the delphic expanse

For those of you familiar with the lovely story Seeing Angels by our own Honeybee, you know that she created a wonderful love story between the sons of Jonathan Archer and Trip Tucker.

Hank and Lorian captured my fancy and when Honeybee asked for an illustration, I jumped at the chance. These are my best interpretations of this intriguing couple.

I haven't had a chance to read this yet, but OMG! Bluetiger, these just take my breath away!

That's hot.

In the second picture, especially, Lorian has a great blend of Trip and T'Pol's features. You can tell he's their son. Hank is just...beautiful!

Thank you so much for drawing these characters Bluetiger! I had so much writing them and they became a big part of that story. It practically brought tears to my eyes to see them brought to life by your drawings.

Thank you doesn't seem enough, but it will have to do.

So, here's how this came about for those who have read the story.

The main star crossed romance is between a heterosexual couple. The song I got for the Valentine's Day challenge was just so angsty and struck me as about two young people who should not have ever met and should not be in love but can't help themselves. Passion taking over and all that rot. So, I had written TnT's hybrid daughter in another story - and she's very artistic and a little mentally unbalanced. So, she was perfect. But she needed a peer to talk to, and I had already established she didn't get along with her close in age brother. But she seemed the type of girl to have a gay best friend. So, I created Hank so she would have someone to talk to and someone would know about her forbidden romance.

And I wanted Hank - who is the son of Archer and Hernandez - to be a very femme gay boy. Mostly in slash, you see more macho, butch type guys. Nothing wrong with that, but I wanted to do something different. And then, I thought it would be unfair if he didn't get a shot at love. And there was T'Mir's hunky and stoic Vulcan-like brother. And so why not? There we go. That's how a subplot can take over a story>

Amazing work, Bluetiger. Very beautiful!





I bow to your greatness!

I want to thank everyone for the kind comments. They, just like reviews to a story, mean a lot to me.

This was indeed my pleasure, Honeybee. I'm so glad it met with your approval! I became quite enamored of these two. Lorian drew me in and I did like that you described Hank as delicate and beautiful. My original thought was that Jon might be resistant to this relationship, but the more I think about it, I wonder if Trip will think Hank is not right for Lorian. It will certainly be interesting to see where this goes if you write more

Brandyjane, thank you. I really did try to make Lorian look like the product of both Trip and T'Pol. I'm glad you could see that

Well, as you know from the story, Hank has a lot of issues and doesn't get along with his parents. Even though TnT are surrogate parents to Hank, he's not exactly prime son-in-law material so I'm sure they will be a little concerned. I also wanted to make it clear in the story that Lorian cared for Hank just the way he is - and wasn't trying to fix or change him. Lorian just sees the good in him and was able to articulate that.

As for Jonathan? I imagine he loves his son, but he doesn't understand him. Even in a time of future acceptance of the spectrum of sexuality, it still can't be easy to be measured by paternal expectations you can't meet, especially when your dad is super successful.

Well, I'm writing the sequel to Seeing Angels, which is about Hank and Lorian.

And the second picture? Yes, that's going in the story. I'm working on it now.