Still quite contrary...

I'm just here for Kleya and Sabine and the Bad Batch these days.

[callie-quite-contrary]

I'm trying to think of code names Kleya and Luthen could use when discussing assembling the Aldhani strike team over comms, and so far I've got Gorn as the Archaeologist/the Contact (i.e., he's the one on site), Vel as the Courier, Taramyn as the Security Guard, Cinta as the Assessor (because she's the one who checks what shape 'the artefact'/the team is in) and Nemik as the Removalist (who gets them out of there), but I'm stuck on something for Skeen. It's very annoying!

[callie-quite-contrary]

Chapters: 2/? Fandom: Andor (TV) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s) Characters: Kleya Marki, Davits Draven Additional Tags: Post-Star Wars: Andor (TV) Season 02, Kleya Marki is not a wet cat, or a poor little meow meow, or any other kind of sodden mammal, she is a dragon, and certain things are going to fucking burn 

Summary: She's known since she was ten years old that bridges are for burning. Here, now, at the end of everything, why should anything be different?

Takes place in the same continuity as A Common Language.

~~~

What happens when two immovable objects meet. :)

Had it ready, thought I might as well post it. It’ll be a bit of a wait for Chapter 3, though...

[callie-quite-contrary]

Chapters: 1/? Fandom: Andor (TV) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s) Characters: Kleya Marki Additional Tags: Post-Star Wars: Andor (TV) Season 02, Kleya Marki is not a wet cat, or a poor little meow meow, or any other kind of sodden mammal, she is a dragon, and certain things are going to fucking burn 

Summary: She's known since she was ten years old that bridges are for burning. Here, now, at the end of everything, why should anything be different?

Takes place in the same continuity as A Common Language.

Posting this mainly as a commitment to keep working on it, so updates will be irregular, but they will happen.

[callie-quite-contrary]

Ugh, just got my first scambot comment on AO3, on the chapter I spent a year trying to write. Well, I say 'just' - it came on Monday, but either it was deleted after posting or someone else reported it or something else happened, because I never saw it on the site, and I hardly ever check the email account linked to my AO3 account so I didn't see it until just now and also, there's nothing I can do about it any more.

Nasty slimy weasel thing*. Wish I could set it on fire, and the kudos that came with it, which I was happy about when I saw it. Especially as it was on that chapter, which I was feeling weirdly fragile about already. I've blocked the account that sent it, but that doesn't do much.

I really hate how this spam/scam comment plague is making fic posting the opposite of fun.

*Sorry, that's an insult to weasels.

[monmothermothma]

LUTHEN & KLEYA | Andor - "What a Festive Evening" (2x06)

[callie-quite-contrary]

Still cannot get over that stunning* gown/cape outfit...

*Yes, I do always hear that word in Dedra Meero's voice now.

[callie-quite-contrary]

Chapters: 7/8 Fandom: Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Bad Batch (Cartoon) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Omega (Star Wars: The Bad Batch) & Sabine Wren, Sabine Wren & CT-9904 | Crosshair Characters: Sabine Wren, Omega (Star Wars: The Bad Batch), CT-9904 | Crosshair, Garazeb "Zeb" Orrelios, CT-9903 | Wrecker, Ezra Bridger, Minor Original Character/s, Batcher the Lurca Hound (Star Wars), CT-9901 | Hunter, Emerie Karr, CT-21-0408 | CT-1409 | Echo, Clone Trooper Deke (Star Wars) Additional Tags: Intergenerational friendship, mentor-protegee relationship, Pre-Slash, Sabine needs a break, the whole Ghost crew needs a break actually, Sabine backstory, Sabine and Crosshair talk about art, Sabine does art, Crosshair is trying to be a good mentor and possibly succeeding, also Omega goes on a mission, and certain Sabine/Omega intimations are if not explored then at least entertained, okay let's call it Sabine/Omega pre-slash, not 100 per cent Rebels S4 compliant

Summary: In the aftermath of Malachor, Rex reaches out to an old friend to arrange some leave for Sabine, Zeb and Ezra, and Sabine, quite unexpectedly, gains a new one.

Re-sharing this because I finally got my brain into gear and tidied up the tags into something more accurate. :)

In this chapter, it’s time for the Specters to leave Pabu, but Crosshair has a few things left to say to Sabine first, and Sabine has a few more things to learn about Omega too.

