roleplaying took up enough time, but after I lost my last job and went on disability, I suddenly had a lot more freedom and once I started my transition, I had more mental energy to spare too. GiveUpAlready.com closed down shop so I didn’t even have a good outlet for the bit of fantasy writing I did! So about two years ago, I started looking around to get back into Star Trek simming, which occupies a special place in my heart because it’s such a big part of how I got into writing in the first place.
I tried out two other places before I found SB118. Given the issues I had identified with the other groups, I looked into this place and, to my delight, I found that it’s expressly queer-friendly and well organized without any single person ruling the roost, so to speak. I figured it was worth a try!
Why did you choose this specific character and duty post?
Sylvie Doucet is largely based on a character I wrote years ago – Krystal Sweettouch, a fairy healer. There are differences, naturally, but the general gist is the same. I really enjoy playing support characters in games and that extends a lot to my writing preferences as well. Krystal was a character I felt like I hadn’t been able to explore as much as I wanted to and when I saw this place needed Medical Officers and Counselors the most at the time that I was applying, she immediately came to mind.
When I first applied to SB118, my intention was actually to write a science character or maybe an engineer. Sylvie ending up in the Medical Department is more a happy accident than anything intentional and one I’ve just been rolling with.
Where do you see your character five years from now?
Ah, it’s more fun for it to catch me by surprise! Realistically, they’ll be a department head, perhaps a first officer. Neither I or my character have any particular aspirations to command, but who knows how it’ll all shake out. I just want to have fun and feel useful in whatever shape or form that takes.
Thanks for your time, Lieutenant JG Doucet!
You can read more about Lieutenant JG Doucet on the wiki.
