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Sticky: Askbox

So this sticky entry serves the function of a tumblr askbox. Comments are screened (invisible to everyone but me and the person who posted the comment). Let me know if you want your "ask" to be answered privately or publicly. If publicly, I'll make a post and link you to the post in a reply to your comment; if privately, I'll just answer the comment, and my answer will also be screened so only you and I can see it.

(For some reason dropping questions/comments in an askbox feels a lot less... socially intrusive than sending a message. I have absolutely no idea why.)

Sticky: 100 Ships prompt challenge

#01 – Adamant	#02 – Snow	#03 – Lion	#04 – Spark	#05 – Amber
#06 – Lust	#07 – Bronze	#08 – Mint	#09 – Arctic	#10 – Black
#11 – Moonlight	#12 – Sunlight	#13 – Blue	#14 – Navy	#15 – Tea
#16 – Neon	#17 – Twilight	#18 – Blush	#19 – Wine	#20 – Nude
#21 – Rhythm	#22 – Brown	#23 – Linen	#24 – Ember	#25 – Thistle
#26 – Cherry	#27 – Orange	#28 – Vanilla	#29 – Bone	#30 – Harlequin
#31 – Cadet	#32 – Chocolate	#33 – Peach	#34 – Lead	#35 – Cream
#36 – Sand	#37 – White	#38 – Crimson	#39 – Pink	#40 – Ocean
#41 – Dove	#42 – Platinum	#43 – Yellow	#44 – Earth	#45 – Midnight
#46 – Pearl	#47 – Frostbite	#48 – Pumpkin	#49 – Electric	#50 – Purple
#51 – Coral	#52 – Salt	#53 – Crow	#54 – Rainbow	#55 – Cloud
#56 – Flame	#57 – Red	#58 – Ash	#59 – Rose	#60 – Slate
#61 – Green	#62 – Ruby	#63 – Olive	#64 – Lipstick	#65 – Spice
#66 – Grey	#67 – Denim	#68 – Rust	#69 – Flirt	#70 – Sunset
#71 – Sable	#72 – Desert	#73 – Jade	#74 – Sage	#75 – Buff
#76 – Jet	#77 – Plum	#78 – Leather	#79 – Liberty	#80 – Metal
#81 – Sepia	#82 – Lavender	#83 – Scarlet	#84 – Crystal	#85 – Chestnut
#86 – Shadow	#87 – Lemon	#88 – Mystic	#89 – Silver	#90 – Coffee
#91 – Seafoam	#92 – Lime	#93 – Punch	#94 – Pickle	#95 – Champagne
#96 – Copper	#97 – Bittersweet	#98 – Honey	#99 – Candy	#100 – Gold

(no subject)

i am alive. i have been writing. we're working on a longfic of which the first draft seven years ago was 25k, the current draft is 149k, and my math estimates that if we start the finale right now we might come in under 190k if we don't add any more subplots.

we have, sort of, an outline for how the finale will go. the story is a fusion universe canon divergence au of "star wars: the force awakens" and star wars legendsverse, both of them slow roasted for juicy bits, with a heavy focus on x-wing pilots. the premise is... well, honestly i think the summary i've written for it works well:

"Cadet officer Poe Dameron went missing, presumed dead, before his graduation from the New Republic Flight Academy. Years later, the rising First Order sends a mysterious lone X-wing pilot to raid unaligned planets. Resistance General Leia Organa recruits General Wedge Antilles and Colonel Wes Janson to investigate."

we recapture poe and the second half of the story is basically him slowly relearning how to be a person. there's torture, there's found family, there's regular family (fuck you disney kes dameron is a good dad and we're stealing him), han and leia didn't get divorced, luke disappeared without a word as he does after his jedi academy experiment went wrong so now nobody's entirely sure if it was him or his nephew or both who went darkside and carved up all the other students... we're actually not resolving that part in this one, we have plans for a whole-ass sequel, but that's later.

in order to figure out who does what where when in "the force awakens", i had to rewatch the whole movie very slowly and pause to take a bunch of notes. i hadn't watched it since "the last jedi" came out because the fan behavior around that movie soured me on everything new canon so badly. tfa is a solid standalone movie, excellent nostalgia bait, it's just... covered in the fucking ooze, as the tumblr post says.

zero technobabble though. just making things happen because they look cool and who cares if they'll make sense later. which means i had to make up all the technobabble about starkiller base from scratch. mostly based on a childhood astronomy hyperfixation from the '90s in which most of my books were from the '50s and '60s. maybe it'll feel more authentically star wars or something. (i'm being self-deprecating, i actually am a bit proud of what i came up with, even though i have no idea how much is gonna make it into the briefing because nobody on this cast is a damn engineer.)

anyway we do have an outline but then we wrote six thousand words that weren't strictly in the outline and now we need to write people quarrelling over theories of the force so who knows when we'll actually get to the finale. i think i'm having fun though?

