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zeldurz · 1 year ago

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Being a house cat means a lot of time to ponder. I am familiar with your fic as it relates to Pellaeon/Thrawn, henceforth, referred to as Prawn. Lately, I have noticed that you have shifted away from this pairing into unfamiliar territory for me, mainly Firmus Piett/Maximilian Veers & Tiaan Jerjerrod/Conan Antonio Motti. Since I am firmly ensconced in my tiny corner of the fandom, I had to ask around, who are these guys?

Now it’s time to ask you. Welcome to my little corner at the Asker’s Studio™️ (don’t mind the ferocious Mini-Panther🐈‍⬛)

Where I go in the fandoms is determined by where ‘my’ authors go, thus, I often find myself in unfamiliar territory. I got my start with Harry Potter, moved on to Gargoyles, enjoyed a long visit with Thrawn, and currently I happily reside in TNG. As person who merely comments, it’s easy to jump around, but as an author, I would think that it would be more complicated.

What made you decide to branch out to these new pairings/fandom? While they are still Star Wars, I view them far enough away from Thrawn to consider them a different fandom (as it is an enormous departure from the Thrawn universe to the Original Trilogy)

I admit that my only knowledge of your new pairings (newer to your fic) is what Wookeepedia tells me, and what more experienced fandom inhabitants add to that. It makes me want to go back to the OT and watch it through a different lens.

What is it that you would want new readers to know about these ancillary characters?

What characteristics do you admire or dislike about them?

Do you see any parallels to characters that you have written about in the past?

I am behind on my Fic reading, but know that I have been enormously entertained by your Whatever it Takes, and I hope to see additional updates sometime in the near future.

Ahhh thank you for having me back on Asker’s Studio, it’s always a pleasure to be here. I will put this under a cut to make everyone's life a little bit easier

I have indeed shifted my preferences into the adjacent world of OT Imperials, at least for the moment. While I can firmly say that this is all the wonderful @alexx-dax’s fault – since I started following him on tumblr and was left with many similar questions to those you have posed to me: who are these men? How can I tell them apart? Why should I even care? – the question of “why” still remains, and for that, my answer is two-fold.

I would say that the jump from Thrawn to the OT Imps is not as far as it looks on the surface – much of the internal politics and settings aboard a Star Destroyer in Thrawn’s time (be it in Canon before the Battle at Lothal or in Legends aboard the Chimaera) remain the same. This makes it both easier to write (as I already have an idea of The Empire and how it operates) and easier to integrate characters that are still very near and dear to my heart – in fact, while I have yet to make full use of it in a fic, the fact that Grand Admiral Thrawn was the one that recommended a then Corporal Veers to Darth Vader for his Death Squadron has a lot of room for potential. I also think it helps that the Imps have a much less wide-reaching fandom – there’s a very small, very enthusiastic community that has made me feel very welcome as I undertake my studies into Background Men, and I really appreciate that.

Without going into too much detail, I would also be remiss if I did not touch on the issue of Writer Burnout and how that has contributed to my step away from writing Thrawn. I have the curse of non-functioning executives (aka ADHD/autism), and writing something that isn’t the topic du jour is a painful and tedious process for me (astute readers will also recognize this is why I rarely do outlines/planning and why I almost never edit/proofread my fics before posting them). For every fic that reaches AO3, there are 8-10 more that are half finished on my google drive, and I tend to lose creative steam on things very, very quickly. Between a bunch of stuff IRL and the rise of people discussing Thrawn and his characterization in fandom spaces(1), I’m having a very hard time getting my ‘voice’ for Thrawn back (it doesn’t help that my largest and most popular fic has spiraled into something much, much larger than I had originally planned, and I’m very much struggling to figure out how to tie it off in a satisfying way lol).

But back to these new guys. Who are they and why should you care?

First of all, if you wish to join me in my corner with my dolls, I would actually recommend watching the OT again but considering the perspectives of the Imps – in particular, Ken Colley’s portrayal of Piett in Empire Strikes back and Michael Pennington’s Jerjerrod in Return of the Jedi(2) give a lot of depth to the characters that we often just see as “bad guy henchmen”. People have written many things about these characters over the years (some of which I agree with and some of which I do not), but I always come back to Piett’s expression as he watches Admiral Ozzel choke to death beside him; these characters are Imperials, yes, but they are not all Tarkin or Palpatine – that is, they are not simply evil for the sake of being evil. Veteran Thrawn fans will know that writing from the perspective of the antagonists can be a lot of fun – and for my brand of fic (ie the hurt/comfort), there are a lot of Rebel Victories that bring pain that’s worth exploring (not unlike Bilbringi in the HTTE Trilogy).

I have spoken a lot about the Imperials as a collective, so now it’s time to get into the individuals. While I will touch a little bit on my favourite ships (Piett/Veers and Motti/Jerjerrod), I think that another fun part about writing these particular characters is that they work well in many different pairings, depending on the vibe you’re going for (I will spare you the chart, but I do have one). Anyway, without further ado and in no particular order, the incomplete summary of Imps:

Firmus Piett (ESB, ROTJ):

Piett is the character that got me hooked on the imperials in the first place – his “goddammit I’m just trying to do my job and not get murdered” energy combined with his otherness (in that unlike most other high-ranking officers, he is neither from a core world nor upper class). His days fighting in the Axxilian anti-pirate fleet only add to this vibe, and much of his characterization (that I go off of, anyway) centers around him being scrappy and resourceful – useful where other, snobbier officers might not be.

As with all things Fanfiction and particularly with the Imperials (as there is comparatively little material to work with), there will always be flavours of characters depending on who is writing them, but I enjoy Piett’s potential for a found family, along with his biting snark and ability to survive only on caf and spite.

Maximilian Veers (ESB):

Veers has the distinction of being in the Imperial Army, rather than the Navy, which automatically gives him a different flavour than the others. It’s my understanding that there’s a rivalry between the Army and the Navy, which lends itself well to a back and forth banter that is easily one of my favourite things in an Imp fic. Veers is also the strong and stoic character – he’s not intimidated by Vader, and he’s going to do his damn job, no matter what.

I’m a big sap for the “hard on the outside soft on the inside” trope, and Veers is perfect for this. He protects his Herd with a fierce loyalty, and is a proven competent leader, but he’s also the sort of guy who teases his partner and loves physical affection. Veers is a giant, blond puppy, and I love that about him. His vibe works especially well with Piett, since they have the whole "tol and smol"/Army-Navy/slowly opening up to one another vibe that I love.

Tiaan Jerjerrod (ROTJ):

Listed as a “cold technocrat” on every official description, Tiaan is another one of those characters that has many layers to him. He is the rich snob from the core, but he’s also an extremely competent engineer who was hand picked to handle some of the Empire’s biggest projects. He’s also comparatively young (a full fifteen years younger than Pellaeon, and ten years younger than Veers, if Wookieepedia is to be believed), and yet has made his way to the top of the top. Tiaan also has the distinction that (at least in the deleted scenes) we see him hesitate – even when given an order, he is conflicted about firing the Death Star II at Endor, given the number of Imperials still on the moon.

Tiaan is usually characterized as being neurotic and anxious – a sort of wet-cat energy that contrasts well with the competence he is known for. His background – a rich aristocrat coming from a long line of decorated Naval Officers from a conservative planet – only adds to this effect, and I’m a big fan of stories that explore how he navigates (or doesn’t) the enormous pressures he faces.

Conan Antonio Motti (ANH):

Loud, Obnoxious, and American, Motti stands out among the Joint Chiefs in the one scene he is in. He has the balls to challenge Vader, and the gusto to back it up – he’s also quite young, having risen to be commander of the DS-I in his early 30s (based on his actor’s age, Wookieepedia does not have a birthday for him). While there are scant few other canon appearances for him, it’s also worth noting that one of them is him writing a letter to HR regarding Vader’s Force Choke, and another is a passage from the Death Star Novel about how he works out in only a speed-strap juggling balls in heavy gravity.

Motti can be summed up as the “Go Big or Go Home” guy who is crass, loud, and gets in everyone’s face. He can be a lot of fun to read and write because he’s so obnoxious, and that makes him fun to include even if the story is primarily about someone else. He pairs well with Jerjerrod because they have similar backstories (young, wealthy) but wildly different personalities, although I have been enjoying the Motti-Thrawn friendship lately (that would give Pellaeon a migraine)

Overall, each of these characters (and Captain Lorth Needa, of course, everyone’s favourite Dad Friend and holder of the single brain cell) has a unique vibe that they bring to the table, and it’s fun to see how they interact with both each other and the Situations they find themselves in. I also find them to be very relatable – every author pours a little bit of their heart and soul into the characters they write, but for me personally, there is a lot I can draw from my own experiences (not unlike how I have written a very few very personal Thrawn fics).

With that being said, I do struggle sometimes to hit the right notes and strike a balance between “canon”, “fanon” and the story I want to tell. While Thrawn has (for the most part) been consistently written and it is easy enough to see a through-line for his story, that is absolutely not the case here. There are many examples I could speak to (Needa as “ruthless”, Veers refusing prosthetics due to stigma or Jerjerrod “loving war”), but for the sake of brevity I will only touch on one: Piett as a schemer who sought to deliberately have Ozzel killed.

While this is… an interpretation of the source material (IE Empire Strikes Back) and has since been made canon by From Another Point of View, it disregards the intentions of Ken Colley in playing the character. He wanted Piett to come off as more relatable to the audience, to give depth to the Empire as more than just a faceless monolith, and I would argue that he is quite successful in doing so(3). Undermining this (and his backstory notes about being an underdog within the Empire) take away some of the aspects of his character that I really enjoy – but does it make my Piett OOC if he wouldn’t do something like that? Does it matter?

Anyway almost two thousand words and three footnotes, it’s very much time for me to wrap this up (as bad as I am at writing endings). Suffice it to say that I find the Imps to be an excellent sandbox with which to play in, and I appreciate both the time you’ve taken to ask me about them and the time it’s taken to read through this essay of sorts.

I’m hoping I’ll get back to Whatever it Takes sooner or later, but I would rather wait for inspiration to strike me than to keep beating my head against a metaphorical wall until an ending falls out. Until next time, thank you again for the ask and all the wonderful comments you have left for me 😊

(1)I should note that this isn’t targeted at any group in particular and isn’t meant to be a negative statement – just that the Thrawn fandom continues to grow, and with the upcoming Ashoka Show, there are a lot of people with a lot of different opinions about the character, and for someone who isn’t particularly adept at navigating the sea of fandom, it can be extremely overwhelming.

(2)If you are able to watch the deleted scenes from ROTJ, that’s even better – there are some excellent Jerjerrod scenes that did not make the final cut

(3)I do own two Piett action figures and haven’t read Another Point of View yet, so I could be a little bit biased

#my inbox

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contentment-of-cats · 1 year ago

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Part I

I cannot think of anyone I would rather have at my side, as we walk our measured miles down the winding road of life (yours being FAR more tenuous than mine) Nonetheless, here we are with you lighting the way as we navigate illness, cats, and fandom. Since you’re so old - ancient even (not so inside joke😆) I have the pleasure of accessing your - WHUT?!- 30 years of fandom activity.

Holy guacamole 🥑!

Welcome, my friend, as this is the first time I have had the pleasure of inviting you to my imaginary easy chairs over here at the Asker’s Studio™️ (cats are extra welcome here)

This is probably going to be in two parts. In this first installment, I would like you to give us your history:

How did you enter fan fiction?

What was the medium? Did you participate in Zines?

Please list the fandoms. What were your experiences/favorites?

Did you have anywhere like A03 to post your fics?

Do you still have any connections from back in the early days?

Included in your history, I would be curious to know if you attended any comic-cons, gatherings, etc.

Bonus: Is it true that in the early days, people used their real names?

