halfagonyandhope

[halfagonyandhope]

good news: i have written 8k words for this au in 3 days

bad news: i'm writing it out of order so it won't be posted for a while. lol

oh no…i have a plot bunny for another obitine au

[halfagonyandhope]

Do you think Sabine ever off-handedly mentioned how some mandos thought Korkie was the secret love child of the Duchess of mandalore and everyone else was like, “was that not what happened??”

that or everyone else has COMPLETELY different stories

(commission info // tip jar!)

[halfagonyandhope]

Asphodel | ch 67

[Excerpt:]

Rising to her feet abruptly, Satine turned to face him but hesitated to meet his eyes as she announced, “I should go check on the twins.”

Obi-Wan noticed how avoidant she was, how she seemed embarrassed that he had caught her in such a quiet, vulnerable moment, and he reassured her, “I was just there. The emdees are in the process of feeding them, and Master Yoda is there. Telling stories, so he says. Ancient fables we were taught as children in the temple creches,” and before mental images of what he’d seen on Coruscant could return to him, he clenched his jaw shut and forced a smile to hide his pain.

Satine said nothing, but as he shifted his body weight from one foot to the other, clearly uncomfortable where he stood before her, she was reminded of his need for medical treatment. She looked him up and down and then met his eyes to ask, “Have you been looked at yet?”

Now he was evasive as he glanced aside and then admitted, “Yes. The emdee says I have some permanent nerve damage, some second degree burns, and, you know, considering all the incidents I’ve had over the years,” he paused to shrug, “I should be fortunate it’s not worse.”

Satine frowned, particularly at the permanence of his condition. “Synth-skin?”

He nodded. “And bacta.”

She reached out gingerly to touch him on his injured hip where she could detect the layers of well-placed bandages lying below the fabric of his trousers, holding the strips of synth-skin against his burns, and she grimaced for him as she quietly asked, “Are you in pain?”

Obi-Wan closed his eyes and released a heavy sigh, uninterested in explaining to her how the physical pain was a strange mercy - a distraction from the suffering of his mind - and like a lifeline, every ache in his bones kept him focused on the present and distracted him so that he was too drained to think about Anakin and Padme, the carnage inside the Jedi Temple, and what he had done on Mustafar.

The lack of an answer spoke volumes. 

“You are,” she whispered. “You always are.”

--

Chapter 67 is up.

[halfagonyandhope]

"This fic is literally just porn, why do you care about the quality of the editing" unfortunately, both my brain and my dick have strong opinions about verb tenses.

[halfagonyandhope]

babe wake up, full canon accurate and up-to-date map of the star wars galaxy just dropped

[halfagonyandhope]

nice pair of characters who trust each other more than anyone else in the whole entire world it would sure be a shame if one of them betrayed that trust for the sake of trying to keep the other alive. it would sure be a shame to love someone so much you destroy them

[halfagonyandhope]

how i think Ahsoka ACTUALLY got her second lightsaber

Anakin: no, i’m not letting you have a second lightsaber.. you’re fine with just one! Why do you even need another one? I don’t even have a second lightsaber cause’ i don’t need one-

Ahsoka: ..

Ahsoka: you know, Darth Maul would let me have a second lightsaber..

Anakin:

Anakin: maybe you should learn dual-wielding Jar’Kai form.

[halfagonyandhope]

WELL THIS IS GOOD NEWS FOR MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

I've learned now that the worst thing I can do for my writing productivity is to commit to a specific number of chapters.

Me: *thinking I can churn out the last couple chapters rapidly if I know there's only [insert number] left*

My brain:

[halfagonyandhope]

edge of chaos │chapter 27

edge of chaos: the space between complete order and complete chaos in which innovative solutions are possible; subfield of study of chaos theory

---

Or: Satine and Ben are on opposite sides of the Sociology and Anthropology Department feud, their tenure applications are up for review, and Yoda's retiring, leaving the junior faculty to clean up the chaos in his wake.

[halfagonyandhope]

Sorry, but this completely took me out of the story 😂

[halfagonyandhope]

oh no…i have a plot bunny for another obitine au

[halfagonyandhope]

In a galaxy far away

[halfagonyandhope]

consider an obitine that had a war wedding at a stupidly (for them -- some people can get married young and be totally fine, but those people are not obi-wan kenobi and satine kryze) young age.

Anakin: so you were married huh?

Obi: yes

Anakin: so like how long?