[callie-quite-contrary]

Chapters: 7/8 Fandom: Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Bad Batch (Cartoon) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Omega (Star Wars: The Bad Batch) & Sabine Wren, Sabine Wren & CT-9904 | Crosshair Characters: Sabine Wren, Omega (Star Wars: The Bad Batch), CT-9904 | Crosshair, Garazeb "Zeb" Orrelios, CT-9903 | Wrecker, Ezra Bridger, Minor Original Character/s, Batcher the Lurca Hound (Star Wars), CT-9901 | Hunter, Emerie Karr, CT-21-0408 | CT-1409 | Echo, Clone Trooper Deke (Star Wars) Additional Tags: the ghost crew needs a break, Intergenerational Friendships, Sabine backstory, Sabine does art, certain Sabine/Omega intimations are if not exactly explored then at least entertained?, also Omega goes on a mission, and Sabine and Crosshair continue talking about art, Crosshair is trying to be a good mentor, I think he's getting there, farewells and possibilities, not 100 per cent Rebels S4 compliant 

Summary: In the aftermath of Malachor, Rex reaches out to an old friend to arrange some leave for Sabine, Zeb and Ezra, and Sabine, quite unexpectedly, gains a new one.

At last, I finished this chapter! It only took a year...and twenty-two days...and yes, I still have to write the epilogue...

Anyway, it’s time for the Specters to leave Pabu, but Crosshair has a few things left to say to Sabine first, and Sabine has a few more things to learn about Omega...

[monmothermothma]

KLEYA MARKI | Andor - Who Else Knows? (2x11) "There's no team. It's only her."

[callie-quite-contrary]

Kleya "Team of three" Marki strikes again (because you know there's no way this was her first time out the gate).

[cptrs]

[callie-quite-contrary]

I'd caption this "In which Kleya fucks up everything for everyone, zero regrets", but let's face it, Dedra fucks everything up for herself entirely on her own, no assistance needed, Kleya was just the icing on the oh-look-it's-the-consequences-of-my-own-choices cake for Dedra.

[callie-quite-contrary]

Andor star Elizabeth Dulau talks playing George Eliot on stage

Dulau stars in the world premiere production of Alexi Kaye Campbell’s Bird Grove

Oh, cool! What's On Stage just did a bonus episode of their podcast interviewing Elizabeth Dulau (Kleya from Andor) ahead of the press night (on 23 February) of her new stage show Bird Grove (written by Alexi Kaye Campbell), in which she plays Mary Ann Evans, the young woman who would eventually become the great Victorian translator, editor and novelist George Eliot. There's some great discussion of the play, and a few cool tidbits about Andor and Kleya too.

And now I'm really wishing I could teleport to London to see the play; it sounds like just my thing...

[callie-quite-contrary]

Scene Two of Part One of the Kleya story is written!

Talk about pulling teeth, oh my fucking god. But it is written! And I'm happy with it! It's a fucking Star Wars fanfic miracle.

[kiwi-in-space]

[callie-quite-contrary]

Which society?

Yes.

[callie-quite-contrary]

Sunday WIP

Posting this first scene from a post-Andor story as a commitment to keep working on it even when writing feels like pulling teeth. It takes place in the same continuity as A Common Language, so hopefully (I really, really hope) working on this will unblock me enough that I'll finally be able to finish that too...

Bridges (are for burning)

The downpour cut out as abruptly as it had begun.

For a moment she almost didn’t notice, the drag of her boot-heels and the resurgent dull pounding in her feet and neck and head drowning out the sudden silence in her ears, but then heat surged up through the floorboards to fill the hut, thick as blood and stinking of rot, and choked her to a halt. She stood, stock-still, and fought to breathe as sweat began a sticky crawl through her hair and along her neck and down between her shoulder-blades, trickling down her breastbone and spine and under the waistband of her pants to pool behind her knees and plaster heavy fabric hot and tight against her skin.

Something scraped at her scalp, faint, insistent, infuriating. It wasn’t until she was able to force a hand up to her head against the weight of the hot air at last that she realised it was a hairpin, slipping loose – looser – amidst the snarl of hair that two days ago, or three, or maybe none at all, had been a nurse’s tidy bun. Under her fingertips the strands felt damp and rough, almost frizzy, from the humidity –

