Starkiller: Red Giant Breakdown
Apr. 18th, 2019 09:08 pmIntro: Alright, alright, alright! It’s Phasma time—and what a time that was. Nobody is really at their best here, except for Finn, who is absolutely still doing his best, just the same as he was in the first chapter. I’m very proud of him, he’s come a long way in the time he’s been with Black Sun. 
( Read more... )
So, that’s about it for this week! As always, if you have any questions or anything, feel free to comment here or on any other venues that you like. I hope you’re enjoying the piece so far—the last chapter is Mitaka POV, and it comes out next Thursday!
As with last week, we’ll break this down into technical details, and story details, and see what we end up with. (At best, I have maybe two topics in mind when I sit down to write these entries, and I always write them immediately after I’ve finished the final pass of edits, so my filter is low, and my exhaustion is high, and I have absolutely been marinating in my own words.)
( Read more... )So, that’s about it for this week! As always, if you have any questions or anything, feel free to comment here or on any other venues that you like. I hope you’re enjoying the piece so far—the last chapter is Mitaka POV, and it comes out next Thursday!
Fic Update: Starkiller
Apr. 11th, 2019 06:33 pmStarkiller (6558 words) by ktula
Chapters: 1/3
Fandom: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Dopheld Mitaka
Characters: Finn (Star Wars), FN-2003 | Slip, FN-2000 | Zeroes, FN-2199 | Nines, Armitage Hux, Dopheld Mitaka, Phasma (Star Wars), Original Male Character(s), Bastian (Star Wars), Moden Canady, Snoke (Star Wars), Kaplan (Star Wars), Thanisson (Star Wars), Original Female Character(s)
Additional Tags: Hitaka - It's Casual and No One Is Happy, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Dance, Alternate Universe - Ballet, Financial Issues, New Beginnings, audition, The Grand Mythos of Armitage Hux, Questionable Fashion Choices, Casual/Consistent Use of Hard Drugs, BDSM - referenced, Sex Work - referenced, A Stunning Lack of Morality, isolation tactics, Phasma's Ring of Keys, Steadily Worsening Mental Health, Armitage Hux is Not Nice, Phasma Has No Empathy, Mitaka Trusts Too Much, Finn is Doing His Best, Unrequited Crush, Unlicensed Physiotherapy, excessive use of alcohol, Irresponsible Use of Prescription Drugs, Threats of blackmail, Smoking, Manipulation via Written Contract, Canon First Order Aesthetics
Series: Part 4 of Come As You Are
Summary:
Chapters: 1/3
Fandom: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Dopheld Mitaka
Characters: Finn (Star Wars), FN-2003 | Slip, FN-2000 | Zeroes, FN-2199 | Nines, Armitage Hux, Dopheld Mitaka, Phasma (Star Wars), Original Male Character(s), Bastian (Star Wars), Moden Canady, Snoke (Star Wars), Kaplan (Star Wars), Thanisson (Star Wars), Original Female Character(s)
Additional Tags: Hitaka - It's Casual and No One Is Happy, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Dance, Alternate Universe - Ballet, Financial Issues, New Beginnings, audition, The Grand Mythos of Armitage Hux, Questionable Fashion Choices, Casual/Consistent Use of Hard Drugs, BDSM - referenced, Sex Work - referenced, A Stunning Lack of Morality, isolation tactics, Phasma's Ring of Keys, Steadily Worsening Mental Health, Armitage Hux is Not Nice, Phasma Has No Empathy, Mitaka Trusts Too Much, Finn is Doing His Best, Unrequited Crush, Unlicensed Physiotherapy, excessive use of alcohol, Irresponsible Use of Prescription Drugs, Threats of blackmail, Smoking, Manipulation via Written Contract, Canon First Order Aesthetics
Series: Part 4 of Come As You Are
Summary:
Finn is looking for a new start—and this audition is going to be it.
Phasma is refining her exit strategy. After all, nothing lasts forever, and this opportunity is burning itself out faster and faster as the days go by.
Mitaka is managing what he can, and gritting his teeth through the rest. It’ll be okay in the end.
And Armitage Hux?
