Fanlore:Featured Article Archives/2022: Week 40

The Talking Stick/Circle Series, sometimes called the Talking Stick Series, is a "braided novel" of 8 Star Trek: Voyager stories and novellas that Macedon wrote in tandem with Peg Robinson in the mid-1990s. The series takes its name from the first story in the series, Talking Stick, and/or the second story, Circle.

Written in the early days of Voyager fanfiction, the Talking Stick/Circle Series was described by Diavolessa, who republished Macedon's stories to their site with permission in 1999, as "Too sprawling (in the grand sense) in scale and reach to reduce to a mere synopsis; let us just say that this is Voyager unfettered and red in tooth and claw, such as Paramount with its nice tidy pander-to-the-demographics mentality could only dream of producing." The series dealt with themes of community, acceptance, justice and friendship.

The series was notable for introducing several memorable original characters to the cast and crew, as well as for portraying Chakotay's Native American heritage without over-romanticizing or shying away from it. Macedon described the first story in the series as having been written "in a fit of angry frustration ... I decided that a native character needed a native voice (not to mention a tribe)." Although it did eventually become a Janeway/Chakotay love story, the romance is sidelined in favor of complex plots and cultural exploration.