***

We will end the first half with the overview. The second half of the interview will deal with the growing pains of Fandom: Censorship, Fandom lifecycles, Media transitions, pitfalls (Dark Fandom), and lessons learned.

This has been a long time coming. I’m thrilled to see it come to fruition.

Ahhh! It's great to find this in my inbox this morning. Thank you so much for asking me.

I'm so happy you're feeling better. The measured miles are thoughtful ones, and good for clearing out the crap, but also for finding out who is willing to walk them with you. I'm blessed to have you and other ride or die folks with me. Man, I am Old, not just Fandom Old, but within hailing distance of sixty! No sin in Old, there are a lot of folks who don't make it. I'm blessed there, too, to have the extra time that I do. Let me get comfy in that easy chair, sip my coffee and cuddle a cat.

How did you enter fan fiction?

I became aware of fan fiction and fan works when I was in middle school. My hometown had a great record store, and I'd go in on Fridays with my allowance and whatever kid-work money I had. My Walkman was a constant companion, and I'd buy cassettes and records, then go down the street to the newsstand for comics. One day, I went in and there was a Star Trek mimeographed 'zine - someone cut a mimeograph stencil and inked it. I picked it up, it was the same price as a comic book, but it had stories - some that I should not have been reading in middle school, but I did!

Side note. I remembered reading Spock: Messiah in a zine before it came out as a book. Everyone tells me that no zine would publish something that godawful

It's weird, but now I look back and think that it was someone working in a school. Could have even been one of my teachers. Photo copiers were huge and expensive back then, most schools didn't have them. Those zines were something I anticipated as a kid - and my mother trashed the lot when she found them. Of course, some never put out more than one issue, but the record store soon became the zine store.

I'd always told stories in my head as a kid, but I didn't start writing until I took a creative writing class as an extracurricular in high school. Fan fiction writing for me didn't enter the picture until the start of the internet (at $2.50 a minute on a dialup modem and pre-Windows 95) and I fell into fandom as an activity on Usenet. I think my first fanfic was a Skinner/Scully from X-Files about 1994. I wrote pretty regularly in that pairing, but the fics, the archives, and the e-Groups/Yahoo Groups are long gone.

What was the medium? Did you participate in Zines?

My first fics went to a Usenet group, and then after that to a Skinner/Scully e-Group. I submitted to a couple of archives, too.

I didn't participate in zines, but I did read whenever I could get my hands on one. I stashed them in the attic under one of the floorboards with my comic books and the bodice-ripper romances.

Please list the fandoms. What were your experiences/favorites?

Nancy Drew books were my first fandom. Little House on the Prairie books, too, but I really loved Nancy. Comics - Archie, Wonder Woman, Dr. Strange, and I casually read about a half dozen others. Of course I loved my Saturday morning shows. The after-school specials were too preachy and I hated them. I wished for a magic box to record all my shows so I didn't have to pick and choose - the betamax was out and OMG so expensive. Mom was not going to cough up that kind of money just to record cartoons and kids shows.

My first visual media fandom was Star Trek which I started watching when it was in syndication. I think I was seven or eight? I bought the books long into the early 80s. Space:1999 was next, Star Wars was after that. I know I picked up the zine before the movie came out. Battlestar: Galactica was a favorite and had its own zine.

Then there was a long lull where I was just too jammed with messy family stuff, school, and extracurriculars that kept me out of the house. At fifteen, I started a paycheck job. I didn't really get into being a fan again until ST:TNG, X-Files, and Heir to the Empire. I was in the Harry Potter and Black Butler fandoms, and also wrote in Doctor Who, Sherlock, and Star Trek's reset movie. Fandoms after that were Stargate (movie and SG1), ST:TNG, Babylon 5, Star Trek: Voyager, Sliders, Farscape, Firefly, all of the Star Wars original trilogies (do not talk to me about the sequels), some of the books, and naturally the two latest Thrawn trilogies. I've enjoyed The Mandalorian, Andor, the Bad Batch, and have idly been watching Rebels and The Clone Wars.

Did you have anywhere like A03 to post your fics?

Back in the Ancient Times, there was only Usenet. Then people started posting to e-Groups, Yahoo Groups, and Listserv. Public fanfic didn't really take off until people could make their own sites - think Geocities, Angelfire and so on. People made sites for their own fic, or started archives. Fanfiction.net came along in 1998 and was a HUGE development - anyone could post whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted to do it! You didn't have to submit to an archive, didn't have to format the html. You just uploaded it!

There were a lot of copycats, especially after FF.net went after the porn, but Live Journal gave the authors a place to post fic themselves, and have a social media interaction. It was heaven - until it wasn't. Archive of Our Own grew out of Live Journal and the repeated crackdowns on smut and slash and launched in 2008. I've been there ever since.

Do you still have any connections from back in the early days?

I still have one friend and collaborator that I've known since early 2000's. We talk most nights and have been through a lot together.

Included in your history, I would be curious to know if you attended any comic-cons, gatherings, etc.

Cons and gatherings always required resources that I never had at the same time. If I ever had the time or the money at the same time, I'd go. I used to go to Comic-Con in Pasadena back when it was just a comic and collector's show.

Bonus: Is it true that in the early days, people used their real names?

It depended on the circumstances. Almost everyone online used a pseudonym. In the 'zine days, the circles were smaller and many people used their real names, unless it was smutty.

#asker's studio #aaaaaaaaaaaa #fandom old #i forgot so much shit until you asked me about it

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coruscantiscribbler · 2 years ago

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Both Sides Now

I have always thought that Star Wars had an identity crises: they claimed to be targeting a youngish crowd, but they lassoed adults in droves. When they specifically cater to children, the adults go on a rampage. When they finally gift us adults with our first really mature program, Andor, a particularly vocal cross-section was up in arms because they were bored by lack of visual stimulation. It seems that the franchise cannot win.

But Andor did win, and win big it did.

My guest @coruscantiscribbler wrote an essay, There Is Nothing Slow Or Boring About Andor illustrating just this point: Star Wars can produce top notch quality content. While not the rollicking good time delivered by, A New Hope or the angst-laden (but guaranteed to be resolved) Empire Strikes Back, nonetheless, it carves out a genre all to its self.

Scribbs! welcome back to the Asker’s Studio™️, my most frequent and favored guest. You make a lot of concrete points about what Andor is and is not, and what many folks unfortunately missed as they watched. The main point that you make is that both Syril & Andor go through profound changes (to the point of exchanging roles) In Andor, you make this observation:

Cassian had only the desire to get through the next day with enough money for a drink and a boink. But by the time of Rogue One Andor knows not only who he is, but what he is fighting for, and he has gone to serving a higher purpose.

When I read this passage, a distinct arc in the series came to mind: the time in which Andor spends in prison. While others may have felt that Andor was introduced to cooperation in the first arc - when he worked with the rebels to steal the credits - I feel that the real test came when he had to devise an escape plan that required the help of others. I believe that it was the first time Andor really had to break from his self-serving isolation and truly work as a team.

Am I alone in thinking that the prison arc was transformative to Andor, or was this part of your evolutionary observation of Andor? I ask this because most people who did not like the show that of this arc as particularly slow.

For Syril, we can see that the further he gets from the structured environment (that he is initially working under), the more he is stretched beyond his capacity. Eventually, when it all caves, we see the signs of a psychotic break. As we move towards the end of the season, there is a possibility that in saving Diedre, Syril might be redeemed. He might once again have purpose - one that lines up perfectly with his singular obsession with Andor.

Are we are going to find both men firmly ensconced in organizations that ultimately take advantage of both of their skill sets, so that when they next meet, each will have the power of many behind them?

Are we to be pulling the lens back and observing the two entities - Rebels and Imperials - fighting it out, or will we continue to focus more on character-driven development? What would you like to see?

I was moved by the show, but strangely, as a sometimes fic writer, I was not inspired to write anything regarding the content. I began to wonder if my impetus to write was mostly due to frustration by what was lacking, therefore, I set out to improve it with fic. With Andor, everything was as it should be, thus, I had no improvement, no fic.

Have you given any thought to this concept of fic inspired by Andor?

Finally, I wish for you to go where you want with this discussion. My questions seem shallow to me after reading your essay, yet, I wish to delve deeper into the topic of Andor, so please feel free to go in any direction you desire!

Thank you so much for taking the time for this thoughtful and insightful ask. I didn't address the prison episodes because it seemed that many of the people who had given up on Andor cited those first couple of episodes as the reason for their disinterest.

What struck about the prison sequence was how it shone a light on how Cassian Andor is not really a leader. He stays in the background and the shadows and he inspires and pushes others to find their courage and to start to believe and ultimately their voice. He does it with Kino. He does it with Jen in Rogue One. It is Jen who makes the passionate speech to the Rebel council, not Andor. It is Kino who inspires the prisoners to push forward despite the blasters in the hands of the Imperial guards.

This is one of the major reasons I selected Andor as the rebel who recruited Kallus, because that is Cassian's gift and his power. Also based on what I had seen in Andor I realized that the Rebellion would have informants among the joy houses and the bars to tell them when an Imperial was getting shaky.

My prediction is that Syril will become an ISB agent as a reward for helping Dedra so that he has more agency to go after Cassian because this does seem to be a duel between these two young men. It is Dedra and Luthen who will be foils for each other. There has been some confusion over who Axis actually is -- it's not Andor, it's Luthen and that's who Dedra is focused on. Cassian is just a tool to reach the true rebel leader.

I think in season two we will start to see the broader Rebellion taking shape, but great story telling isn't about the spectacle, the massive battle. It's the little falling pebbles ie the characters and their choices, that make for true drama not the avalanche itself. I think is often lost on studios and producers especially in feature films. I don't need twenty minutes of a special effects battle, I need the quiet moments where the real choices are made.

I haven't been inspired to write about Luthen or Dedra or Mon Mothma except as they impinge on the fic I'm writing, but I have been inspired to use the fully fleshed out world that Gilroy presented as regards Coruscant and I've tried to bring that sense of a fully realized world to life. I got really, really tired of dusty planets with marketplaces that looked like something out of the 12th century. I wanted to see not only the glitter of Coruscant, but also the Minneapolis of the Star Wars universe.

There is a reason people are quiet in the face of fascism and it's not just fear, it's also about comfort. "Well, I know the government arrested my neighbor but he was (fill in the blank of whatever scapegoat) and I'm not that person, and I have my job and my kids and my spouse to consider, and if you just comply and follow the law you'l be fine, and things are better than the chaos of the Clone Wars", and so the justifications continue.

#Cassian Andor #fascism #syril karn #dedra meero #Luthen #Mon Mothma

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seikilos-stele · 2 years ago

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What’s in a Name?

I’m not sure that I ever titled one of my asks before, but after pondering this particular topic, I think that I will start incorporating titles much like we do fics.

For about a year, I had the orphaned title of a fic, A Thing of Beauty stuck in my head. It was an orphan due to the fact that the title was so suggestive for a horror fic, that I could not due it justice. The title stole the thunder of the fic that never was. (Actually, I did eventually write/publish the fic as part of a group challenge, but its best that it remain lost to time 🤣) It set me to thinking about just how important naming a fic really is, so this brings me to the master of fic namers, @seikilos-stele . More familiarly known as Drac.

Welcome back to the Askers Studio™️ Drac, it’s that time again to rummage my brain and pick yours 🤣! Last night, when we were discussing ideas for a new fic, you almost halted mid-sentence and declared that once a name was chosen for this fic, it would practically write itself (which turned out to be true) Now, over the last few months, I have had a sneak peak at the process by which you go about choosing fic names & I have also experienced the gob-smacking significance of those names at varying points in your fics.

I am going to list three of the most profoundly named fics of yours below, and I would like you to tell us at what point they were named, whether the fic induced the name or the other way around. Or anything else you would like to add. I will add that either you have a repository of Shakespeare, poems, and Latin tucked away, or you have incredible recall abilities.