Fic: All the Powers of Lust (Star Wars)

All the Powers of Lust (9922 words) by thedarlingone
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Legends: X-Wing Series - Aaron Allston & Michael Stackpole
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Wedge Antilles/Tycho Celchu/Wes Janson/Derek "Hobbie" Klivian, Wedge Antilles & Luke Skywalker, Cubber Daine/Wes Janson/OCs, Shara Bey/Kes Dameron/Wes Janson
Characters: Wedge Antilles, Wes Janson, Derek "Hobbie" Klivian, Tycho Celchu, Luke Skywalker, Cubber Daine
Additional Tags: Aromantic Asexual Luke Skywalker, Orgy, Movie: Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Planet Hoth (Star Wars), Planet Hoth is Cold (Star Wars), Blow Jobs, Hand Jobs, Anal Sex, Anal Fingering, Oral Sex, Cunnilingus, Foursome - M/M/M/M, Threesome - F/M/M, Foursome - F/F/M/M
Summary:

Wes has a plan to improve efficiency on Echo Base. Wedge is appalled, then intrigued.

Or: the Great Hoth Orgy of 2 ABY was a resounding success, mostly.

(no subject)

Bait and Switch (4123 words) by thedarlingone
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars Legends: X-Wing Series - Aaron Allston & Michael Stackpole
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Wedge Antilles & Wes Janson
Characters: Wedge Antilles, Wes Janson
Additional Tags: Missing Scene, Canon Related, Wraith Squadron (Star Wars), Canon Rewrite
Summary:

"You want to re-enact the death of Iceheart with yourself in the starring role?"

***

Wedge and Wes finalize the Wraith Squadron roster and address the issue of putting Wes and Kell into combat situations together. Wes suggests a solution. Wedge doesn't like it. And when Wedge Antilles really doesn't like something, he's not going along with it.

Missing scene for Wraith Squadron.

(look what i wrotened)

(no subject)

I appear to be alive. The Rogue Squadron discord (Star Wars rebel pilots fandom, approximately) has been really hopping lately, as much as a fandom that's never gone over a dozen active members in my memory can hop; I've written and published several fics, so many that I'm not sure I've even crossposted them all to here. (I may have, but I'm too tired to check.) Somebody asked about "necroposting" on discussions from a few hours ago -- we're in favor, approximately half the chatter right now is from old LJ-era fans, one of whom recently found where everyone else had gone to (via me, I'm smug) -- and someone else pointed out that the whole fandom is basically necroposting, as the vast majority of our Rebel pilot canon was published 1996–1999 and the final piece of what this group usually works off of is from 2012.

Being the extrovert I am, I've also drawn enough energy and enthusiasm from the chatter to do most of the necessary line edits on the first 136k of a monster fic Leia and I have been trying to finish up.

( waffling )

...where was I? Right. We're also picking up some renewed enthusiasm for the rest of the WIPs we dropped when the fandom died out the last time, but who knows how far we'll get in any of those since we are trying to finish a couple of the current ones first.

I've also been working sporadically on more of that Close Readings meta-analysis piece I think I did crosspost to here semi-recently, but because the author (GNU) had binge-read everything else that was published at the time before writing the books I'm analyzing, they're full of references I keep missing. So I'm genuinely pondering whether to go and read all of the old EU (I actually prefer the current brand name, "Legends") in publication order and make extensive notes. If I do, I'll likely livechat them on the discord because we have a book club channel, then archive somewhat modified versions of the notes here so I can reference them later.

( different waffling )

Fic: Shadows of Tierfon (Star Wars Legends)

Shadows of Tierfon (1838 words) by thedarlingone
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars Legends: X-Wing Series - Aaron Allston & Michael Stackpole, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Wedge Antilles & Wes Janson
Characters: Wedge Antilles, Wes Janson
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Backstory
Summary:

"You did better!" The words burst out of him. Wedge had shot him down without killing him, last week, when his astromech went nuts and tried to vape Luke. He'd thought -- kriff, he'd thought he was finally about to pay for what he'd done to Doran those years ago.