Hux is consumed with bringing Starkiller to life on stage, but he’ll bring them all down with him if something doesn’t give…
*
Black Sun is hiring dancers between the ages of eighteen and twenty four for the debut performance of Starkiller, set to premiere later this year. Black Sun is a contemporary dance company based on the technique, rigour, and aesthetics of classical ballet, and focused on producing works that are expressive and demanding, with a distinct personality…
Starkiller: Fusion Breakdown
Apr. 11th, 2019 06:09 pmIntro:
Well, here we are again. Back for another series of blog posts/director’s notes/however you’d like to phrase this, and also back in the Come As You Are au, which is the site of my very first longfic! It’s possible this is the first piece in the AU you’ve read, and if so, that’s totally cool—the pieces are meant to be stand-alone, so you can start wherever, and then read whatever you like. Come As You Are is my most self-indulgent kylux fic—it’s a dance/ballet/burlesque/BDSM/sex work fusion, that deals rather intensely with themes of mental illness, recovery arcs, overcoming trauma, and being an authentic person/pursuing acceptance and all that fun kind of stuff.
I’ve refined my tagging strategy since writing Foxtrot in the first place, so you’ll note a bunch of tags on the piece that are applicable to the piece as a whole, but specific chapter warnings will always be at the bottom of the chapter notes. As always, if you have concerns or questions or comments or anything, you can reach out to me here, on Twitter, on Curious Cat, or anything of the like, and I will give you more information, redact triggers if I can*, and all that type of thing.
*(I know that sounds bizarrely vague—but let me put it this way, I can give you a version of Foxtrot with the lead-up to some specific off-screen self-destructive behaviour that Ben is involved in redacted out, because that’s a specific event in the story. I cannot give you a version of Foxtrot in which Ben does not have mental health issues, because that is the story.)
I generally use these behind-the-scenes entries to both deconstruct the things that happened in the chapter that was just posted, as well as talk about themes for the work, why I made the choices I made, include Easter eggs that couldn’t make it into the text, talk about some trivia, all that kind of stuff. If you have any questions about any of this stuff, feel free to reach out, and I can elaborate on my thought process. For Dollars to Donuts, I broke the blog entries down into technical considerations, and story considerations—and I’m going to do that here too, because I like the format.
With all that wanking aside, on with the show!
Chapter Intro:
( Read more... )So, that's about all for the first chapter here! The second chapter will be up next week, and, as always, I'm always happy to chat about the piece, or hear what you have to say about it.
2018 in Review
Jan. 1st, 2019 08:46 pmWhew, so. 2018 was a year, let me tell you what. It's been my best year so far, creatively speaking. I really feel as though I hit my stride this year, and I feel much less conflicted about balancing everything.
My wordcount goal for the year was 250,000 words, and my actual wordcount was 416,503 (actually just over 420k because my spreadsheet is out, but I'm not bothering to go back and correct it). I did 20k+ every single month except for December, and 50k+ in January, February, and November. About 28.5% of my wordcount will (eventually) be available for purchase, 9% was blog posts/breakdowns of my writing, and the remainder was all fic.
I put seven fics out on ao3 in 2018:
reconnaissance - this was my birthday present to me! If you've read Foxtrot, reconnaissance is a Mitaka-POV look at one of Kylo Ren's performances. If you haven't read Foxtrot, reconnaissance is a Mitaka-POV thirst-fest over Kylo Ren, and his (nearly literal -- it's actually a staff) sword-swallowing abilities. It makes references to the events of Foxtrot, but said events are presented without context, so it won't be a spoiler if you haven't read the fic.
Blood Like Starlight - the very first installment in the kylux vampire au that I'm delighted to be writing with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
splinteredstar ! This one introduces everyone to vampire!Kylo (the pretentious fuck) and human!Hux (very long-suffering, very much Over This Shit). There's a lot of bootlicking in this one.
Next to Godliness - the second installment in the kylux vampire au withsplinteredstar ! It's a sexy, sexy oral hygiene fic. (What? Hux knows exactly what Ren has been eating, and it's repulsive.) Also features Kylo's dramatics over Hux having not written while he was away--and Hux's sheer confusion that he was expected to, for some reason.
Dollars to Donuts - this is the big one. Weighing in at just over 180k, this fake relationship/coffeeshop-college modern kylux AU took up the majority of my year. I started drafting it in 2017, finished it up in the first quarter of the year, and then took from March - August to post the thing. It was a massive undertaking, and there were times I thought I'd never be done the thing, but honestly, it's some of my best work. I was extremely lucky that it was very, very well received, and I'll be grateful for that forever, because it gave me a huge creative boost, both personally and professionally.
what lies beneath - this one is a kink fill for a lingerie!kylux prompt. I completely skipped any hint of feminization in this one, and went straight for a pre-TFA classic kylux dynamic with added class tension instead, as I'd been reading The Little Stranger. It's a fic about who we are versus who we pretend to be, and includes one Force-projected boner, some very, very expensive underwear, and the written version of a looping gif.
