Space Whale Breaching The Hull

LATEST UPDATES!

Promises, Chapter 89 🍄

Cover Me in Pearls, Chapter 13 🥃

How Bots Become Real 🤖💙🤖

"It'll look even better with blood on it" (Tarkin)

You Wear Fine Things Well, part II 🖋️(OFMD🏴‍☠️)

Blood and Fools ♟

Pierced (Lesser Evil)🦌

Wargames Finale! 🚀

Graduation Present (Book of Dayja)⌚️

Fraternizing in the Nude chapter 2🔥

I mostly post updates on my fanfiction (tagged with the title/ship), meta-fanfiction bits and bobs, and Star Wars fandom shenanigans (mostly Thrawn).

Here are some of the WIPs I am most focused on atm:

1. "Good Day, Lieutenant Vanto": The Series (GDLV)

Thranto crack-adjacent vaguely-Shakespearean rom-com featuring Alive!Thrass because I can. In progress at the moment are the sixth and seventh (and final?) works: Book of Un'hee and The Incident™️

2. Promises You'll Only Make: also a series (Promises) - in progress - rated E

A Kallus-centric series that is too big and probably merits future-me travelling back in time to stop me from ever doing it. Navigates an Imperial task force of ships: Kallivant, Thranto, Kandor, Daylus, Kalluzeb, and more still-secret ships because the Ao3 Emperor has, frankly, given me ⚡️too much creative power⚡️. Accompanying pieces from alternate POVs (Thrawn, Dayja, Yularen, Eli), and AUs also in progress. The sequel--The Stars Did Wander Darkling--is currently in the works as well.

This ask has a list of posted Ancillary Fic 🙌

3. Love After Stardust: A Ronbi Tale (M)

Yet to go live, but heartily underway. Basically Jane Austen in Space featuring Thranto and Ronbi and *secret ships*. Sometimes I just gotta Regency Rom-com, ya know?

Chapter 15: Oil on Leather Part II

Before leaving for Coruscant, Dayja gave Thrawn and Kallus ONE JOB.

Preview below cut

... but Word stopped working on my laptop and so I'm still in the recovery stage of grief. It's gonna work out, it's just taking way more time and effort than I'd like for said working out to... work out. I'm migrating like hundreds of thousands of words of fic to a different writing program, and figuring out how to get it all set up in a way that 🧠 can tolerate.

Everything is under control. 💀

Chapter 89: "A Judgment Made Can Never Bend" Part III

The First-Year ISB Practical Evaluation in field work continues to be far, far higher stakes than anybody was prepared for. Featuring a special cameo appearance!

Preview below cut/Link in my pinned post

(Then again, I think we only know names for of three of the four children Sidious told Bane to kidnap for experimental conditioning)

And then some-odd years later Kallus is in the coruscanti underworld facilitating an illegal eel purchase in durese and thinking to himself "I've never had duros angry at me before" like the compartmentalizer he is.

(The fact that Kallus thought it twice made me think "sounds like something that someone who *has* had a duros angry with him before would say, dude")

Oh man, I never saw this ask! And that makes me so sad because this is my favorite sort of shit to see!  

I LOVE how your brain works. Connecting these sorts of distant dots between different works into one constellation like somebody with a bunch of thumbtacks, red string, and a wall covered in photos and newspaper clippings trying to solve a fannish murder! :D That's basically how I write fanfic, so it's pretty awesome when readers are doing it too. GO TEAM!

My favorite part of this is how it ends with Kallus facilitating culinary eel crimes and how that relates back to his unfortunate psychological tendency to compartmentalize.

No notes.

I will neither confirm nor deny this headcanon. But in this headcanon, I guess Kallus wouldn't be a teenager...? But it would be SUPER funny if he were. Like, some evil bureaucratic error transpired, and Kallus is in the mess hall or something, eating spoo and staring at Dobbs's ass while Dayja's sitting there, spork hovering in front of his open mouth, staring at Cadd Bane, who's disguised himself as a lunch lady.

We have fun here.

I am in a cafe, editing Promises. I thought I'd lost all the work I'd done for that fic over the last month, and made a very distinct, horrified rooster noise--naturally.

Everyone is looking at me how you might expect them to be looking at me, BUT NOT YOU. 💙

Nobody needs that shit.

Chapter 88: "A Judgment Made Can Never Bend" Part II

The First-Year ISB Practical Evaluation in field work becomes far, far higher-stakes than anybody was prepared for.

Preview below cut/Link in my pinned post

Still. I have to wonder if Dayja is more or less pissed off at Kallus in the verse where he does/does not take him of the Chimera.

And if Kallus would fully learn about himself in a verse that he isn't away from dayja when he first defects or if he doesn't defect at all (its not that I want them apart. At all. It's that I'm not sure he would be pushed enough to NEED to without it.)

Yes, Dayja does know about Eli. Probably wishes he doesn't, but oh well. When do I ever give him what he wants.

Is Dayja more or less pissed off at Kallus in a verse where he does or does not yoink him out of the Empire is a very, very interesting question! Dayja may be equally pissed, but for different reasons. Another question to duct-tape to that one would be: whom would he be the MOST pissed off at in those situations? Kallus? Himself? Thrawn? The Alderaanian Royal Family? People who overcook steak?

And yeah. Kallus needs a lot of external pushing. Leaving the Empire was just one of them.

There's going to be more pushes.

LOTS more pushes.

