Roundup

[jaggedwolf]

Jade Empire

I finished off chapters 3 and 4, which covers both the Lotus Assassin fortress mission and the final confrontation with the Emperor, which means I finally reached parts I never got to play in my first run-through of the game. The Lotus Assassin fortress has a "Sith Academy on Korriban" feel to it, unsurprisingly, and despite my years-ago reading of spoilers, I hadn't anticipated Sagacious Zu's role in all of this. Grand Inquisitor Jia is one of the more interesting antagonists and I like her character design.

Juggling the Dawn Star and Silk Fox's romances is still going as planned, but I found it kinda funny Sky just chills in the background of that confrontation - poor Sky didn't even get flirted with by Furious Ming in this playthrough :(

...I continue to be annoyed with myself for having spoiled this climax of the game for myself years ago, convinced I'd never get to play it myself, but it was still executed well, IMO. I wonder what I'd have thought of Master Li in a spoiler-free playthrough.

TGIF/F

Apparently awkward-turtling my way around this con two years ago paid off in me having an unabashed fantastic time this year, haha. At its core, it's a kind of earnest good-faith in-person fannish experience that really worked for me, with both nuanced conversations and moments of sheer joy. I'm already looking forward to the 2022 con. Here is a non-exhaustive list of things I enjoyed:

• Running into another Starship Iris fan in the wild and wrangling some folks into listening to the first episode one evening
• Learning to play beer pong for the first time
• Watching and yelling at each other over the Kim Possible live-action movie, in which there's an age-appropriate new character for the role of Kim's girlfriend and also Kim's mom (played by Alyson Hannigan??) and grandma are badasses.
• People appreciating my "rebel gem" Pearl pin

Even for the (extremely rare) couple of moments that stressed me out, I unexpectedly ran into people later that shared my sentiments and got to discuss it with them, which was pretty cool.

Writing

I wrote the first AO3 fic ever for We Fix Space Junk, a podcast about an experienced smuggler/repairwoman and her new work partner, a former heiress/socialite. Naturally, there is pining and thoughts about scars.

The Temporary Delay (1447 words) by jaggedwolf
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Samantha Trapp/Kilner
Additional Tags: Huddling For Warmth, Pining
Summary: When an unexpected snowfall traps Samantha and Kilner planet-side after a job, Samantha deals poorly with the lack of proper heating. Kilner tries to help.

Links

Tamsyn Muir Interview: “There is a lot of blood on my dance floor.” - Interview with the author of Gideon The Ninth. She interviews like her prose, which is delightful, and I really like her thoughts on fanfiction and the purity demanded of it and of queer and/or female creators.

Emily Dickinson Escapes - On renditions of Emily Dickinson in fiction, and how they've changed over the decades.