AU for Shadows of the Empire. Wes tells Wedge about Kissek Doran much earlier than in canon.

***

Man, I just keep writing things. At least this one is only 2k. My poor brain though.

(no subject)

Meta Collection: Close Readings and Exegesis on Aaron Allston's Wraith Squadron Trilogy and Starfighters of Adumar (30614 words) by thedarlingone
Chapters: 6/?
Fandom: Star Wars Legends: X-Wing Series - Aaron Allston & Michael Stackpole
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Wedge Antilles, Wes Janson, Derek "Hobbie" Klivian
Additional Tags: Meta
Summary:

Meta, headcanons, fanons, and canon analysis, mostly mine, collected and re-edited in dialogue with the Legends X-Wing fandom on Tumblr and Discord.

***

the first scene of chapter 4 of wraith squadron, aka the doran incident, aka the first portrayal of ptsd i ever saw myself reflected in as a tiny tortellini (well, i would have been about twenty, but still), and the reason i latched onto this fandom and eventually acquired a

the_dour_one through the rogue squadron discord.

twelve thousand words analyzing less than 900. been putting it off for three and a half years. brain is porridge now, i go flop

Fic: Echoed Days (Star Wars)

Echoed Days (3481 words) by thedarlingone
Chapters: 1/3
Fandom: Star Wars - All Media Types
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Wedge Antilles & Wes Janson
Characters: Wedge Antilles, Wes Janson
Additional Tags: Medical Inaccuracies, Medical Grossness, Planet Hoth (Star Wars), Post-Battle of Hoth (Star Wars), Whump, Canon Rewrite
Summary:

After the Battle of Hoth, Wedge Antilles and Wes Janson are stranded alone on the ice planet, Wes with severe internal injuries. Wedge does his best to take care of him and work toward rescue for them both.

(Rewrite of Marvel Star Wars #78 from 1983.)

***

So a friend got me Kindle copies of all the Rogue Squadron comics Dark Horse put out in the '90s, and also the one issue of the old Marvel Star Wars comic that I was interested in rereading, and I appear to be writing all the fic ideas I had when I read them the first time ten-ish years ago while unable to string fiction words together due to Prozac side effects. (This one is even long enough to put chapter breaks in, which feels like it's never happened to one of my solo pieces before although I can't swear to that.)

I'm honestly so nervous about this one. I didn't co-write it with Leia, so I don't get the "we're so good together" confidence boost, and it's... weird. And very whumpy. It's... very me, for sure? That's the best I've got.

The next chapters will go up tomorrow and the next day, assuming I don't explode or anything. You never know.

(no subject)

The Rogue Squadron Discord (Wraith Squadron and all other Star War pilots also welcome), which goes through long periods of dormancy, is absolutely hopping recently -- we've gotten some new people and we're all chatting about the X-wing books and other Star Wars pilot-adjacent stuff. If that sounds at all interesting to you, we'd love to have you join as well!

(I just got ebook copies of the '90s Rogue Squadron comics from a friend. There will be screenshots in the Discord once I finish squeeing.)

Fic: Isolation (Star Wars Legends X-wing)

I posted a fic for the first time this year!

Isolation (6167 words) by thedarlingone
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars Legends: X-Wing Series - Aaron Allston & Michael Stackpole
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Wes Janson, Wes Janson's Astromech (OC)
Additional Tags: uh. shit. is castin a major character?, Canonical Character Death, Missing Scene, Castin Donn (mentioned), Introspection, POV Droid (Star Wars)
Summary:

Wes was supposed to be spending three very boring uneventful days nominally in command of Hawk-bat Base while Wedge took most of the squad to Coruscant for leave.

That was before he found out Castin Donn had just stowed away on Face's mission to meet with Warlord Zsinj.

Now he's spending three boring days in his X-wing hoping a Super Star Destroyer doesn't show up.

(Missing scenes for the book X-Wing: Iron Fist)

(no subject)

One nice thing about having to do all this very slow DIY hunting, at least, is that I get really excited whenever I do get anything at all I didn't have. I moved Cephalobot in and he just gave me a recipe for golden gears, which I needed, and then I got the golden garden bunny from a beach bottle.