1. The Ferryman

This title was very subtle It does not occur to the reader until the very end, and then it becomes shockingly obvious. Since I had to make an illustrated map of Greek mythology, it was all to apparent who/what we were talking about: Charon. So many questions plagued me about this title/end!! Did you construct a whole fic around this poignantly connected title/ending?? This ranks in my top 5 of your fics, it is by no small part due to the title-end connection.

2. Out of the Woods

Welcome to my all-time favorite fic by Drac. Now, this title sneaks up on you fairly quickly. In fact, @coruscantiscribbler and I were reading it at the same time, and I gave my very elaborate geusstimation of what I thought was going on, and it turned out to be correct. But folks, my very clinical x-section of the plot did not due justice to the beauty & passion that was the fic, itself. The title is a phrase that I use all the time at work. I didn’t have to overthink it…the scenario was dire enough to remove all doubt

3. Requiscant

And here it is: the masterpiece of the Art of Hunger franchise (I seriously think this group of fics deserve their own category in your catalogue) Requiscant in Pace. One does not have to be altogether familiar with Latin to know this one. Stroll by any grave in an Italian cemetery and one will see it on all the stones. So, this was on my mind as I read this fic. A certain anxiety was boiling over as I read chapter to chapter. Finally, I blurted out the truth as I saw it, in the comments. Nadia assured me that I was correct. This revelation is like like cold claws scratching you from the inside. I want to know the genesis of naming this fic in particular, because the title holds the key to everything about this fic. Joint decision? You? Nadia?

It has been a pure joy ruminating about this topic since last night. I cannot wait to read your long, in-depth answer.

As an aside, I would love for other fic writers to pitch in with their own experiences in naming their fics!

Welcome back, Drac.

It’s good to see you again!!

…so this brings me to the master of fic namers, @seikilos-stele . More familiarly known as Drac.

🥺💙

Last night, when we were discussing ideas for a new fic, you almost halted mid-sentence and decided that once a name was chosen for this fic, it would practically write itself (which turned out to be true).

Yes!! Actually, the fic is called “And Thou No Breath At All”, and it’s done now! You can read it here. It’s a dark parasitic horror for Legends Thrawn.

Okay, let’s see. I really wish I’d kept notes on how I came up with titles now 💀 A lot of the time, I just write a oneshot and pull the title out of my ass when it’s complete, or if I’m writing from a prompt list, I just lazily slap the prompt itself on as a title, no matter how bad it is. But keeping in mind that two of these fics are a few years old, I’ll try to answer.

For “The Ferryman”, (yes, after Charon) when I named the document I was working on, I chose this title as filler. I knew my story would involve Ascendancy-era Thrawn receiving mysterious photographs of his childhood, and that he would visit Rentor with Ar’alani, Thalias, Samakro, and Che’ri to figure out where these photographs came from and who was sending them. I knew that the photos would eventually be revealed as coming from Thrass, and that the fic would explore Thrawn’s grief for his brother.

The rest wasn’t planned yet. It’s one of those stories where everything unfolds as you’re writing it. So the title definitely informed the rest of the fic. Because the WIP had “THE FERRYMAN” written on the header in big bold letters, whenever I finished a scene and wondered, “What should I do next?” I would glance up and start brainstorming about death. That’s how I got to the worldbuilding about Rentor’s local sea otters that ferry the souls of the dead across the sea; and that’s how Ar’alani and Thrawn end up in his childhood home, examining the little carvings that Thrawn’s dead father made of his children … and now Thrawn is the only survivor. That’s also how we came to see the shroud ceremony on the ice and finally the family fishing weights that were released into the sea in memory of Thrass.

For this fic, the title definitely informed and influenced the story itself. If I’d given it a temporary name like “Thrawn visits Rentor” or “Chiss family vacation” it would be a much shorter story, though it would still have a sad Thrass-related ending. I bet it would only be about 1K, and it wouldn’t particularly stand out from my other short angst fics. But also, “The Ferryman” was only meant to be temporary! I didn’t personally like it, and I always feel like I’m cheating when someone mentions it. Like I turned in an assignment where I spelled my name wrong XD

2. Out of the Woods

I really like this fic too! I knew what this one would be called as soon as the plot-bunny popped into my head. And yeah, it definitely informed the story again. This was another long oneshot, so the whole time I was writing, I had “OUT OF THE WOODS” in the header, and that helped me form the theme: it’s not just a cute cottagecore Thrawn/Pellaeon fic where they’re retired; it’s not just a spooky horror story; it’s got to be a story of recovery and escape.

So naturally, as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that Thrawn and Pellaeon are living in a false world of some sort, and slowly you uncover clues that one or both of them is trapped in a dream … or a neuromodulator … and all the pieces come together, and you realize this is a story about trauma and accepting help when you need it. Plus, with a pithy title like this, it makes it very easy to solidify your ending early on: Thrawn and Pellaeon will eventually leave their cottage behind and go out of the woods together.

(I had “into the woods and out of the woods and home before dark” stuck in my head the whole time I was writing this)

3. Requiescat

This is my favorite AoH too! And my favorite title on this list! And the lamest story about how I picked it!

I asked Nadia to be sure, and she confirmed my memory. The story behind this one is:

Nadia: “Have you thought of a title?” Me: “I was thinking Requiescat. How does that sound?” Nadia: “Yes, good title!”

The sad thing is, I’m certain there’s more to it. I know I had a whole other title picked out initially. And I know I was reading something, and stumbled across a passage somewhere that made me think of this… but as you know there was a lot going on in my life when I was writing Requiescat, so I don’t remember the details.

(Unfortunately, this title had no bearing on the fic whatsoever. Nadia and I had already hashed out the whole plot in detail more than a year before I selected it to write because I was bored and it just felt right at the time.)

I did find this early version of the fic that might interest you. I think all of this got cut and rewritten when I sent it to Nadia. It involves a Leia who’s not tied up, and a simple cave instead of a kings’ tomb.

****

Requiescat - a prayer for the repose of the dead

There was no light.

When the Noghri pushed her inside, Leia fell to her knees. The harsh slate floor tore through her fine linen robes like they were nothing; in the darkness she could feel flecks of stone embedded in her skin, the hot sting of blood, but she couldn’t see it. Not yet.

Behind her, a slab of stone slid into place, blocking off the last pale rays of sunlight. Shadow swallowed Leia whole. Strands of sweat-damp hair clung to her cheek; her own breathing was harsh in her ears.

“Fitting, I suppose,” said a voice in the dark.

Leia turned away. She placed her scraped palms against the makeshift door and pushed with all her might. It didn’t budge; it just left her shoulders sore and her elbows clicking. Straightening up she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She forced her emotion to swell and then dissipate: outrage, betrayal, a spark of fear, all of it faded away. In the emptiness that followed, there should have been the Force.

There wasn’t.

“Rukh is unusually intelligent for a Noghri,” said the voice in the dark: calm, cultured, bored. “And of course he’s been at my side for many years now. He was positioned perfectly both to understand the usefulness of my ysalamiri and to foresee a time when they might come in handy.”

The ysalamiri. Leia shifted until her back was against the stone slab. “He didn’t tell me he took an ysalamir with him,” she said.

“Why would he?” Thrawn asked. “Who do you suppose he planned to use them against?”

His voice broke a little. Not from emotion. He was hoarse, ragged, barely audible. That was only to be expected. For the past twelve hours he’d had nothing to eat or drink. While Leia sat on the sidelines on Thrawn’s old throne, the Noghri saw to her every need, plying her with local delicacies, all their most-edible foods and pleasing beverages. And just meters away, at the same time, Thrawn’s naked body hung on the makeshift gallows, his arms and legs tied to wooden posts, the sounds of torture and rape filling Leia’s ears.

He was supposed to be buried in here, or better yet, left on Honoghr’s poisoned plains for the birds to pick at his corpse. Leia wasn’t supposed to be in this stone tomb at all.

“You’re awfully calm about this mess,” Leia spat.

Thrawn hummed from the shadows. “I’ve had twelve hours to come to terms with death,” he said neutrally. “You’ve had forty-five minutes. Give it time.”

In her mind’s eye, Leia could see the pale sun glinting off Rukh’s knife as he cut Thrawn’s gag. The rules of Honoghran execution were clear. First came public humiliation --— for someone like Thrawn, who’d poisoned Honoghr and deceived his loyal soldiers for so long, that meant rape. Twelve executioners took their turns. Next came torture. On some planets it was called death by a thousand cuts. The Noghri were a bit too bloody for that term. They used knives, teeth, claws. They tore flesh from the bone, cauterized the wounds to stop the prisoner from bleeding, paused whenever he lost consciousness to ensure he felt every blow.

They left certain areas intact. His jugular. His genitals. His eyes, nose, lips, tongue. Those were saved for last. Those would be taken only when the dirt beneath him was so soaked with blood that it had become a muddy river.

But when Rukh cut Thrawn’s gag and placed his knife blade at the root of Thrawn’s tongue, the Grand Admiral spoke.

Vader poisoned Honoghr, he said. Not me.

And the Noghri could smell the honesty in his blood.

With a low growl, Leia smacked the stone wall. On the other side, there was a scrabble of claws and a reptilian hiss. Ysalamiri. Deeper in the walls, crawling through the tunnels, there was something else: small local animals burrowing through the stone. Leia whispered a curse.

“Be calm,” Thrawn advised. Her eyes were adjusting now, and Leia could just make him out. The Noghri had laid his broken body out on a horizontal slab of stone.

“Help me push,” Leia said. “If we work together…”

In the dark, two red slits appeared. Thrawn had opened his eyes.

“Help you push?” he repeated, a smile in his voice. “Come closer.”

Leia almost didn’t obey. But what did she have to lose? She pushed to her feet and crossed the cramped tomb slowly, careful not to trip over the uneven floor. Thrawn’s eyes put off a dim glow, but it wasn’t much use to her --— not until she was so close that every breath filled her lungs with the thick reek of blood and charred flesh. Thrawn’s eyes met hers, but his head didn’t move.

“This is all I can manage,” he said. “My lips. My eyes. Nothing else.”

Leia looked down at his body. It was wrapped tight in a linen shroud now, his wounds hidden from sight, but Leia knew what lurked just beneath the stained cloth. Massive strips of muscle had been stripped from his shoulders, his legs, his torso. There was hardly anything left on his arms or chest. Beneath the scent of copper and smoke there was something else, cloying and green and artificial.

“I thought they treated you,” Leia said, her voice coming out hushed. “When they took you away.”

Thrawn’s eyelids dipped. It was the closest to a nod that he could manage. “Rukh did,” he said. “He fed me an analgesic for the pain. He washed my wounds.” He met her eyes again. “What else can he do for me?” he asked.

There was no self-pity in his voice. His tone was matter-of-fact and unbothered. But a cold shadow swooped up from Leia’s stomach and enveloped her heart at the words. She walked backwards, blind, until her back hit the door and she slid once more to the rough ground. She would die here. Thrawn would die first; he would succumb to his injuries. Then what would she do? Would she eat his body to stay alive, to buy whatever short moments she could grasp? How long would it take her to die of thirst?

Leia let out a long slow breath. She buried her face against her scraped knees and tasted blood.

“Peace,” Thrawn said, like it was an order. “You won’t be here long.”

Leia laughed to herself. “You have a rescue team coming?” she asked.

Surely he did. It wouldn’t take the Imperials long to reach Honoghr. A few days, at most. But Thrawn didn’t bother to answer the question directly; perhaps he realized that Imperial capture for her wouldn’t be much better than being entombed.

“You have a rescue team coming,” he said. “Your brother will be here before the Chimaera arrives.”

“Excellent,” Leia said sharply. “So the Noghri can strip the Force away from him and throw him in here to die as well.”

