Romance has always been a present plot point in Star Trek. Whether it’s Kirk’s famous lust, Riker & Troi’s slow burn, Jadzia & Worf’s relationship, or a subtle flirtation between Garek & Bashir, Trek fans are invested in the love lives of their favorite characters. Thus, it’s quite logical that here at SB118, writing an in character romance can be a big part of a character’s development. With so many new members joining, and even for veteran writers who haven’t explored that side of their character yet, this article series aims to shed some light on the experience.
In this interview, I’ve asked the real life husband and wife writers of Morro Caras & Sevantha Saa to join me and share stories and insights from their own writing process. Don’t worry though, I’ll try to get a bit of gossip to share with you as well.Through this interview series, perhaps you’ll gain a better understanding of what goes into writing a safe, healthy and engaging relationship inside of SB118. After all, “Love is the universal language” according to Captain James T. Kirk.
Harford: To clarify something for our readers, the two of you are married in real life, correct? How long have you been together? Tell us the story of joining SB 118. Did you join together?
Saa: We’re going on 11 years of marriage but have been together for closer to 15 years, and were friends/frenemies since what… freshman year of high school?
Caras: We went to a school dance together and hated each other after that for the next few years but were still in the same friend circles. We eventually patched things up and as our friend groups fell apart over the years, we stuck together. We’ve known each other about half our lives now.
Saa: We didn’t join immediately together. I actually was given the link to SB118 by Jess, who plays Gwen’ora Tasen, and Morro had been on a year long kick of watching Star Trek in whole for the first time… we had just played Resurgence together, and it sounded like a fun experience.
Caras: I try not get very involved with online communities. They tend to have a lot of drama and fall apart just as they are getting good; but she had described it as being very interesting and having all of its stuff together, being around for 30 years. It sounded like it was an investment worthwhile, even though we might not be on the same ship together.
Saa: I was in a class with Jess, and I think he was in the second class after ours.
Caras: It only took a couple of weeks to convince me to at least try. It was mostly me convincing myself, she didn’t ask me to join.
Harford: Was it always your plan to write characters who were romantically entangled? I know Saa and Caras haven’t had an easy road, what is the status of their relationship currently?
Saa: Not long-term no. I wanted to have a connection to his character but we’d been put on different ships and really weren’t sure how that’d work, so we initially just explored a single academy experience they had.
Caras: I was alway open to Morro eventually getting with someone on his ship. I actually had a rule that anyone who would have asked him out, would have gotten a date with him. Because Morro had never been on a real date before. First time it almost happened was by accident due to a misunderstanding. The second time I was approached OOC and it was a day after we had decided we were going to write a romance for Morro and Sevantha. The irony!
Saa: He wanted cute, I wanted a mess… we’ve comfortably settled in the middle with how they panned out.
Caras: Cute mess is a good descriptor for them. I think I set them up for failure in their pen pal exchanges, and by “failure” I mean failure not to fall for one another. Morro needed someone to be vulnerable with and to see him and he kind of just selected Sevantha to be that person. She then said a line and it clicked for me and I just went “Oh no, I ship them”
Saa: Yeaaah, after a few exchanges, we realized we’d doomed them.
Harford: How do you maintain focus on individual character development in addition to developing your story together as an IC couple? How important is it to you both that your characters are perceived as individuals who are growing in their own right? What sort of boundaries have you established to help keep things on track?
Caras: Morro and Sevantha take their duties very seriously. They are currently the Acting heads of their respective departments. I think the nature of the characters and their dedication to their duty post set that for us. They have to do their jobs, and now that they’re in charge, they have to do them well.
Saa: We both designed our characters with a lot of care and detail before they ever became a couple and I never want people to look at them as just an extension of one another. They are two different people who have different struggles. One of the big things is not having one another solve all the others’s problems. Morro has a large storyline with his sister Z’Mat, who we have both played versions of, and it was decided after committing to write them romantically… Saa would be support for Morro in his struggle but some of his longer standing friends and crewmates should take lead in eventually dealing with her.
Caras: Sevantha is referenced a lot in Morro’s sims, and she’s always on his mind in some way, but so are a lot of his relationships. Lhandon Nilsen also gets mentioned frequently. I would think it almost funny if people thought they were a couple instead, they spend so much time together.
Saa: In missions we may throw references regarding one another in their thoughts, they learn a lot from one another, but we never let that be the only facet to them. We’re in a multiverse mission right now and Sevantha discovered early that someone has killed a number of versions of herself, and that there is a version of her brother alive, in a version of Starfleet, and their telepathic connection re-established. She hasn’t forgotten Morro is on the away team and is worried, but she also has this very heavy cloud over her unrelated to her partner.
Caras: My goal with Morro has always been to make him the best supporting character I possibly can. Unlike myself, he is the most outgoing extrovert I can write without completely annoying everyone (but it’s okay if people are annoyed by him). In order to accomplish this I have to construct an identity that involves multiple relationships of all facets. That gives him enough depth to stand on his own, but also makes his relationship with Sevantha more interesting because of all of the other people that have influence on him.