I really haven't had much luck getting new recipes from amiibo villagers lately; I know it's possible, I've done it in the past, but both the smug villagers I tried seemed to get stuck in this weird little loop, so I'm wondering if there's coding where they can only ask for certain recipes while in the campsite, so you don't have to craft them an entire golden casket or something. I've never seen anything like that in the datamines, but I know there are parts of this game that just aren't well understood.

I'm thinking I might cycle in all the villagers of a certain personality that I have amiibo for until I polish off their DIYs. I've been holding back one of each personality so I can do the daily campsite trick, but it doesn't seem to be working.

( rambling about options )

(no subject)

More completionist grinding on Animal Crossing New Horizons today. You're supposed to be able to trade with friends for items you want, but the lack of game-stable wifi is preventing me. I know I'm stubborn enough to keep going by myself, it's just... tiring.

( Read more... )

(no subject)

I've been rereading a bunch of DWJ off and on as it comes in at the library. Today was Castle in the Air (I remembered most of how it goes this time; I first read a lot of DWJ while not forming memories so it's always an adventure whether I'll remember any of it or not) and The Homeward Bounders.

I seem to recall someone saying something I can't quite remember about Jamie being generally considered one of the less likable protagonists, or more exasperating or something... I can't remember exactly what was said, but I was so confused that I couldn't even remember who Jamie was and had to ask. (He's the protagonist of Homeward Bounders.) I mean, I did read it for the first time right at the beginning of my own wanderings, but it still puzzles me that he would be considered especially annoying or whatever it was they said. He's just accurate. He's no more overconfident than Christopher Chant, no more abrasive than Sophie Hatter... he's simply what happens when you lose the capability to have a home.

Anyway, yeah, I have feelings about Jamie. For obvious reasons.

(no subject)

over the past couple days i've taken out the rest of the guardians in my botw savefile. well, there are a couple left in shrines, i think, but i did all the overworld ones and all the combat shrines. i'm down to twelve shrines left, which are:

( Read more... )

(no subject)

I've been playing on my no-blood-moon Breath of the Wild save, working on clearing korok seeds and non-weapon chests from various sections of the map as I feel like it. I got a lot done yesterday -- cleared Satori Mountain, which is one of the more cram-packed areas -- but I didn't write down how many koroks I had at the beginning, so it's hard to know just how much progress I made. (There's no in-game counter for chests opened, which is fine because there are like three that are glitched out and impossible to reach without doing elaborate glitchy nonsense of your own.)

I don't know how far I'll get today, but I have 205 koroks out of 900 collected so far. Not bad, really. That's a little under 23%. (I've also done 80 shrines out of 120, and I think I have most of the warp points for the other 40? They're just either combat shrines I don't want to do until I need the weaponry from the enemies, or really annoying bottomless-pit shrines that I don't feel like tackling until I need the weaponry from the chests inside them.)

Maybe I'll clear out some Guardians today. I bought some Ancient Arrows from Robbie, so I don't have to do three perfectly timed laser parries on each one, or even use a particularly good bow.

Edit: I just shot down a single Guardian Skywatcher and got a Giant Ancient Core, which is something like a 4-6% chance -- it's 0.5% per pull and there are 8-12 pulls on the drop table per kill -- so it occurs to me that I should probably track those too. I currently have 4 regular cores and 7 giant cores, counting the one I just got, because I've used a bunch of the regular cores for things. There are... a lot of Guardians left to kill, several dozen at least, so we'll see how far I get?

Edit2: I got a bunch of cores as well as the more common drops; I spent 15 regular and 6 giant cores on upgrading my guardian-resistance armor to max, and I still had one regular and two giant cores left, so I must have gotten one more giant core and 12 regular ones. I haven't even killed nearly all the guardians that there are! I was very worried I wouldn't get enough cores to buy and upgrade the armor if I'm not letting the guardians respawn, but I guess I'm doing okay. I invested the last two giant cores into an Ancient Bow, which fires straight with almost no arrow drop so I can get flying Guardians from a distance, and an Ancient Shield, which bounces Guardian lasers back without me having to time my parries. They'll both break eventually, but by that time I should hopefully have a lot more of the guardians cleared out and get some more cores. Not tonight, though.

(no subject)

memed from

thisbluespirit I have made a list of 50 foundational media things of mine... it's quite a mixed bag and I don't know that I'd say I recommend all of them at this remove but they all certainly left a mark on me. I have a massive sinus headache due to changing weather so I'm sure there are a lot of things I've forgotten all about. Also most of them really ought to be "this entire series or this author's entire oeuvre" but we make do. Anyway consider letting me know which ones you've experienced or whatever. (It's got everything from music to video games as well as the expected books and movies so who knows.)