She’d stripped every last hint of curl ruthlessly out of it for the first time the night before they’d moved to Coruscant for good; Luthen had grumbled down the Fondor’s short corridor as she’d worked, something about inventory and time, but she’d ignored him, every pass of the smoothing iron a reminder to herself of what she needed to be for as long as they were there: sleek, shining, smiling, silent, a glossy empty mirror for the Empire’s great and greedy to see themselves reflected in and so see nothing at all.

The pin dropped from her fingers. The knot of hair slid further down her neck, but didn’t unravel; there was another pin in there somewhere, holding what was left of the tangle together, and she dug her fingers into the mess after it, wrenched the thing free and heard it skitter and bounce across the floorboards behind her, but it still wasn’t enough, there was still something –

There.

Hair tumbled loose, over her shoulders, down her back; suddenly she could breathe again, hear again, move again, and she wheeled around sharply towards the door. Somewhere outside – not close by, not this time – there were voices shouting and a platoon’s worth of boots sploshing down muddy tracks, and beyond them…

Her fist closed tight around the last pin.

Beyond them were the low grumble and rising whine of engine after engine as transport ships and fighters came and went from the base on Yavin IV.

Stay here, okay? Vel had said before she’d left, smiling that moist-eyed, pitying, patronising smile. There are no maps of Yavin Base, and no trail markers either. We don’t want you getting lost again, do we? I’ll show you around properly when you’re feeling better, just as if she hadn’t been finding her way through fields and trackless forests since before she was old enough to do up her own fucking shoes.

She flung the pin away hard behind her, hoping spitefully that it’d break something Vel cared about, and stalked out into the jungle without even waiting to hear it fall.

[theladyeowyn]

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - S03E09, “Terrarium”

[callie-quite-contrary]

Small clever desperate pilot + big grumpy lonely Skeksis = best episode of season.

[fancykraken]

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds “The Serene Squall”, s1x07

[callie-quite-contrary]

I know you don't want to hurt your ship, Chris, but you have to admit that "Fire gently" is a bit of a contradiction in terms!

[ellipsus-writes]

If you haven't heard, the em dash has been getting a lot of attention lately…

Because it was trained on pirated work—including freely accessible online writing (like fanfic, academic texts)—ChatGPT picked up patterns and quirks native to human writing.

Including (sigh) the em dash.

There are other victims here (RIP tapestry and delve 🫠), but the appropriation of the em dash—a punctuation mark beloved by writers everywhere—feels especially personal.

A kind of low-grade panic is ensuing. Writers who once memed their own em dash overuse—the greatest punctuation mark ever to grace the control-freak’s lexicon, frankly—are suddenly backing away to avoid accusations.

No. More. We have centuries of dash-abusing writers behind us. We will not sit quietly while AI repurposes our beloved stilted aside—or the just-one-more clarification the sentence demands—or the dramatic pause your comma could never—etc.

You don’t write like AI—AI writes like you.

Defend the em dash.

(Feel free to download/share/stick it where it matters!)

[callie-quite-contrary]

I'm a professional editor, occasional academic writer and trainee indexer these days. In my work writing I use whatever dash style the style guide dictates (APA 7 loves spaced en rules and honestly, I love APA 7). In fic, though? Unspaced em rules all the way. They create the effect I want to create and they look great, unlike spaced en rules which look like shite on AO3.

Defend the unspaced em dash! And use it well.

[callie-quite-contrary]

The mission party is growing!

Tiny adorable Omega doll and teen artist Sabine have encountered a lost stranger determined to find her way home. Sabine is being a bit Mandalorian about it all right now, but Omega appreciates anyone sensible enough to go on an adventure with a backpack and torch and has already encouraged her to join the squad. :) They'll help Fern find her way home - eventually...

Now, Hasbro, I need young Kleya in one of her wrap-jacket-and-cropped-trousers outfits, grown-up Omega, adult Kleya, Emerie and Dreena, if you please. And be quick about it!