(I know that Tumblr wip isn't absolutely promises Canon atm, but I am operating under the assumption that you wrote it for a reason and the spirit of it is true at least)

But, in Cover Me With Pearls, he is outwardly pretty ticked at Kallus for either doing some treason (he thinks for Eli) and/or doing some treason and not having the decency to follow through. (Notably, he is fairly pissy with Thrawn but that seems to be his default state)

Now, I know that two short WIP dayja snippets don't mean he's not angry with Kallus (he seemed less than pleased when he confronted him on the Chimera). He can be mad/upset/heartbroken/scared/secretly a little happy with Kallus all at once and also want to deck Thrawn. (I mean whomst amongst us hasn't felt that way?)

But. I also noticed that you didn't make 'cover me in pearls' start at the battle of attalon. Granted, kallus has had a lot more time for introspection (and rebellion) between the sphinx explosion and attalon that might make him less likely to back out from jumping ship (lol) but I am wondering about Dayja between the sphinx explosion and attallon.

And if Dayja might have learned/discovered something between the sphinx explosion and attalon that changed his perspective about Kallus going rogue/how pissed he is at Kallus/how he perceives Thrawn. And if it has anything to do with whatever Dayja tells the alliance that is 'very disturbing' in 'I want to change it all'.

(Also. It has not escaped my notice that the mysteries around Kallus and Dayja have not, as of yet, been solved in the AUs. While i recognize that, on a practical level, you would not be able to keep up the suspense if you told us Everything in the AUs. But. I also am starting to suspect that we'll learn that there is a Reason we/kallus don't Solve Their Pasts in the AUs. Or, at least in 'i want to change it all' since 'cover me in pearls' is still WIP. Kallus does, however, seem aware of his visions for what they are in 'i want to change it all', though - like when Yularen dies. (but, real talk, dayja seems to be all about continuing to obfuscate Kallus' force sensitivity in 'cover me in pearls' at least thus far). Basically, is it off the mark to think that, in order for Kallus to learn Everything, he had to defect around the time of attallon. and without Dayja?)

(Operating under the assumption that the promises AUs are more or less permutations of the Canon promises timeline)

Semi related: We also see that Dayja looks scared and cries when Kallus chokes him out. Scared for whom? About what?

Or am I reading too much into it and it's just that it makes more sense for Kallus to back out after the first time he really realizes that his actions will cause the deaths of the people he fought beside?

Sorry this is a bit thought vomit-y

!!! You don’t need to apologize for being thought vomit-y, because this reply is also going to be spewing forth in bilious fashion.

First of all, I don’t know whennnnn you sent this because life has sucked me down a very deep, very dark marine trench. I won’t get into what’s down there, but a lot of it never felt the need to evolve eyes. But know that when I DID see this in my inbox, I made a vocal OOH! of happy excitement, so thank you!!! (I came back to polish the next Promises chapter, if anybody was keeping track lol)

Okay. Vomit. I do not control the trajectory. So, you’re right: pragmatically, I’m not going to give the whole plot to Promises-proper in the AU’s and side-fics. But you’re also right in that the side-fics/AU’s are (basically) Promises-canon. How they are Promises canon is tied to the main fic.

I LOVE your observation that for Kallus to “learn Everything” he had to defect, because I think there really is something to that. Maybe there are other paths, but there is something to defecting that is key for him, and we may (lol we will) see how some of those paths play out differently—across multiple fics.

In Pearls, Dayja does (at least as of now) obfuscate Kallus’s force sensitivity. And as long as he does that, there is always going to be a wall between them. Maybe defecting in dramatic fashion wasn’t the most efficient way for Kallus to break that wall down, but it was effective. Trouble is, just as he’s breaking down the wall between him and Dayja, he’s also just left him behind. Fucking tragical—or IS it?? Yeah, no, it’s sad.

As for Dayja between the Sphinx and Attalon, yes: he is learning more. But he’s also experiencing more. Other shit is happening in the galaxy (some of which Thrawn alluded to when he captured Fulcrum and hit him until his hair looked sexy). But also, as calculating as Dayja can be, when it comes to people he loves, he can get a little less calculating and a little more cutty. 

And yes. The starting point of Pearls has a lot to do with how believable it felt to me for Kallus to be turning back and why then. In Promises, Kallus helps Kanan and Ezra escape from the factory without knowing that the sabotaged equipment resulted in the deaths of some of his comrades and the near-death of Yularen. So the A of that AU is Thrawn chooses to tell Kallus so (while also pulling him out of the factory to do it—so no rescue). There’s also the more pragmatic reason, which is that when I started writing that AU, that’s where we were in the main fic. But it also made sense to me. (At the time, I didn't realize it was going to take me over a year before I actually started posting the fucker)

Dayja does look scared when Kallus chokes him out, and part of that has to do with the events of Interlude I when Dayja was recruited by Gideon and the aftermath of that (they’re touched upon throughout, and will be touched upon again this upcoming chapter). He also expects Kallus to understand what he's doing and the impact it has, and that's a big part of what really gets to him.

There’s a lot to their pasts that is going to be solved in Interlude II, but not all of it.

I did start writing the sequel last year (two years ago? I forget) so… gotta save some stuff for that. Most of Kallus’s Whole Deal will get addressed in Interlude II, but a lot of Dayja’s will have to wait.

Thanks for vomiting at me. Makes me feel like my own word-vomit is going to people who read it, and not just the great void bucket.

I really regret keeping that metaphor up.

I have so, so many regrets. (Regurts)