Thrawn was silent for so long that it made her feel silly. She sniffed and raised her head, peering through the dark at him. Red light cast strange shadows over his face, but he didn’t look frightened, didn’t look irritated. His features were relaxed, eyes hooded. He looked thoughtful, composed … and suddenly Leia was aware of the way her lips were twisting, the ugly pinch of her eyebrows. She smoothed her face into a politician’s mask.

“The Noghri have no quarrel with your brother,” said Thrawn softly.

Leia swallowed another dark laugh. “He’s Vader’s blood, too.”

“But he did not lie to them,” said Thrawn. His eyes shifted away. Red light bounced off the tomb’s stone walls. “To the Noghri, Vader was a god. A god is permitted to be capricious, temperamental. If he poisoned Honoghr, then that was his right, and the Noghri will rationalize that they must have deserved it.”

Leia frowned. It made a certain amount of sense to her. There were old gods on Alderaan who tortured the mortals at will, cursed them with painful disfigurements, turned them into wretched animals. But…

“But then why would they punish you?” asked Thrawn, reading her mind. “Because in Noghri tradition, the gods do not lie. You lied to them; therefore, despite your divine blood, you cannot be a god.”

Leia wrapped her arms around her knees. “You lied to them,” she murmured.

“So I did. And here I am.” A quiet huff escaped from Thrawn’s lips. Maybe it was his version of a laugh; Leia couldn’t tell. “Besides,” he said softly, “I only sat on their throne. I was never their god.”

A damp chill rustled through the tomb. Leia swallowed, her throat so dry it clicked. The seam where the slab met the wall was near her left ear, but as hard as she listened, she still couldn’t hear anything outside. She wanted to hear the scream of a Y-wing’s engines, the shouts of frightened Noghri, the hum of a lightsaber. But everything outside was still and calm.

“Are you…” she started.

Red lights blinked on and off in the dark.

“Are you in pain?” Leia asked, her voice stilted.

She listened for his breathing, but she couldn’t hear it. Too quiet.

“No,” Thrawn said finally. He sounded younger now, less sure of himself. Like the show of concern put him on the back foot. Overhead, a pebble fell from the ceiling and there was a snuffling noise as a small, unintelligent animal poked its nose through a hole in the stone.

Would the air run out before they died of thirst? No, there was a breeze coming from the very top of the tomb. No light, but at least a little air. Leia shifted in her spot and kneaded her temples. Water dripped from the damp stones overhead, with one study droplet landing close to Thrawn’s ear. He couldn’t move his head away from the puddle that formed, and Leia couldn’t bring herself to help him; her limbs were heavy, her tongue frozen.

“I have a message for you to deliver,” said Thrawn.

A laugh bubbled into Leia’s throat. She closed her lips tight against it, but still, when she spoke, she could hear it in her own voice, harsh and ugly. “Last words for a lover?” she asked.

“In a sense.”

Leia’s stomach rolled. When she blinked she saw Han’s soft smile, felt his callused hands against her skin. She could hear her children crying for her from a galaxy away and suddenly there was a sour gush of bile on her tongue. “Tell me,” she said. “I’ll memorize it.”

Red eyes bored into her through the shadows. What kind of family did Thrawn have? She didn’t think of Imperials as family men, certainly not high-ranking officers like him, but of course she’d danced with them at balls, shaken hands with their children, probed their wives for intel over tea. She imagined Thrawn with a child in his arms, and just an hour ago she would have laughed at the image, but now it made her feel sick.

“For Voss Parck on Nirauan,” Thrawn said. “Tell him you come with my approval. Ask him about the Far Outsiders.”

Him. Leia sat up a little straighter, her eyes sharpening. The tightness in her throat faded away.

“Voss Parck,” she said. “A military colleague?”

“Yes,” said Thrawn. “An old friend. And a valuable ally in the coming war. You will need his assistance, his resources, if you wish to survive.”

The coming war, he said. Slowly, Leia got to her feet. She wove toward the glowing red lights of Thrawn’s eyes like she was in a daydream, and when she reached his side, she loomed over his body, her fingers clenched tight in the folds of her robes.

“What do you mean, the coming war?” she asked, her voice low. By instinct, she called to the Force, begging it to help her read him — but it didn’t answer. In the darkness, near the shell of Thrawn’s ear, something shifted — a glint of light shining off a carapace, a cave beetle scratching at his skin. It wasn’t the only one. His hair moved gently, subtly, as insect legs picked across his scalp. “You didn’t say anything,” said Leia in a murmur, biting back her horror. She brushed the beetles from his face, tried not to think about how futile it was, how many other creatures were waiting in the dark to feast on him while he lay paralyzed. A drop of cold water plopped down from the ceiling and splattered on the stone slab right next to Thrawn’s head. Dim, dull eyes stared up at her, expressionless: not wincing from the beetles, not thanking her for chasing them away.

“There are forces in this galaxy -- outside this galaxy -- that could destroy entire systems in one sweep,” Thrawn said, his voice soft. Leia combed her fingers through his hair and then left them there, curled in Thrawn’s black, blood-matted locks. Her thumb stroked against his temple: cold skin, scraped and sore. “Forces that would destroy us, gladly,” Thrawn went on. “My people know of them. They’ve consumed everything there is to consume in their own galaxy; some years ago, they made their way across the border, into ours. I’ve seen the destruction firsthand.”

His voice fractured. His words folded in on themselves. His eyes closed, all light fading.

“Work with the Empire,” he said in the darkness. “Find Voss Parck. He has resources you’ll need. Allies. Information.”

#my asks #thrawn

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myevilmouse · 2 years ago

Note

Thrawn:Alliances is the only one of the three canon Thrawn(2017) books that I do not own. It is my silent protest over the loose ends & roads left unexplored that embodied that hot mess of a book.

At the same time, I consider Alliances to be Zahn’s gift to the fertile minds of the fan fic authors of Thrawn Fandom. It is basically the Thrawn repository of What If’s.

Welcome back to the Asker’s Studio™️, Mouse, it’s been a while.

In your fic Uneasy Alliance, you do exactly this: you explore a stream of consciousness that Zahn comes so close to developing, but instead, drops it…at your feet. He suggests an attraction of Padme to Thrawn at every turn, but never allows it to surface. You, my friend do the heavy-lifting for us.

A brief summary for those of you unfamiliar with the fic:

This fic draws VERY heavily on the actual scenes and dialogue in the book Thrawn: Alliances.

100% of Anakin's actions and dialogue are directly lifted, I made up absolutely nothing where he is concerned except in description and perception. Perhaps 80% of Padmé's and Thrawn's dialogue and actions are directly from the book, with slightly more liberties (necessarily) taken.

The story is built around Padmé's introspection and reactions, and I have added detail and dialogue to already existing scenes where they were alone and Zahn didn't tell us what they were up to... with the aim of making the scenario as possible as...possible. This could have happened in the book, so if you ship it, I get why!

This summary does not do justice to the passages and the sensual overload that is Padme’s Thrawn (as we see him through her eyes) or the just plain too-hot-handle moment when the the hormones finally seize control:

Defiant, Padmé lunged for his mouth, lips biting and tugging at his, daring him to stop her. With a growl, Thrawn slammed her hard to the wall, drawing a grunt from her throat. One knee drove between hers, his thigh shoving and pressing against her crotch. Instead of stopping her this time, Thrawn’s kiss turned savage.

Okay, now that I have everyone’s attention, let’s get to it!

I discovered this fic quite accidentally when another Tumblr post was lamenting one of my many complaints about Alliances: how could Padme not be attracted to Thrawn?!

Our lamentations were answered with a simple paste of this fic address. All was good in the universe 😁

So, let’s talk about Alliances, this fic, and revisions in general.

Did you read Alliances as I, and come away with the same unsatiated feeling that I did?

There were many avenues one could have explored with this book (a bane & a boon it was) What made you decide on the Thrawn/Padme theme?

This was an unusual approach for fic: it was almost line and verse accuracy to the original text! In your notes, you specify that this format was quite intentional. Do I interpret correctly that this was done to emphasize that, indeed, Zahn was suggesting the same thing all along: there was chemistry between Thrawn & Padme?

As I thought about it, perhaps the same scenario could be explored with Thrawn/Thalias? (I’m not a huge fan of Ascendancy Thrawn, so maybe leave that 🤣)

Finally, was it harder to write this fic with the stricter format hugging so close to the actual text of the book?

In conclusion, I vote that we replace the original Alliances your version, because it was such a more satisfying meal.

It’s been too long, Mouse, I hope to have you as a guest more frequently (when I finish this move 😖)

Dear @beebee-76!

This is a fabulous ask and a wonderful break from the holiday prep for me this morning. Thank you first of all as always for reading my stories. We have a lot in common (this was already known) and obviously that now extends to our opinions on Thrawn: Alliances. And it’s always a pleasure to be featured on the Asker’s Studio™️ 😊

So let’s jump to it 😊 And thank you again for the very kind words about my fic. It’s fabulous that you loved it so much and it inspired this ask.

Did you read Alliances as I, and come away with the same unsatiated feeling that I did?

I know I still have an unanswered ask from you in my inbox about the differences between “the Thrawns” as in Rebels Thrawn, Ascendancy Thrawn, The Thrawn Trilogy Thrawn, and what I would call 2017 Thrawn. Someday I will have the mental fortitude to tackle all that, but let it be known that Thrawn: Alliances really disappointed me when it came out. It was, as I said earlier, unforgivably boring, or as you say up above “a hot mess.” Hard agree there. I thought all the bits with Padme were just excruciatingly slow, and saw the entire story as squandered opportunity and a waste of time. After 2017 Thrawn, who is my favorite Thrawn, to call this followup a letdown is an enormous understatement.

There were many avenues one could have explored with this book (a bane & a boon it was) What made you decide on the Thrawn/Padme theme?

I don’t write gen fic really, I’m all about my men (Luke and Thrawn) getting with the ladies. And I’m always open to exactly who those lucky women may be…Rare pairs are a fun place to play for finding new partners. I used to participate more frequently in fic exchanges, and naturally one of my faves is the Star Wars Rare Pairs, as often the requests there fired the imagination. Some of my favorite stories started because of prompts there, including my Aesthetics series and my Luke/Guri fic, which wasn’t an assignment got, I but the ship haunted me until I wrote it for the requester anyway.

Another rare pairing on the list was Padme/Thrawn. I found this intriguing (although I wasn’t ultimately assigned it) because they do actually meet in nu!canon… I read a few frustrated fans’ comments (like the tumblr post that I responded to) about how Padme would never choose Anakin over Thrawn, and why didn’t she just get on Thrawn’s ship and leave behind her loser husband at the end, etc. and I thought hmmm….maybe maybe maybe…

Whenever I write a fic I try to make it as plausible as possible. I find spots for missing scenes (like in my Luke Skywalker/Mon Mothma fic) where we know people were in the same place at the same time, or find a canon-divergent way to set a story in a believable timeline (like Luke/Sabine or even Thrawn/Sabine). So I went to my copy of Alliances with nothing more than this goal: find a spot in the book where Thrawn/Padme could happen, or find something—a hint, a clue of a future opportunity for Thrawn/Padme to happen. I’m not a fan of cheating in real life or in fic, so the latter option was my preference at the time. A Padme Lives AU, perhaps, where Chiss envoy Thrawn comes to rock her world after her husband is out of the picture.

In short, I had no idea what I was going to write, but was looking for openings.

And boy, the openings I found. As you righteously point out, when you are LOOKING for it, you realize that Zahn has basically already written the fic between the lines. He gives us SO many opportunities to read an attraction, while also helpfully making Anakin the most annoying, unsympathetic, and immature he’s ever been. Zahn keeps separating them—Anakin going off his way and Thrawn and Padme having another adventure together. Sometimes he tells us what they were up to, sometimes he doesn’t. Imagine my eyes growing comically wider as I scanned the text and realized I didn’t have to write a missing scene, I just had to tell you what happened when Zahn didn’t.