(no subject)

i did not go to the protests today; i used up my mobility spoons for the week earlier, and also i am actively avoiding being at places where i have the slightest risk of being detained, because if i don't get back to the shelter by 11pm i lose my bed and they throw out all my stuff.

i have also not been playing much pokemon. i switched over to breath of the wild, which would be easier if the shelter wifi didn't block all video game related websites including the interactive map i use to check off the collectibles. (it doesn't block youtube for some reason, so it seems unlikely to be a question of bandwidth, just "nobody on the resident wifi here should be able to access ign or gamefaqs because clearly then they'll be lazy Bad Homeless and never leave" or, you know. something to that effect?)

( Read more... )

(no subject)

have not been playing brilliant diamond for a few days, leia is going through some shit and i'm also having trouble getting the food stamps renewal people to talk to me. but a friend of mine did link me a gameboy emulator for android and send me a copy of pokemon crystal to put into it, so i've been playing that a little bit this evening. apparently it introduced concepts such as "play as girl" to the pokeverse. it's also a unified version without version exclusives, which they used to do apparently -- i don't know why, and they stopped after about gen4, presumably because they realized people would just wait to buy one unified version instead of two versions with exclusives? i don't know, i was never even on the periphery of the pokemon phenomenon once it stopped being absolutely unavoidable.

anyway it's interesting. somehow the 16bit style gives it a completely different feel than 3D pokeymans. i haven't gone anywhere near the first gym yet (it makes you do a fair amount of trekking around before you even get pokeballs) so we'll see how i continue to feel about it. at least this time i know going in that gym 3 traumatized a generation, so i have slightly less expectation of not getting my ass kicked

pokeymans update

So I got tired of catching a new pokemon on every route, since I had most of the common ones and the new ones becoming available weren't especially useful to me (Girafarig's Normal/Psychic typing basically removes Psychic's Fighting resistance at the cost of also giving it a Ghost immunity, for instance), which was the main reason I'd started writing things down here, so I fell off of doing that. But apparently people have been interested, so, uh.

Well, the nuzlocke fell apart at gym seven -- I lost two pokemon of level 50+ in the level 42 Ice gym, because I screwed up my type resistances and managed to send in two pokemon that were weak to Ice, partly because I didn't expect a Medicham to have an Ice move (it can learn Ice Punch, it turns out) and hadn't read my reference material closely enough to realize that it would.

I knew I was probably going to get upset and end the nuzlocke as soon as I lost one of my major players, but I didn't expect that to happen until the Elite Four,

( Read more... )

Anyway, so then I went to try to transfer my nuzlocke pokemon into Pokemon Home and found out that because my secondary profile doesn't have a separate Nintendo login account, I can't do that anyway, so it's good that I didn't get as far as catching any legendaries on there (which was going to be one of the next steps after gym seven). So I've started a different playthrough on my main profile where I have the Pokemon Home paid subscription.

I definitely established that I prefer having fewer pokemon so I don't have to worry about grinding them all to sufficiently high levels. The rest of the nuzlocke format is too stressful, though, and I definitely want to be able to catch a bunch of the same pokemon until I get one with good stats to raise.

I've just beaten the third gym in this new playthrough --

( Read more... )

nuzlocke day 7

* note to self, come back to Valor Lakefront and look for a Girafarig at some point, I'm tired of hunting for now.

* On Route 213, I could get a Wingull in the tall grass, or I could wait until I get Surf and go look for a Tentacool, or use the Good Rod to try for a Remoraid. I'm not really sure what I want here.

* I reached Pastoria City, so at least I can warp back here now. I'm tired and Crasher Wake's gym is one of those puzzles where you have to go around a complicated path battling every single trainer, so I might not tackle him tonight.

* I did make enough money on the way to buy the outfit I wanted, so at least I'll look cute for the gym battle.

nuzlocke day 6

* Ugh, my Happiny fainted. I forgot it was Normal-type and not Fairy (I always get confused between the Chansey line and the Clefairy line) and let it get hit by a Meditite with a supereffective Fighting move.

* I did get almost everyone grinded up to level 30 though, and headed along Route 215 toward Veilstone City.

( Read more... )