Gilded Collar - the third installment in the kylux vampire au withsplinteredstar ! This one is a petplay one, and starts digging more into monster!Ren, and also hints at how fucked Ren is after working for Snoke for this long. It's one of my favourite ones in this series--partly because of how it exists on its own merits, but mostly because of the super fucking awesome stuff that it sets up for future installments in the series.
Reach Out and Touch Faith - and, finally, the 2018 project that stretches into 2019, my collaboration withforautumn ! It's a canonverse/canon-divergence kylux longfic--basically a pre-TFA fic written from a post-TLJ lens. Of all the writing I've done this year, I think that RO&TF represents my best technical work, and it's really comforting because I can see the direct line from lessons I was trying to teach myself during DtD--and lessons which I immediately turned around and was able to use in RO&TF.
I have an additional 10k or so of fics that were drafted during the year but aren't yet completed, and will become part of my 2019 roundup.
I think that's about it for this year's post--if you have any questions, or anything--about the works, about my process, about my tracking, or even just about my day, please feel free to ask below!!
I'll get a 2019 planning post up once I've, you know, done some 2019 planning.
My wordcount goal for the year was 250,000 words, and my actual wordcount was 416,503 (actually just over 420k because my spreadsheet is out, but I'm not bothering to go back and correct it). I did 20k+ every single month except for December, and 50k+ in January, February, and November. About 28.5% of my wordcount will (eventually) be available for purchase, 9% was blog posts/breakdowns of my writing, and the remainder was all fic.
I put seven fics out on ao3 in 2018:
reconnaissance - this was my birthday present to me! If you've read Foxtrot, reconnaissance is a Mitaka-POV look at one of Kylo Ren's performances. If you haven't read Foxtrot, reconnaissance is a Mitaka-POV thirst-fest over Kylo Ren, and his (nearly literal -- it's actually a staff) sword-swallowing abilities. It makes references to the events of Foxtrot, but said events are presented without context, so it won't be a spoiler if you haven't read the fic.
Blood Like Starlight - the very first installment in the kylux vampire au that I'm delighted to be writing with
splinteredstar ! This one introduces everyone to vampire!Kylo (the pretentious fuck) and human!Hux (very long-suffering, very much Over This Shit). There's a lot of bootlicking in this one.Next to Godliness - the second installment in the kylux vampire au with
splinteredstar ! It's a sexy, sexy oral hygiene fic. (What? Hux knows exactly what Ren has been eating, and it's repulsive.) Also features Kylo's dramatics over Hux having not written while he was away--and Hux's sheer confusion that he was expected to, for some reason.Dollars to Donuts - this is the big one. Weighing in at just over 180k, this fake relationship/coffeeshop-college modern kylux AU took up the majority of my year. I started drafting it in 2017, finished it up in the first quarter of the year, and then took from March - August to post the thing. It was a massive undertaking, and there were times I thought I'd never be done the thing, but honestly, it's some of my best work. I was extremely lucky that it was very, very well received, and I'll be grateful for that forever, because it gave me a huge creative boost, both personally and professionally.
what lies beneath - this one is a kink fill for a lingerie!kylux prompt. I completely skipped any hint of feminization in this one, and went straight for a pre-TFA classic kylux dynamic with added class tension instead, as I'd been reading The Little Stranger. It's a fic about who we are versus who we pretend to be, and includes one Force-projected boner, some very, very expensive underwear, and the written version of a looping gif.
Gilded Collar - the third installment in the kylux vampire au with
splinteredstar ! This one is a petplay one, and starts digging more into monster!Ren, and also hints at how fucked Ren is after working for Snoke for this long. It's one of my favourite ones in this series--partly because of how it exists on its own merits, but mostly because of the super fucking awesome stuff that it sets up for future installments in the series.Reach Out and Touch Faith - and, finally, the 2018 project that stretches into 2019, my collaboration with
forautumn ! It's a canonverse/canon-divergence kylux longfic--basically a pre-TFA fic written from a post-TLJ lens. Of all the writing I've done this year, I think that RO&TF represents my best technical work, and it's really comforting because I can see the direct line from lessons I was trying to teach myself during DtD--and lessons which I immediately turned around and was able to use in RO&TF.I have an additional 10k or so of fics that were drafted during the year but aren't yet completed, and will become part of my 2019 roundup.
I think that's about it for this year's post--if you have any questions, or anything--about the works, about my process, about my tracking, or even just about my day, please feel free to ask below!!
I'll get a 2019 planning post up once I've, you know, done some 2019 planning.
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