You do interpret correctly. Instead of my original concept, I decided to simply remix the novel, filling in those blanks and using Padme’s pregnancy (which is not at all mentioned or implied in the book) as an excuse for her oversexed response to the handsome alien that is repeatedly shoved in her direction. (Much as I am not a real believer in the Padme/Anakin chemistry, I didn’t really want to make Padme an unfaithful hussy, so the prenatal hormones were a convenient way to abet her reactions.)

I think Zahn has progressively fallen more and more in love with his blue man, to the point where Thrawn has gone from Villain to Antihero to straight up Hero in some of the newer books (which is why I find him less and less interesting to be honest). It’s clear in Alliances that he wants Thrawn to outshine Anakin in every way. I couldn’t believe Disney let him get away with it. Anakin’s decisions are wrong, Thrawn is always right—even Padme sees this and acknowledges it in the text. Anakin isn’t as smart/rational/creative/cool etc. Zahn gets to hold up Thrawn as capable, honorable, resourceful. All things Padme recognizes. He even has Anakin confront her at one point with the “now you’re taking his side”.

In order to achieve this—and let’s be clear, I’m not a huge Anakin fan—I think Zahn did some serious character bashing/warping of Anakin in the book. After working so hard to find his wife, do I think right away he would send her off with a guy he barely knew to retrieve his lightsaber? Hell no I don’t. I think the “real” Anakin would be more jealous, more possessive, and more cautious than this version. Zahn’s Anakin is stubborn when it suits the story, and relents just as conveniently. In my fic, Padme has quite a bit of introspection about this—WHY is her husband sending her off with this stranger so often? She was in mortal danger, he came to save her, but is more concerned with destroying shit and having some weird revenge against no one in particular than overseeing her personal safety.

Sorry Zahn, your motives are super transparent here.

…was it harder to write this fic with the stricter format hugging so close to the actual text of the book?

It was the opposite! I loved uncovering this story from the clues in the novel. It didn’t take long to write at all, once I got started. I scanned the book, identified the key scenes I could use to make Padme/Thrawn happen, and the bones of the fic was done in about a day. The research/rereading took longer than the writing, I think. I found out in the meantime that one of my talented artists friends @sometimesartmostlychaos, was a low-key Padme/Thrawn shipper, so the story was a gift to her upon its completion.

Zahn’s version of Anakin allowed my fic to take shape, as you mention, using total accuracy to the text, dialogue, and repeated separations he inflicts upon the newlyweds. While I don’t 100% buy it (more reasons why the novel just was an overall mess), I certainly see what Zahn was doing, and what he was doing was making Thrawn better in all aspects than Anakin. How could a smart woman like Padme NOT notice, particularly when she’s having so many traumatic experiences?

I compounded it with hormones to serve my own nefarious purposes, but as I said in the author’s note, I didn’t really have to do a lot of work to get there. Zahn laid it all out and I just had to massage the attraction from latent to overt. It was a super fun exercise and I absolutely enjoyed it. Making it better, making it INTERESTING, if I do say so myself.

As I thought about it, perhaps the same scenario could be explored with Thrawn/Thalias? (I’m not a huge fan of Ascendancy Thrawn, so maybe leave that 🤣)

I too am not a huge fan of Ascendancy Thrawn (understatement, I kind of hate him) see above about how the more perfect and heroic he gets the less interesting I think he is… I don’t care at all about these new books although I read them out of a completist sense of obligation…I don’t know. I loved Outbound Flight Thrass… and Aralani was cool and all (not anymore though ugh) but Thalias is SO ANNOYING and always has been, I’m sorry. She has this hero worship thing going on with Thrawn and it’s sort of icky and not inspiring for smut. And clearly Zahn is trying to use her to swat away the slash fanfic but it’s not working. I mean…he LITERALLY SHIPPED THEM in a shipping container overnight I can’t even…

In general, I find Thrawn’s solicitude towards Thalias contrived, I don’t like daddy!Thrawn to Cheri (god really?! That’s the name we’re going with?!), and I should probably just stop there. But in brief, I’m not the person to write Thalias/Thrawn. If I did, it would be super dark, not this let’s drink hot cocoa and eat cheese platters playing cards in a little shipping container. Maybe have him be like “oh you think you want this?! Muwahahah evil laugh proceeds to wreck her completely in every sense” ah what a digression.

In conclusion, I vote that we replace the original Alliances your version, because it was such a more satisfying meal.

I adore you for voting this way, and am humbled by that assessment! I have threatened at times to remix my remix, in essence write a “what if” where Padme jumps on Thrawn’s ship last minute instead of just wistfully watching its departure. I probably will never write it, but I think it could be done and done well. Thrawn in this case would be the hardest to twist (he was, as you see in my story, under no illusions about what was going on with those wacky humans), but in fanfic all things are possible. Which is why we love it!

Thank you again so much for this ask @beebee-76! I am grateful for the chance to explain my process for this fic. Never wrote anything like it before but absolutely loved the chance and the writing exercise and ESPECIALLY the reactions of readers who, like us, saw the plausibility and enjoyed what I did with it.

#thrawn: alliances #padme amidala #thrawn #anakin skywalker #timothy zahn #thrawn x all the ladies #my thoughts #myfic #fanfic #fanfic is for fun #beebee-76 #asks #fandom #i like asks

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furiarossa · 2 years ago

Note

Hello! If I have not been perfectly clear, I absolutely love your art!

It is my good fortune that you do a lot of Gargolyes illustrations and paintings. It is equally fortuitous that you gift us with Gargolyes art that features Owen Burnett, my love ♥️.

I run a make-believe interview show called Asker’s Studio™️ where I take moment to learn a bit more about the artists & authors of Tumblr. If you don’t mind, I have a few questions.

There are two of you - siblings?

How do you share the different roles when creating art?

How did you become interested in Gargolyes?

Do you work in the field of illustration (or desire to?)

I really appreciate your creativity and I thank you for spending a few moments with us.

Thank you very much for your compliments! We are delighted that there is an audience (even if small) for our mini-obsessions and that someone is interested in our fanarts.

Yep, we draw A LOT of different things, but we're having a strong Gargoyles phase XD

Okay, about your questions:

Yes, we are siblings! Two Italian sisters who have always worked together on art and writing!

There are many people who ask us how we divide the work, which of us does what, but the truth is that... there is no fixed pattern! Sometimes one draws and the other colors, sometimes vice versa, sometimes someone makes a sketch and the other inks it, sometimes one puts the idea in it and the other the making, and other times... each one of us creates by herself an entire thing! So everything is very fluid, we are only interested in creating beautiful stuff. Are we succeeding? Perhaps. But we sure are trying!

The oldest of us, Furia, watched Gargoyles on television as a child! And it was her favorite cartoon. Gargoyles greatly influenced the way she drew and wrote and made him feel less alone... because she was very, very lonely. Many years later, the two of us watched it together and found that... it was even better than Furia remembered it! Cool designs, great storyline, deep messages for the viewer. And, yeah, some amazing villains too!

Yep, we desire to work in the field of illustration. We are still "testing the waters", doing some commissions to see if we can reach a large enough audience, but we would love it if this became a full-time job. Hey, it would be great if a publishing house decided to hire us! Or anyone else, really. We would love to be professional artists.

Thanks to YOU for this little interview! We hope that our answers can be at least an itsy-bitsy interesting.

Have a nice day!

Regards,

-Furia and Mimma

#personal #answering #answering questions #who are we?

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contentment-of-cats · 1 year ago

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Part II: Growing Pains

When we ended Part I of our overview of Fandom, we saw fic evolving from Zines and independent publishing to fic specific platforms such as Fanfic.net, LiveJournal, Ao3, and Dreamwidth. The hand-off from one platform to the next was not always a process of evolution, nor a smooth transition, rather often necessity demanding invention. With the transition from paper to online exposure came the opportunity to develop community and an opportunity for problems.

We’re back at the Asker’s Studio™️, so grab a cat, move a cat, kick the toys out of the way and get comfortable.

Today, I would like to discuss what I like to generally define as Growing Pains. These are the issues that arose on all fronts which ranged from the highly personal, to technical assaults that threatened the mere existence of fic, online.

I have chosen a few topics that reflect on the evolution, creation and demise of Fandom platforms/archives/host sites. Let’s begin with the big one: Censorship. Over the months, I have heard fragments about a wave of censorship that hit both FF.net & LiveJournal. I understand that the results caused rifts/fragmentation in the fandoms. Since those platforms existed before my time, could you briefly describe what they were, how they served your needs, and what ultimately led to their demise?

Out of the ashes grows a rose: AO3. I understand that Ao3 was borne as the answer to the failings of the aforementioned FF.net & LiveJournal. However, it is not without its own attacks/problems - as recent as the last two weeks, hackers with content issues successfully took down the site for a solid day. Could you add any insights to these purity attacks & whether they are a continuation of the long war on creativity? Even less spoken of are issues of internal strife, regarding fic content/underage content. Having participated in several Fandom platforms/host sites, was the creation of Ao3 the answer that Fandom participants were looking for, or do problems evolve along with solutions? (I invite @olderthannetfic to feel invited offer any historical perspectives on the creation of AO3 at this time)

Finally, I would like to throw out what I call The Next Frontier: the introduction of AI. Many of us have locked our accounts and designated them Registered Users Only, as the AI beast lands like a pack of Death Eaters. We see the entertainment industry walking the picket lines with AI being one of the contract issues. Can you offer some insight on this topic?

This is a hackneyed list of issues - both human & technological - that has confronted Fandom/fic over its long and short history. Please feel free to add, abridge, omit or expand on anything I have brought up. As always, thank you very much for your time..

*settles in*

I wanted to answer this sooner, but really needed to think about some of my answers. This has been through a few drafts, so hold steady.

Censorship:

In the beginning (Usenet), there was always censorship. The fandoms would start off with 'all are welcome' but that was never actually the truth. Popular ships always eclipsed rarepairs, and people got downright nasty about it and there was also a lot of anti-smut action. Then there was the slash vs. het vs. noromo (no romance - now called 'gen) disputes. The fragmentation came with e-groups and members only listservs where people could write their stories without the censorship of the majority or characterization cops. There was still more fragmentation over other subjects, the purity police existed to make more wedges. The first time I ever saw a fight over 'queer' being a slur was on a Skinner/Mulder e-group so that was around 1996ish. E-groups purged a lot of slash and smut lists before it was bought by Yahoo, and Yahoo did the same.

Archives were curated sites on accessible hosting sites like Geocities, Angelfire, and so on. either dedicated to a specific fandom, pairing, or genre. Posting power rested in the hands of an archivist or a board of archivists. There was a lot of favoritism, and some authors posted their own work on a private website and often joined a ring of likeminded sites.

Fanfiction came out of the woodwork of the internet in 1998 when fanfiction.net came to be. FF.net was the equivalent of a publisher's 'slush pile.' A knocked-over fire-hydrant geyser of fic and fandoms as opposed to the neatly bottled and displayed stuff. It took a while, but the tweaks started in the early 2000's (dammit I am so fucking old) with banning works from a specific source (Anne Rice, Archie, Terry Goodkind etc.), then moving on to banning reader insert, filk and songfic, RPF, NC-17 and sexually explicit material (purging existing content also). They banned CYOA, Self-Insert, Character/Reader (You) fic. A lot of this was for two reasons.

The leadership of ff.net wanted to make the site attractive to advertisers.

They wanted to play nice with publishers, studios, media, real people depicted in fic, and intellectual property attorneys.

The migration to LJ placed fic in the hands of the author. They could post whatever they wanted and screw the mods.

If fanfiction came out of the woodwork on ff.net, it came out of the closet on LJ.

