Dru's Starbound Screenshots

For the fourth year in a row now, it's time for Small Fandom Summer! Join me for Small Fandom Summer! It's real easy to play:

Make a fanwork for something that has fewer than 1000 English-language works on AO3

Post it to AO3

And then you've done it! You've made a thing and you've diversified the fandom ecosystem! You're basically a hero.

Q: The fandom I want to create for has more than 1000 English-language works on AO3, but the specific pairing I want to write for has fewer than that. Does that count? A: Yes! Q: What if it has more than 1000 English-language works on AO3, but, like, just barely? A: Okay! Q: What if it actually has a lot more than 1000 English-language works on AO3, but it still feels small? A: Sure! Q: What if I don't want to post it to AO3? What if I don't even have an AO3 account? Can I post it somewhere else? A: Wherever! Q: What if-- A: Just do a thing, friend. Make a thing. Share the thing. This is not meant to be restrictive; this is meant to be inspirational. Create the fanworks you want to see in the world. Make a stranger happy by appealing to their niche interests. Bring joy.

And if you want to give yourself some silly little Steam-like achievement badges to commemorate your accomplishments, well, you're in luck! I've made a bunch of them right here! You can grab the ones that apply to your work and paste them wherever you like and feel good about what you've done. Here's a few of my favorites:

So you see? This is meant to be silly and fun.

There's nowhere to sign up. There's nothing to commit to. There's zero pressure. You just do it if you do it, and don't if you don't. But if you do want to play (yay!), tag your stuff with #small fandom summer so we can all swoop in and appreciate everyone else's efforts.

Green icon of a magnifying class over a beetle. Who's That Boy? (wrote for a character that previously had no AO3 tag)

Orange icon of a tape measure. Size Matters (wrote the longest fic to date in the fandom)

Grey icon of two women holding hands. Lesbifriends (wrote the first F/F fic in the fandom)

Yellow icon of a smiling face surrounded by hearts. My Special Person (wrote something because you knew that one person who'd appreciate it)

Blue icon of an elephant and a mouse. Lorge and Smol (wrote a crossover between a fandom with more than 1000 works and a small fandom)

Grey icon of handcuffs. Testing the Waters (this had better not awake anything in you)

Yellow icon of two fish approaching a hook. Hooked! (wrote something for the first time and are already planning on writing something else for it)

Anyway I was bitching about how hard it is to come up with feasible planets in Star Wars because sometimes you need a new planet from scratch and sometimes you need to know more about a planet than the 'has jungles, is probably a moon technically' than Wookieepedia will give you, and they're like 'oh yeah I can do something about that'.

So they've written (in Matlab but they swear it will run as a .exe as well and I may be conscripted to embed it as a web tool at some point) a star system generator.

You input what you know about the planet (ecosystem, population, sun colour, does it have liquid water, does it have a moon or moons, is it a moon or moons, temperature averages, atmosphere, you get me) and it will give you the... everything else about the star system, in obedience to real-universe physics. And if you input nothing you get a randomly generated star system.

And I’m like oh I know people who will be into this with a vengeance, and they're not on Tumblr, so this is me seeing who exactly would be keen on, and I cannot stress this enough, a real-physics comprehensive star system generator.

Ok so I need help cause I have the extended story mod and what the fuck do the salt guardians look like and where do I find them

I'm writing for a pathfinder campaign and trying to describe the skin of a plant person. A ghoran or a leshy.

What do you call plant skin if it ISN'T bark. If it's green like a flower stem or some such. Searching is only giving me vague "if the stem is woody or herbaceous" and not "we call the analogue skin or epidermis of a plant bark or (blank) if it isn't bark" I remember you doing scientific illustration so you were the first person I thought to pester with this.

So the outermost layer of tissue on a plant really is also called an Epidermis or Skin. No really. There's also the term "Periderm" that covers things like bark, the pseudoskin on potatoes, and other tougher skin coverings some plants develop. For fruits specifically, the skin is called an "Exocarp" (with the fleshy part being Mesocarp and the innermost layer around the seeds being the Endocarp). But that's specific to fruit.

In order to get the "Plant-ness" of the character through, describe the specific botanical features this plant-person's skin has, like how she'd have Trichromes instead of hairs on her skin, or possible needle-like spicules or glochidia, maybe even actual spines! Does she grow Bracts, perhaps as an analogue for eyelashes or lips?

See that bit at the bottom? Don't do that. Insert ParamedicGuy.gif going "Don't."

Other malicious spam comments I've gotten seemed designed to make an author question their writing, or outright encourage them to delete their stories from AO3. This one is different, in that it tries to get you to destroy the work on your own computer.

If you ran that command, it basically locates your Documents folder, then deletes everything in it, including all subfolders. It also does it without any prompt, so you have no chance to second guess your actions.

This is just fucking trolling.

Coincidentally, we just did training on a cyberattack similar to this, called a ClickFix attack. You can read about how that works here.

As a general rule, if ANYONE or ANY WEBSITE tells you unsolicited* to do anything in Powershell, CMD RUN, command prompt, shell command, or something similar, DON'T.

*There are legit reasons for running commands in PowerShell or the command prompt, but in those cases you are likely seeking out a solution to a problem you are already experiencing. Don't just run random commands on your computer as recommended by some unlogged-in guest on a fan fiction site.

Always think and consider before taking action, and get a second opinion from a trusted source. When I got this comment I was pretty sure what the command would do, and it took me about three seconds of googling to confirm it.

Cynthia was one of Magni’s longest relationships, lasting nearly a year. I’m still unsure of how they would have meet, but I do know that the reason Magni stayed with her was because of the stability. It seemed like she was willing to look past Magni’s baggage, an for a bit Magni was fine with someone getting to know her that deeply. They could even see a life where they would stick together and travel the galaxy together.

However, Cynthia had something different in mind for their relationship. She slowly began to pull Magni away from her goals and aspirations in exchange for stability and assurance. Unknowing to Magni, she was also in a way “domesticating” them. Magni didn’t have to loose her work related tendencies, the perfect Miniknog family operates best with a worker to bring back the money… Cynthia is a victim and perpetrator of the ideals of the Miniknog. It’s maybe best Magni didn’t agree to marry her. Maybe it’s best they left when they did. Who’s to say she would have later?

Happy New Year