Obi-Wan: Almost twenty years now

Anakin: *chokes and does frantic math* WHAT?

Obi-Wan: and it's not quite "were"... it's more like "am"

Anakin: *flips table*

[halfagonyandhope]

idk how to word this properly but wrt the fanfic thing you reblogged earlier. Why do fanfic writers have such different expectations than any other content hosting platform?

Like lets take youtube as a point of comparison, Engagement like comments and likes largely exists to boost the works place in algorithm, thats why youtubers put in calls to action and other engament bait. Few with decent reach even read the comments and the audience shouldnt try to develop any weird parasocial relationship with the youtuber. Fanfic authors ask for likes (kudos, because the websites gotta use nonstandard language for some reason) and comments despite them not having any impact on an algorithm, and seem to want the audience to try and develop a relationship with the author based on tumblr posts like that one.

Why the radical difference in behaviour away from the norm? And honestly with all the (usually) metaphorical blood spilled online about parasociality why are authors really surprised that the audience tries to keep their distance as is best practice with any other content producer?

okay I am going to answer this as kindly and as calmly as I can and try to assume that you are asking this in good faith. because my friend, the fact that you feel the need to ask is, to me, The Problem.

[this is, for the record, in response to this post]

fanfiction writers are not *posting content.* (I also have reservations about engaging with the term "content producer" or "content creator" but let's put that aside for now, I'll circle back to it.) you say "they seem to want the audience to try and develop a relationship with the author" as though it is strange, off-putting, and incomprehensible to you, when in fact that is the point of writing fanfiction. it is a way of participating in fandom. it is a way of building community and exchanging ideas and becoming closer with people.

if authors wanted to solely ~generate content~ that would get them attention (?? to what end, the dynamic you have described seems to equate algorithmic supremacy as winning for winning's sake, as though all anyone wants to do is BUILD an audience without ENGAGING with them, which I cannot fathom but let's pretend for a moment that is, in fact, true) then like. if that were the case why on earth would they choose a medium in which they categorically cannot succeed and profit, because it isn't their IP?

you are equating two things that are not at all the same thing. to the degree that parasocial relationships are to be avoided, and "that person is not trying to be your friend they are trying to entertain you, please respect their boundaries" is a real dynamic -- which it is!! -- like. you have to understand that the reason that is true for the people of whom it is true is because it is their JOB. they are storytellers by profession, and they are either through direct payment, or sponsorship, or advertising, or through some other means, profiting off of your attention. i don't say this to be dismissive, many wonderful artists and actors and comedians and any number of a thousand things that i enjoy very much go this route but they do so as a *career choice.* and so when you violate the public/private boundary with them, you are presuming to know a Person rather than their Worksona. the people who work at Dropout or who stream their actual play tabletop games or who broadcast on TikTok or YouTube are inviting me to feel like i know them to the degree to which that helps them succeed in their medium and at their craft, but there MUST be a mutual understanding that that's a feeling, not a fact.

however.

a fanfiction writer is not an influencer, not a professional, and is not looking to garner "success." there is no share of audience we are trying to gain for gain's sake, because we are not competition with one another, because there is nothing to win other than the pleasure of each other's company. we are doing this for no other reason than the love of the game; because we have things we want desperately to say about these worlds, these characters, these dynamics, and because we *want more than anything to know we are not alone in our thoughts and feelings.* fanfiction is a bid for interaction, engagement, attention, and consideration. it is not meant to be consumed and then moved on from because we are NOT paid for our work, nor do we want to be. the reward we seek is "attention," but attention as in CONVERSATION, not attention as in clicks. we are not IN this for profit, or for number-go-up. there is no such thing: legally there cannot be. we are in this because we want to be seen and known.

like. please understand. i am now married to someone i met because of mutual comments on fanfiction. our close friend and roommate, with whom i have cohabitated for over a decade now, is someone I met because of mutual comments on fanfiction and livejournal posts. that is my household. beyond my household, the vast majority of my closest personal friends are people with whom I built relationships in this way.