LJ came along in 2000ish, it originally was a place for fans to interact with other fans - like a forum where you could also post fic. The ban and excision of NC-17 and explicit fic from FF.net made LJ into a fandom hub, and for a short while kept the fan-run archives from dying out. However, even the hosting services did not want smut, slash, or other possibly-prosecutable fic on their servers, and were shutting down those sites. It was haphazard, but not random, as fandom grudges and the purity police would rat archives out.

LJ also saw the rise of the BNF, and also the phenomenon of Dark Fandom and Fandom Wank (FW originated on LJ and was driven off several platforms). LJ was sold to 6 Apart in 2005, and the Russian company SUP in 2007, with the founders mostly bolting after Strikethrough and Boldthrough - instigated by Warriors for Innocence (actual identity unknown, speculation attributes to Ms.Scribe). However, 6 Apart and SUP also wanted to - you guessed it - make LJ profitable. WFI was arguably the first successful, large format purity troll. I was already moving away from LJ and FF.net at the time, that just hammered the nail in.

Archive of Our Own:

That leads us to Ao3 (called AoOO and cue the 'Werewolves of Fandom' jokes), began with a 2007 LJ post by @astolat. The genesis of Ao3 was widely mocked, but fifteen years later it is still standing. I remember hearing about it and wondering if it had any relation to the essay 'A Room of One's Own' by Virginia Woolf.

"But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction—what, has that got to do with a room of one's own? I will try to explain."

I view the attacks on Ao3 as an attack on marginalized groups using nontraditional media. There are still vast numbers of people who do not want women or other marginalized groups to have a room of one's own, much less an archive, much less an archive that can't be held by the balls via their wallet, or threatened with a squad of foot soldiers with Esquire and Juris Doctor next to their name. Ao3 is now a part of fandom culture - good, bad, and ugly - and is a target for purity trolls using straw man, gaslighting, and red herrings to pull Ao3 apart for their own purposes.

Ao3 does have the problems that any institution has - and those unique to those dependent on user-generated content. It has its own internal struggles with the content that users generate as it pertains to underage/noncon and other squicks. To censor or not to censor? Is it enough to ask grown ass people to tag their work or to ask other presumably grown ass people to use tags when to eliminate content they do not want to see? are they doing enough to attract a diverse staff? How is that staff being treated? It is non-profit, staffed with volunteers, and lives on funding drives like US public television and NPR. It has a big enough base that understands the mission and is active enough to parse board candidates. In much the same way as NPR/Public Television, the content is a draw for trolls. Legacy media was the means to control the message, but when you can shoot content on your phone, write and publish from your connected device, the media can't control the message. It scares the piss out of people who have every reason to want to control the message.

When people attack Ao3, their reasons are spurious troll food for the most part. There's another, deeper, more nefarious agenda at work.

AI and the War On Creativity:

AI art, music, and writing is the idea of someone who views media as something to be consumed. You buy a book, you watch a show, and that is monetized.

Nobody has ever successfully monetized fandom.

The war between creators and media controllers heated up when technology handed creators the tools to make their own content and the platforms to distribute it whether it's video, writing, art, or music. AI is an attempt to wrest that control back.

To the Powers That Be, fandom is a resource that needs to be squeezed for money. People consuming fanworks for free are people not giving their money to Disney, Sony, Warner Bros, and so on. The PTB have taken over the cons, despite the inclusion of artists alleys, so that they can once again control the media and control the message. The PTB like to deem themselves creators and disruptors. However, creative human beings are an unruly lot. The PTB want creatives and what they produce, but under their control. No unions, no contracts, no pesky IP issues.

An AI has no rights, no needs, no true consciousness and thus can only copy or derive when it 'creates' content. Their 'disruption' is for everyone but themselves. So when we bar them from scraping our content, they see it as our refusing to give them something that they are entitled to use.

AI scraping from Ao3 and venues like DeviantArt are attempts to make unpaid use of creators' content. Creators write and create art that is uncompensated, which is then shared. Some writers and artists have 'tip jars' or take commissions, but the vast majority get nothing but comments and likes. Since this work is uncompensated, the PTB deem it 'free' and therefore they can do what they want with it. When they scrape a work to train their AI, they are working to replace creatives. Full stop.

For that matter, a scraper doesn't need to be from Google or MicroSoft. You can download scrapers for Wattpad like this one:

There are also tools available on sites like GitHub that can be used to scrape Ao3 and FF.net. Moreover, there are a fuckton of AI specifically marketed for fanfiction writing to fanfiction writers - all of which have been trained on fan-generated content. There are AIs for art and for music. It could be argued that these AI will help people unleash their own creativity, improve stories, and unearth creative potential. The thing is that none of these tech companies does anything for free in the long term.

Finally, the US Copyright office has ruled that you can't copyright anything - image, writing, music, video - that you create with an AI. anyone can use it for any purpose, without you having any legal recourse. There must be a minimal 'human involvement' - in this particular case, the art generated by a human entering text prompts into an AI was deemed insufficient to meet the standard. The ruling is the first of its kind, and more will follow, but keep in mind that you are one ruling from the AI creators assuming a stake in your work.

#askers studio #ask reply

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coruscantiscribbler · 2 years ago

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I have always been a huge fan of your character analysis. Your insight into Thrawn inspired many ancillary discussions regarding the simple question with a complex answer: is Thrawn a villain?

Welcome to The Asker’s Studio™️

I would like to shift the focus from Thrawn to Wullf Yularen, but remain in the same mindset as above.

Yularen had a long and decorated military career with the Republic which came to a zenith with the Clone Wars. Upon the transition (putting it mildly) from the Republic to the Empire, Yularen -like his counterpart Tarkin- followed Chancellor Palpatine on his rise to Emperor. In Yularen’s case, we are led to believe that there was no prior knowledge of the subterfuge practiced by Palpatine to achieve that goal.

While we only get a glance at Yularen in The New Hope, we get an achingly warm, grandfatherly glimpse of him in Rebels. In Rebels, we see a somewhat befuddled mentor who has been betrayed by his star student, Alexandr Kallus. We see pain and sadness.

It is this Yularen with whom I had my first Star Wars crush, and it is this Yularen who we often see portrayed in fan fiction.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, in Andor, we are treated to yet another version of Yularen. We see a cold, calculating tactician at the helm of the ISB, railing and rallying his troops to rise and ferret out the enemy. We see a fascist regime. We see the enemy.

The juxtaposition was jarring to me, as many questions begin to once again rise to the surface. What did Admiral Yularen think about Order 66? What did he think became of the Jedi Knight whom he worked most closely with, Anakin Skywalker? How did he reconcile the destruction of Alderaan whilst serving on the Death Star?

I turn to you, my most analytical author, and ask if I may: Please offer some insight into the May faces of Yularen, touching on my questions if you like. I would love to indulge in your consistently astute insight into one of my favourite characters.

I realise that I have dumped a lot in your lap, but I know you are the correct candidate for this heavy task!

As always, thank you for your time and consideration.

Oh my goodness. Complex questions for a complex man.

Let's start with the Rebels Yularen as you have described him -- somewhat befuddled. But is he really? In that final scene with Thrawn he states that "Things have fallen into place a little too perfectly for my liking. And I don't think Lieutenant Lyste was capable of what you have accused him of." Yularen might not have landed on Kallus as the spy because of his fondness for his star pupil, but he knew that things were not as they seemed and they were being hoodwinked.

In Andor he has come to a meeting that is usually run by a subordinate. Why? Because what happened on Aldani is the first major action taken against the Empire. He says in part, "This is why we plan. This is why we work so hard when we are at peace. This is why we recruit so carefully. And demand so much."

He was a military man and you can see him thinking and planning on how to prevent the next war in his new role as head of the ISB. I'm certain he had no idea that Palpatine had engineered the Clone Wars. All he knows is how much was lost. How many ships and men he saw die. How many worlds were devastated. He helped found the ISB to try to make sure the Empire would be strong, resolute, ready to prevent another atrocity like the war.

It was also fairly clear that he found the Jedi somewhat inexplicable and often times very irritating. We know Anakin drove him to distraction. So while he might regret what happened to the Jedi Order all of his background and training as a military officer would incline him to accept the word of his commander and chief -- Palpatine -- that the Jedi were plotting to kill him and rule the galaxy. That Anakin tried to prevent the coup being planned by the Jedi and died valiantly defending the Chancellor. I don't think Yularen had any idea that Vader was Anakin reborn into darkness.

Yularen has always seemed to me a man who took the chain of command and his sworn duty very seriously, and the man who was guiding the war, and as far as Yularen knew, defending humanity was Palpatine. Yularen's training and background would lead him to trust the word of the Chancellor soon to be Emperor. It would help him to silence the doubts.

In a New Hope we have one brief glimpse of him at that conference when Vader chokes an officer. We never see him after the destruction of Alderaan. I have always felt that that action shocked Yularen to his core. Perhaps he retreated to his quarters. Tried to tell himself it was necessary. They would never have to do it again. Remind himself that the point of war is to convince the other side to stop fighting and this tragic but necessary action would end the rebellion and stop the fighting.

Or perhaps he sat in the dark realizing what he had done and what he had become. (I'm planning on dealing with that in We Regret so stand by). He is a deeply tragic figure in that he is fighting the last war and his desire to avoid that carnage ever occurring again leads him to betray his honor.

So to answer the opening question. Is Yularen a villain? Yes, certainly. But when he faced himself in the mirror each morning he saw a man defending the rightful government, upholding the rule of law, keeping the peace, preventing another war, without considering the plight of the people who had to live under that system. They had become mere abstracts, sacrifices to the larger mission. To the Greater Good.

#wullf yularen #alexsandr kallus

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zeldurz · 2 years ago

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Hi there! I have been meaning to touch base with you on my fake interview show, The Asker’s Studio™️ (an unabashed rip-off of the very real show, Inside the Actor’s Studio with James Lipton ז״ל)

Welcome!

It’s well-known that I am the world’s laziest fic reader. None of my degrees prepared me for the Ao3 search engine, so all fics that make their way to my scores of open tabs come by recommendations. It’s a pretty stringent gauntlet to run, as those close to me know that certain tags such as hurt with no comfort likely will not make the cut. (Simply because I get enough on-the-job overload of this already)

The bottom line is this: your fic, Whatever it Takes landed in my must read file by dint of not one, but several hearty recommendations. I am still thanking those people, because even when I hit a dark patch and rejected fic for a while…this little gem still worked for me.

For those who are unfamiliar with the fic, here is a brief summary:

The Chimaera's medics arrive just a moment earlier, saving Thrawn from the fate Ruhk had intended for him. As the Grand Admiral fights for his life, Gilad Pellaeon comes to some important realizations and makes some important decisions.

Only time will tell if they're worth it.

Essentially, what we have is a Legends AU Prawn fic! (Pellaeon-Thrawn)

One of the main themes that runs through this fic is a significant amount of pining. It is very subtle, as is most everything about this fic, so I wanted to pick it up from here.

Generally speaking, most of my asks tend to be thought-bending deep dives into the land of introspection. Since this is your first time here, I will try to go light. 🤣

Tell us what brought you to write fic, and more specifically, how it was you chose a Prawn pairing (which is usually overshadowed by the more popular Thranto pairing) as your universe.

Writing style. I can never get enough insight into how people write their fics (my method being to know the beginning & end and fill in the rest, thank you @coruscantiscribbler) Do you use the more complex outline format, or do you just sit down and “go for it”? (the @myevilmouse method)

Many of my authors know exactly how their fics are going to end they day they begin them. Are you one of these authors, or does the mystery remain for you, too?

Finally, is fic a catharsis, something that you do to relax & for fun? I ask this, because eventually fic became a nemesis for me. An adversarial relationship that I walked away from. (until very recently, the muses began to whisper…)

I am enjoying Whatever It Takes, immensely. It is my hope that it goes on for many more chapters.