Saa: We do try to at least have one shoreleave JP just for us. Our Wednesdays nights are our date nights where we dedicate time just for us, we’ll sit, watch a movie, and write back and forth. This week it’ll probably be passing off the controller for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and tags.
Harford: What challenges have you faced while writing Sevantha and Morro’s story?
Caras: One of the core elements about Morro and Sevantha as individuals is that they are specifically and deliberately not human. They had never even been to earth until they went to the academy. They do not hold human values in the same regard as their human colleagues. The physicality of the relationship and emotional parts of the relationship should seem out of place to humans. If you know Orion and Betazoid cultures, clothing is mostly optional depending on the activity. The two of the writers being humans, trying to write aliens to show other humans how different they are from humans is like a weird challenge we constantly wrestle with. We really want to explore and show what a relationship looks like where social norms and values are different. My hope is that they weird people out, but still think they are cute together.
Saa: Definitely this, we’re having to work a little backwards because the physicality of the relationship is not a major hang up, its the telepathic bond developing between them and the emotional intimacy and vulnerability they’re both having to be willing to show. Right now they’re in a spot where… Morro is struggling with a lot mentally currently and Sevantha expressed interest, along with the weight of him actually having feelings, caused him to panic avoid her for a bit. It made for some fun interactions since most people only see Sevantha when she’s professional and collected until our JOPA meeting, where everyone suddenly learned she can be stubborn and a little spiteful and competitive.
We also weren’t on the same ship for awhile so that came with a lot of struggle in trying to time things for shore leave exploration. Where the Fleet is great about accepting timey-wimey things there were logical aspects that became hard when justifying how to have him in the Gamma Quadrant boonies and her in the Beta Quadrant do more than just send videos messages to each other. Eventually, due to our IRL lives having rather opposite schedules, I sought to transfer onto his ship, and ended up changing my duty post from Medical to Counseling which has been a great shift for Sevantha.
Harford: What advice would you like to give members of the fleet who may be considering developing an IC romance for their character?
Caras: We’ve been playing tabletop role playing games together for almost two decades now, We’ve both been the GM and ran romances for the other in games, so we know what our boundaries are and how to set our expectations for the relationship. I feel with those we have the trust that we can play a little more freely without having to think about it.
Saa: Communication is super important behind the scenes between partners, we have the distinct advantage of years knowing one another… being new in a community with strangers it can be daunting to reach out when they feel chemistry between characters and to discuss, but I highly recommend it to avoid any possible misinterpretations of meaning and actions. Transparency is a must.
Caras: I would say establishing guidelines/boundaries, goals, and even an exit strategy. This is a narrative game, unlike real life, you have to portray your relationship as a part of the story and all the elements that can have an impact on it. Then you have to try and keep it as real as possible to your characters. It’s ok if they break up, sometimes that’s even more interesting. Who knows they might get back together. If they do stay together, I think it’s important to also asses that, show *why* They have the mettle and fortitude to withstand all of the things that come with being in Starfleet, and why it’s so important to the characters that they do stay together.
Harford: Okay, now for the tea; how does living together and being married affect your writing process? Do in character moments ever cause tension out of character
Saa: Most of the time we enjoy writing in different rooms unless we’re doing date night JP work, we’re both introverted individuals who like having our space for our creative outlets. We use discord a lot for communication when planning, while we do plan things in person from time to time, having a log of what we were planning is pretty important… we have a lot of games going and not having dedicated placement for our ideas risks things getting lost. We could be talking Star Trek then something hits and we swap planning for another tabletop we’re working on, so we gotta learn to manage our collaboration.
Caras: It’s a very hard time describing to someone on the outside how it feels when your characters hit a rough patch in the story. I will go as far to say that it does have an effect on things. After particularly big games our character’s relationships are damaged or changed; It’s as if something terrible happened to a close friend, and we just have to sit with it even though we’re technically in control.
Saa: We definitely have moments were we’ll write something and have to stop to reconsider where we want things to go. Also sometimes if we’ve written something particularly heart breaking… That atmosphere will be hard to shake, so we’ll have to find something else small to do/write to alleviate that feeling. I feel too much for my characters sometimes!
Caras: If you want the real hot tea, you’ll have to ask us about our table top games sometime. Let me tell you, the risk is not worth the reward. Get ready to get yapped at for hour, by either of us.
Saa: Writing is definitely emotionally safer than tabletop sometimes… I’ve cried more from emotional damage done at the table due to NPC death than I’d like to admit. My theatre degree and commitment is actively weaponized against me in those moments, for sure. Not that I’d have it any other way. ♥
Harford: Thanks so much for joining us today and giving us a unique insight into writing IC romance. Not many in the fleet have the opportunity to write with their spouse.