you ask why fanfiction writers want THIS and not "the norm," but the idea of everything being built to cater to an algorithm to continue to build clout, as though the only method of reaching people is Distant Overlord Creator and Passive Receptive Audience being "the norm" is EXTREMELY NEW. this is not how it has always been!! please think of the writers of zines in a pre-internet fandom, using paper and glue and xerox to try and meet like-minded people in a world that was designed for you to only ever meet people in person, by happenstance, in your own hometown. imagine the writers of the early internet, building webrings from scratch to CREATE a community to find each other, despite distance. imagine livejournal groups, forums, and -- yes, indeed, of course -- comment threads IN STORIES -- as places where people go to *converse.* in the past, we had an entire Type Of Guy that everyone knew about, the BNF ("Big Name Fan") whose existence had to be described via meme because it was SO DIFFERENT THAN THE NORM. treating fellow fans like celebrities or people too cool for the regular kids to know was an OUTLIER, and one commonly understood to lead to toxicity.

in the past, I have likened writing fanfiction to echolocation. i am not screaming because I like hearing the sound of my own voice, though i can and do find my voice beautiful. i am screaming so that the vibrations can bounce back to me and show me the world. the purpose is in the feedback. otherwise it is just noise.

does this make any sense? can you see, when i describe it that way, why an ask like yours makes me feel despair, because it makes us all sound so horribly separate from one another?

perhaps I will try another metaphor:

a professional chef who runs a restaurant will not have her feelings hurt if you never fight your way into the kitchen to personally tell her how much you enjoyed the meal. that would, indeed, violate a boundary. professional kitchens are a place of work, and you have already showed her you enjoyed the meal by paying for it, or by perhaps spreading your enjoyment by word of mouth to your friends so they, too, can have good meals. you show your appreciation by continuing to come back. if a bunch of people sitting around randomly happen to have a conversation about how much they love the food, it wouldn't hurt that chef's feelings to not be included in the conversation. however: EVEN IN THIS INSTANCE, it is ADVISABLE AND APPROPRIATE to leave a good review! you might post about how much you like this restaurant on Yelp, and it would probably make the chef feel great to see those positive comments. but the chef doesn't NEED them, because the chef is, again, *also being paid to cook.* that's why she started the restaurant, to be paid to cook!

i am not being paid to cook.

i am at home in my own kitchen, making things for a community potluck where i hope everyone will bring something we can all enjoy together. some people at the potluck are better bakers, some better cooks; some can't cook at all but are great at logistics and make sure there's enough napkins for everyone; some people come just to enjoy the food, because that's what the party is for. and if I, as this enthusiast chef who made something from my heart for this reason alone, learned after the fact that a bunch of people got together in the parking lot to rave about my dish but no one of them had ever bothered to tell me while I sat alone at my table all night, occasionally seeing people come by to pick up a plate but never saying anything to me -- of course that would bother me, because I am not otherwise profiting off the labor I put in. this is not a bid to be paid, because if someone WERE to say "hey, great cake!! here's five bucks for a slice" i would say no, friend, that is not the point and give them the money back. i'm not trying to Get Mine. I am in it to see the look on your face. I'm in it so you can tell me what about it moved you, so that I can say back what moved me to make it in the first place. so we can TALK about it.

because what happened in the first place is this: one time I had a cake whose sweetness, richness, flavor, intensity, and composition moved me so much that I *taught myself to bake.* so I could see how much vanilla and sugar was too much, so I could learn how to make things rise instead of fall flat, so I could even better appreciate the original cake by seeing for myself the effort and talent and inspiration that goes into making one even half as good.

learning to do so is a satisfying accomplishment in and of itself, yes.

but I also did it because at the end of the day we should EAT the cake. and it's a lonely thing, to eat alone when a meal was always designed and intended to be shared.

so, to answer your last question: i'm not surprised, i'm just sad. because somehow two things that were never meant to be seen as the same have been labeled "content," and thus identical. and it diminishes both the things that ARE intended to be paid for AND the things that are not, because it removes any sense of intimacy or meaning from the work.

i hope you know i'm not mad at you for asking. but i'm frustrated we've come to live in a world where the question needs to be asked, because the answers are no longer intuitively obvious because we're so siloed.

[halfagonyandhope]

Star Wars Text Post

[halfagonyandhope]

edge of chaos │chapter 26

edge of chaos: the space between complete order and complete chaos in which innovative solutions are possible; subfield of study of chaos theory

---

Or: Satine and Ben are on opposite sides of the Sociology and Anthropology Department feud, their tenure applications are up for review, and Yoda's retiring, leaving the junior faculty to clean up the chaos in his wake.

[halfagonyandhope]

what gets me about the padawan haircut is that there was absolutely no precedent for it in the original trilogy which means that george lucas just wanted to do that to ewan mcgregor