I thank you for your time, should you choose to share it.

Ahhhhh my first Asker's Studio! Now I know I've made it as a fic author lol

I started writing fics because I do a bunch of text RP and play a lot of DND/TTRPGs, and I started writing bits and pieces to get a better sense of my characters and their backstories. From there it was a small jump to “fanfiction is RP where I am all the characters at once” and eventually I realized other people might, in fact, enjoy what I have written.

For Prawn specifically, the blame for that lies almost entirely on @life-jim-but-not-as-we-know-it. About a year ago I started listening to the canon Thrawn audiobooks on the recommendation of @emp-roar, and I found myself instantly attached to Thrawn as a character (as is true for many autistic-coded Sherlock-esque characters). Since I had to wait for the audiobooks to become available, I made my way over to AO3 and searched up my new blorbo and my favourite genre of fanfiction: the Hurt/Comfort. I did not even know who Gilad Pellaeon was at the time (I was very excited to see him in Treason and Rebels – “that's the Legends Guy from Drac's fics!”) but I was very emotionally invested in the two of them.

Even after finishing the Heir Trilogy, the Ascendancy Trilogy, and the Canon Thrawn Trilogy, I still find our dear Captain Pellaeon the most fun to write as Thrawn's “Watson”, and so that's (mostly) what I do. There's something about the two of them sassing each other that I really enjoy, and I find Pellaeon's perspective a little easier to get a handle on than Eli's or Ar'alani's (as examples).

Not to mention Bilbringi provides an awful lot of inspiration, since I am definitely NOT a Major Character Death person, and if I can pretend that last part of the Last Command never happened, I most certainly will.

Ohhhh this is an interesting question. I have an extremely unique method for story planning called “I have ADHD and a job that requires an awful lot of driving” - by which I mean almost all of my fics start from a kernel of an idea that gets tumbled around in my mind for anywhere from an hour to upwards of eight hours of highway driving, and then if I'm lucky, I'll write it down before it goes away again. Usually, this idea is the middle of the fic (for Whatever it Takes, it was the concept that maybe the Empire isn't very well equipped to treat a critically injured alien, even if he is their Supreme Commander), and then when I want to write I have to sit down and figure out how to start it and end it. There are many stories gathering dust in my google drive right now as I try and figure out how to make them flow quite right.

Because of this and the aforementioned ADHD, I also tend to bounce around between different fics depending on what happened to catch the attention of the brain squirrels on any particular day – so I usually don't plan too far in advance.

Also while it isn't so much about how I plan my fics, you may be interested to know that many of them are written a paragraph or even a sentence or two at a time. My job (when I'm not driving) often has 10-15 min gaps where I'm waiting for a test to run or a system to finish pumping down or something like that, and that's often when I wind up writing down the bits and pieces I thought of on the way there. I will sometimes sit down and write a whole bunch at once – especially if I'm staying overnight somewhere for work and so don't have my tablet or my gaming PC – but if I have big chunks of time I'm usually doing something other than writing.

So far, yes! If you had told high school me that I had written 69458 words (according to AO3, so I'd bet it's closer to 100000 if you count my google drive) of stories this year of my own volition, I would have told you that was insane and that I hated writing, but I do actually really enjoy it. I think it helps that there's less pressure to have “central themes” and “metaphors” and all that other stuff that is very important to English teachers, and that I'm writing solely for myself. If other people enjoy my unedited blorbo thoughts, then I'm happy to share them, but I don't want it to become a “I have to do xyz” sort of thing. (this is also why I am sure there are many typos/missing words in my fics, bc rereading and editing is Not Fun lol)

Thank you for asking! I always appreciate your comments and thoughts on both my work and others :D

#my inbox #stuff i wrote

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coruscantiscribbler · 1 year ago

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I know that your writing experience is quite broad, so you seem the best candidate for this question.

Welcome back to my virtual Asker’s Studio™️ with my very real 🐈‍⬛

More than any other author I read (which I admit is quite a limited spectrum of individuals) you seem to pay close attention to canon, adherence to plot, and consistency in general. If logic deems it, and the story arc demands it…the character dies.

My question to you is: have you ever had a serious battle over killing off a character? Has there been a case in which you defied logic and allowed the individual to live? On the flip side, have you ever killed a character off and experienced pushback from your readers? Finally, have you ever regretted killing off a character and actually wanted a re-do?

I will offer that one of the last solo fics that I wrote dealt with the death of a beloved character. The resulting melancholy led to an existential crisis and the worst case of writer’s block.

As you know, while I have not had the opportunity lately to invest in comments, I DO love your fic, We Regret.

I'm pretty brutal about my characters, and since I have a pretty detailed outline before I start to write I know in advance who lives and who dies, and I almost never deviate from that. The outline shows me what will and will not work so I'm pretty confident about my choices.

But it is a struggle and, in fact, I'm facing it right now. I'm closing in on the end of a novel and I had planned to kill the main character who I have written now for four books. And I really don't want to, particularly because I know what it will do to his husband. And I think there is a way to not kill him that will still be satisfying, But....

If I get to the end of this and it just feels wrong then I'm going to have to suck it up and let the character die. And since one of the big themes of this book is "We are all made of star stuff", I rather sense that the poor fellow is going to have to make the ultimate sacrifice.

I really expected to get pushback in one novel when I killed the boyfriend, but oddly it didn't happen and I'm not sure why. Maybe because there was another man (vampire) in the mix who loved her. I've had people say it made them sad, but that's okay, I want the story to evoke emotions in the readers. They sure as hell evoke emotions in me. To wit --

I have never actively regretted killing a character because of that outline thing I know it's necessary. But in the moment it is extremely painful to do what must be done. I've actually sat at my desk and wept after I finish writing one of those death scenes.

In some ways it's easier to kill a hero than to kill a villain who has been redeemed. You feel regret that they never got to find some peace and solace after their change of heart.

#writing #killing characters

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coruscantiscribbler · 2 years ago

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My brain seems to have switched to creative overdrive…or I have gotten extremely inquisitive 🧐

This is a fair warning to my Artists, Authors, and all -around interesting people (because anyone who is not me is interesting) of Tumblr that The Asker’s Studio™️ is in session!

When last we met, I had intended to ask this set of questions, but the fates (and my keyboard) would NOT have it. We jumped tracks and went to Yularen, instead. (Not a bad thing ❤️)

While watching the new Andor series, I could not help but to think of you, and your fic, We Regret.

For those of you unfamiliar with this fabulous, Rebels (say what you will, that show brought us 6 more Thrawn books) based fic, it has all of our favourites: Kallus, Thrawn, Eli, Yularen, Pryce, Andor, and a host of interesting Original Characters.

A brief overview:

Follows Kallus as the very foundations of his life, and his most precious relationships are twisted and poisoned by his continued loyalty to the Empire. He finds it more and more difficult to silence the still small voice that wants him to question, to doubt but to go from blind loyalty to betrayal is a journey that is neither easy nor quick.

As anyone who is familiar with Rebels knows, Kallus eventually defects from the Empire and joins the Rebellion.

While the series did not include the character of Cassian Andor, you have done us all a favour and corrected this wrong. Andor plays his own pivotal role in your fic.

The questions that were pummeling me as I was watching the series were fast and furious, so I will try to keep it to a low roar. However, as I always remind my guests: you have carte blanche to answer, deviate, expand…or go in a completely different direction from my presentation. All I ask is that you talk, and talk a lot.

The first group of queries concerns, Andor, himself.

When you started the series, was there any urge to edit, expand, or depart from how you presented Andor thus far?

Was there anything about the series/character presentation that you would have changed?

The second set of questions involves your fic as a whole

Was there any desire to change how you were going to present the Rebellion & Kallus’s experiences after viewing the series?

Finally, I am curious how set is the arc of We Regret, are you certain of how it ends and the journey in-between here to there (end)?

I ask this last question, because I have always wondered if authors wake up one morning and totally trash the outline, jump rails, and end up in a completely different place!

Once again, it is my honor and pleasure to take up some of your precious time. Thank you, kindly.

I love your Asks, they are always so insightful and force me to (try) and be equally insightful.

I'm going to start with the last question first. No, I never trash the outline and go haring off in a completely different direction. For me the value of outlining or "breaking a story" as is said in Hollywood, is that I have explored all the dead ends, or seemingly attractive paths that only lead you into a swamp well before I actually start writing. And I plot backwards. I know the end of a story or novel or script before I ever start writing. If I know where I'm going it's very easy to figure out the scenes that I need to get there.

I know exactly how I will end this story, several years after the restoration of the Republic, and I will give away this much -- it won't be on Lira San. As I've indicated elsewhere I could never buy the happily-ever-after ending for a man with this much blood on his hands.

Andor has had a profound impact on me, but only in so far as how it bolstered by own views about the Empire. I have always seen the rebellion as having a dark underbelly because you don't overthrow a government without making some ugly compromises with decency and morality, and Andor does not shy away from that. Neither did Rogue One. One of the first moments in which we see with Andor is him coldly killing an informant to keep him from falling into the hands of the Empire.

I'M GOING TO THROW OUT A FEW SPOILER HERE. SO IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN ANDOR STOP READING NOW.

The two rebel leaders we see in ANDOR are Mon Mothma and Luthen and they both make some truly ugly decisions in support of the rebellion. Mon Mothma basically sells her teenage daughter to a crime boss so she can keep financing the rebellion. And Luthen in an act of cold calculation doesn't warn a fledgling rebel cell that the Empire is waiting for them because it would compromise his informant inside the ISB. Ugly choices forced on these individuals by the dark times in which they live. Of course the crimes and brutality of the Empire are far worse than the morally grey choices made by the rebels, but none of these people are saints.

I'm going to try to keep that balancing of the light and dark now that Kallus is in the rebellion. Draven is a hard man. He expects his agents to be hard as well, to know they must bury their morals because everyone on all sides thinks they are fighting for the greater good.

YOU CAN START READING AGAIN.

I knew before I ever started typing that it would be Andor who recruits Kallus into becoming a Fulcrum agent. But I didn't want it to be a straight line from crashing with Zeb on the ice moon, asking a few questions and then ringing up the rebellion to ask if he could help. A man as dedicated and loyal as Kallus wasn't just going to throw aside his life and beliefs that easily, so I took him to rock bottom, and had it be a single, simple event, the death of a single young pilot trainee, that was finally too much. The proverbial pebble that starts the avalanche.

I wouldn't change a thing about Andor. I think Gilroy did an absolutely stunning job with the character's development. We first see him as a small time crook, a man with no direction and no purpose. A string of petty crimes, mooching off his friends, sleeping with a variety of woman, committed to nothing. Then slowly, slowly he starts to discover outrage and finally his purpose. It's how I wanted to move Kallus from loyal Imperial officer to rebel spy.

The other point where I found support from Andor was the presentation of family. Throughout the movies the rebels all seemed to have either real or found families, but the Imperials were presented as just two dimensional bad guys. And the treatment of the stormtroopers always offended me. Who were these men and women in the white armor? Wouldn't they have had mother's fathers, siblings, wives, husbands and children? Someone would mourn their passing.

Andor showed us people on both sides of this conflict with families. There is the commandant of the garrison on Aldhani with his wife and teenage son. There is the lieutenant who turns traitor because of a woman. There is Syril and his domineering mother. Mon Mothma has a husband and a sulky teenage daughter. There is the ISB informant who wants out because of his new born child. And of course there is Maarva who saved and raised a child, and whether Cassian knew it or not instilled in him a thirst for justice.

#Rebels #Andor #alexsandr kallus

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seikilos-stele · 1 year ago

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One of those questions that just pops into my head and I need to know if I’m the only one…!!

When my beloved Snape killed Dumbledore I was traumatized. How can my favorite character kill my second favorite character in my much obsessed-over Harry Potter??

Until the whole sequence was explained later, I felt robbed of Snape. I was left adrift because while it did fit the story arc, I felt robbed of my obsession-within-an-obsession: Snape. He went a bridge too far. We were going to have to break up! 😭

In this session of Asker’s Studio™️ (have a seat. just move the cat 🐈‍⬛) I want to know if there has ever been an action/incident in which your favorite character did something so heinous that you had to divorce them?! If so, were you able to get around it by re-writing, ie, fixing the scene with fic?

There have been endings that were fixed (so artistically done…) but when you look back at the demise of Padme, it makes me wonder how anyone can feel anything but revulsion for Vader/Anakin…but redemption being what it is, anything is possible - essentially with fic.

If there is more than one example (I hope that there is at least one example!) all the better!

You know what, I had to think about this ALL NIGHT to come up with one, but I finally got it. Snape would be an easy example, but I didn’t react the same way you did — I think, in 2004 or 2005, post-HBP, JKR gave an interview somewhere. She was asked if Snape was actually a bad guy and she gave some coy answer like “you’ll have to wait and see.” Well, obviously, if we have to wait and see, then he’s a good guy! So that interview soothed my fears 😆

The characters that actually got to me were all played by Robert Carlyle. I had a huge crush on him and I wanted all his character to be admirable! Not good, necessarily, but admirable: meaning, not cowardly, not whiny. I wanted them all to have an internal strength that I could respect, whether their morality aligned with mine or not. And for three important examples, the characters just…didn’t.

Those characters are Rumplestiltskin/Mr. Gold from Once Upon a Time, Nicholas Rush from Stargate Universe, and whatever the fuck his name is from 28 Weeks Later.

I especially loved Rush and Gold, and every time they back-slid into their selfish/cowardly ways, I was personally devastated 😆 miserable! I’d be wracking my brains to make their actions fit my view of the character … or I’d be cursing the writers. Gold had it worse imo. There was an internal consistency with his character for most of S1-3, and imo it disappeared or wobbled too much in the seasons after; it became harder and harder to make sense of Gold’s character arc, and damn near impossible to like him. I couldn’t see the traits I’d originally liked so much.

Rush was easier because he was slimy from the start … I just wanted him to become Less Slimy in a more uniform manner 😆 We got lots of competent moments from him — and lots of embarrassing incompetent moments too. He had a petty jealous streak that wasn’t likable. He struggled embarrassingly with physical tasks too, and his refusal to get in better shape seemed petulant, and like a form of denial. If you’re familiar with SGU, you’ll notice that I’m leaving out Rush’s most abysmal actions. The thing is, I love bad guys who do abysmal things. So long as they have a core of admirable traits: self-reliance, flexibility, competence, for example. It’s when that core is weak that I feel betrayed by characters.

To use Snape as an example, I see now that even if he WERE a total villain, his murder of Dumbledore and his loyalty to Voldemort wouldn’t bother me. It would be the way he bullies children. That’s always been the hardest part about Snape for me to stomach. I don’t know how to explain it! I guess it’s because I like the trope of the honorable enemy soldier — the honorable enemy soldier can do and believe a lot of heinous things, but he can’t be a coward, he can’t be whiny, he can’t bully young children. He has to have an honorable core, something that reminds you of your favorite allies, to contrast with the unforgivable beliefs and actions. If his core isn’t honorable, if it only reminds you of obnoxious bullies and self-serving cowards, then there’s nothing interesting about him — he’s just a rotten guy.

….and I never want a hot Robert Carlyle character to turn out to be a plain old rotten guy. Unless it’s Begbie 😆

ETA: oh, I forgot to answer the other part.

No, I’ve never really written a fix-it. I did write lots of fic for HP, OUAT, and SGU. But I wasn’t skilled enough to do a fix-it at the time. I mostly wrote crack oneshots and occasional humorous multichaps. For OUAT, I eventually expanded into hurt/comfort, but it was fairly OOC across the board.

#my asks

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blackmonitor · 2 years ago

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It’s time to reconvene The Asker’s Studio™️ because I’ve got questions!

It is my exceedingly good fortune @blackmonitor that you are reading @myevilmouse Conflicting Aesthetics at same time I am, so that I reap the benefits of your artistic talents. In chapter 3, Mouse drops a heavy paragraph relating the frustrations that our artist, Seta, is experiencing whilst sketching Thrawn:

It wouldn’t be perfect. That was the problem with truly fascinating subjects. Capturing his aura was the best she could hope for. Thrawn, even half-naked, exuded command. The sense of power, a demeanor of authority was prevalent, almost but not completely camouflaging a latent vulnerability. Not self-consciousness, something else. Seta could see it, imagined Thrawn would deny it existed, but wouldn’t be content until its flavor was imbued in the lines of her art. It was the sum total, everything wrapped in a charismatic fog of mystery, emphasizing the thing that made him most alien—which also made him intriguing and attractive beyond the physical.

I asked the omniscient Mouse if she was 1. An artist 2. If she was, was this description from experience? The answer was No on both counts. WHUT?! I am not satisfied with this answer. I need to know MORE!

So my dear honest to goodness real artist: Could you please reflect on the paragraph above from an artist’s point of view.

Hint: short answers are not acceptable (jk) 🤣

For those of you who have not seen the portrait that Seta was frustrated over, @blackmonitor has done us the great favour and rendered it for us, exquisitely. (Check out all of her work - it’s pure gold yummy greatness)

Portrait courtesy of @blackmonitor

As always: you have the floor. Thank you for the generosity of your time and talent!

Welcome! Oh wow… Let me just…

“So my dear honest to goodness real artist...”

Oh yes, that paragraph! That was chilling! And I had the opportunity to read it as a lost artist who didn't draw anything for YEARS, and now, as someone who brought joy to many people with my silly drawings. In both cases, it touched something in my soul.

First of all, let me talk about the method of my drawings - not the technical details I already described here.

So art, for me, is about communication - communicating something to the viewer, even in a portrait or anything. It should tell a story, an emotion, or just some vibes to the viewer. Otherwise, it has no point (according to my point of view, but this is highly subjective, so forgive me if yours are different).

For example, take my first Thrawn portrait.

Before I started to draw it, I wondered what I should draw - how to draw him. Back then, I read the first Ascendancy book, so it was obvious that I wanted to see him in that uniform. So when I found my reference from the comic, I changed it to communicate what I wanted - a man destined for greatness who failed.

But how? Well, my method is this - in mind, I became that person (like writers do it). I imagine how he would act, what he would feel… general things. And when I can see that back from my display, I'm happy. Like Seta, I always put my interpretation of the character into the drawing - the posture, the expression, and emotion. @myevilmouse did a beautiful work of describing all those things and the struggle!

The overall vibes and emotions are always superior to the technique or realism in my art. I want to communicate basic understandings in a pleasant form. Sometimes this works better, and sometimes it's not. But I always worked like this even before I did fanarts. So for me, Seta's struggle is real! But I never tried to reach hyperrealism 🤭 That's not for me. Swift projects, maybe a few days on them, move on to something different.

Similarly, in writing, @myevilmouse wrote down beautifully the struggle of sketching someone sitting in front of you, and you know almost nothing about him. In cases like that, I usually use my imagination. Fill out the gaps. I have a basic knowledge of personalities which I use these times. And while I am drawing someone, I'm always thinking about them - not necessarily them in the picture, but other different situations - filling those gaps in my mind.

The goal for me is to put something into the picture. When that something is "looking back to me," I'm happy. Maybe it's something only I can sense, Idk. But that's my goal, similar to what Seta felt as @myevilmouse described it.

For me, Thrawn is a fascinating individual to draw - because he is a great character! And there is so much potential in him.

Thank you for this opportunity to share my thought about this exciting subject!

#ask #asnwer #ask box #blackmonitor #too long answer #my method of drawing #The Asker’s Studio™️

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coruscantiscribbler · 2 years ago

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Hello there! It’s been a while since we have sat down for a discussion here at the Asker’s Studio™️

A few days ago, a discussion arose, regarding the redemption of Agent Kallus (a story arc from the TV show Rebels)

You took a moment and weighed in:

It's why I never bought the happily-ever-after-on-Lira-San. If Zeb took him there (briefly) I think was only an act of grace on Zeb's part to show Kallus that not all the Lasat were gone. Kallus can never atone for his actions. All he can do is try.

I would like to revisit an old topic - the redemption of Agent Kallus - from a different angle. In our past discussions, you have been very clear about the direction that you would take your fic, We Regret. There would be no Kalluzeb, no happily-ever-after-on-Lira-San, and quite frankly: no happy Kallus, period. I fully embrace this vision for your fic.

I was recently reminded that Rebels was a children’s show, thus, many of the high order concepts, morals and story arcs that I hoped for may not have been feasible for that audience/age group. I staunchly begged to differ, as other children’s shows such as Gargoyles willfully waded into moral territory.

My question(s) to you are:

If you were the head writer for Rebels, how similar would you have addressed the story to your fic? (absent the smut, folks 😈)

Would you have addressed the deaths of the Stormtroopers with more compassion/emphasis?

Overall, are we doing children a disservice by glossing over all of the above: Genocide, instant redemption, casual death

As usual, I greatly appreciate the time and effort that you apply to your fic, and my questions in general.

Aaargh, I had written a lot of this and then managed to erase it all. Trying again, and thank you so much for the Ask.

If I could have been in charge of Rebels I would not have dropped Kallus playing Cat & Mouse with Thrawn. I know the writers wanted it to be a surprise that Kallus has become Fulcrum, but as Andor has shown us there is great drama to be mined from a person moving from total loyalty, to questioning and then to betrayal. And when you have an actor as good as David Oyelowo why on earth would you waste him? (The fact Kallus was wasted in season 4 is criminal.)

I think Thrawn and Kallus admired and respected each other and then Kallus came to fear those all too discerning eyes. Rightly so because Thrawn did unmask him.

The way the stormtroopers were treated in Rebels is part of the reason I started my fic. (apart from finding Kallus a fascinating character). The Clone War series showed such compassion to the Clones, their hopes, dreams, loyalty and devotion to each other, the pain when one of them died. It was beautiful.

Well, the troopers are also human beings and the fact they were killed as casually as if they were droids truly bothered me. After the devastation of the Clone wars, I figured a lot of people would have joined just to have 3 hots and a cot, but there would also be some who were patriots and wanted to see peace and order restored to the galaxy. That was Kallus.

I've never bought the idea that people in the Empire had no relationships. There would be romances, weddings, friendships would form. Soldiers fight for each other, they rarely fight for causes. I wanted to show those connections and relationships.

And of course funerals. The title of my big Kallus Fic is from the opening line of the condolence letters he writes to the families of the fallen troopers. Behind those faceless people in white armor were parents, spouses, children who would grieve at the loss of someone they loved.

It's also why I gave the people in the Lothal Dome and even aboard the Star Destroyer's some sense of a social life. There would book clubs and chess clubs and gaming groups, and I even threw in a glee club. Humans crave and need contact, you can't take that out of them in the few short years the Empire actually existed.

Yes, death should have weight and meaning. It's one of the reasons I never really enjoyed comics. My friend Len Wein used to say "Nobody's dead in the comics until you see the body and not even then." And I would argue that debases and trivializes death. I think it's unfair to ask a reader or a viewer for an emotional reaction to a character's death and then smirk and say -- "Never Mind" a la Emily Litella from Saturday Night live.

I think it's important to be clear eyed about what was being described in Rebels. Genocide should never be glossed over, and I don't see how a person who took part in such actions gets to have a happily-ever-after ending even after devoting five or six years to a more worthy cause. I plan to take my story past the end of the war, and I know what Kallus will be doing after he pays his debt to society. I think if the New Republic had any hope of succeeding it would be because it honored the rule of law. Kallus has to face some punishment.

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