teach me the art of war

Exchange fic

So, May the Fourth Exchange happened! (This post has been sitting in drafts for a while now. Oops.) Firstly: just look at my gifts. LOOK at them. I have been spoilt rotten and I'm still pinching myself a little that so much rarepair goodness came my way. I really, REALLY do not have time to be doing exchanges at the moment, but Mt4 is my one big do-or-die event of the year and I have zero regrets for the full body push it took to cram the thing into my schedule.

Secondly, I want to blather a bit about the fic I wrote, because it got wildly out of control in a way that was both very fun and very exhausting. (There's also a punchline. Please stick around for the punchline! I'm still screaming about it a little inside.) ( tl;dr is it even Mt4 if I'm not drowning in canon review and >20x over the wordcount? )

Anyway - now we're at the punchline - reveals day came around and it turns out my recip not only wrote for me in return but basically joined me in a surprise round robin! Like, theirs is the get-together, mine is the three-years-later established relationship. Same core cast, same canon divergence, same complicated polyship. If the premise of 'Ben survives Exegol and goes on to have complicated relationships with a whole bunch of Resistance heroes' sounds even a tiny bit appealing to you, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND:

All the Stars in the Sky (7571 words) by ambiguously
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Rebels
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren & Finn/Rose Tico & Poe Dameron/Jacen Syndulla, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren/Finn/Rose Tico/Poe Dameron/Jacen Syndulla
Characters: Poe Dameron, Jacen Syndulla, Rey (Star Wars), Finn (Star Wars), Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, POV Poe Dameron, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Canonical Character Death
Summary: Poe has a lot of problems left to deal with after the Battle of Exegol.

TV shows

As mentioned above, I've been (re)watching Resistance and enjoying it SO much more than I remember doing last time. It's first and foremost a fun, goofy show aimed at a somewhat younger audience than the other cartoons, but it also has some really thoughtful messages about how far right organisations recruit by exploiting people's natural cravings for belonging and security. The whole cast are pretty much all lovable, but I'm especially taken with Synara and Tam and their glaringly obvious romantic chemistry that deserved so much more screentime than it ended up getting.

I also started The Bad Batch, which until now I'd correctly but misleadingly lumped in with TCW as Clone Stuff(TM). Like yes they're clones, and Clone Stuff(TM) doesn't usually interest me very much, but these clones are living their best Accidental Child Acquisition lives! If Disney wants to milk The Mandalorian's success forever by churning out an endless stream of gruff action heroes adopting and protecting small children, I think I'm actually okay with that. I'm still early in season 1 so no idea where it's all going, but I'm enjoying myself a lot so far.

Comics

I read Crimson Reign and Hidden Empire, in which Qi'ra leads Crimson Dawn and an assortment of other criminals and miscreants (prominently including the Knights of Ren) on a campaign to end the rule of the Sith. The plot revolves a McGuffin that can literally freeze people in time and is a bit silly even by Star Wars standards, but it clips along at a great pace and has some truly heartwrenching Qi'ra moments. It's a fairly large crossover event, and I've grabbed all the other tie-ins that my library had, so I'll be reading those at some point soon. Doctor Aphra is involved!

Video games

I started playing Squadrons, which is the first flight simulator I've ever touched. This experience has taught me that I don't like playing flight simulators, but I do like watching them played, and luckily my husband is not the kind of man you have to pressure very hard to pick up a game controller. It's an enjoyably different perspective on the big Star Wars adventure, since you're playing ordinary pilots on both the Rebel and Imperial side, nobody important. There's also an embarrassingly hot Imperial NPC named Terisa Kerrill, who's portrayed by an Aussie actress, which is nice! It's not Mandatory Star Wars Content by any stretch, but it's a good bit of fun.

Fannish update: I am not doing Chocolate Box this year after all, because Chocolate Box mods are taking a (by the sound of it, badly needed) year off. Instead I'm doing candyheartsex! It's a one-off replacement exchange running on exactly the same schedule and I'm super excited for it.

I admit I'm also a little anxious about taking part in a gift exchange again, after having a go at writing the little ficlet I was talking about. It went really really badly. I'm so rusty: my prose felt sloppy, but worse than that, my thinking was all clouded. I couldn't seem to get the characters to do what I wanted, or even answer 'what the hell is this story about' to a satisfying extent, even though it felt so clear until I started trying to put it in words. Just, a mess. Fucking baby's first fanfic all over again. I don't want to ruin anyone's Valentine's Day by accidentally gifting them legolas by lucy, so I have to sort my shit out before signups, but right now I kind of feel like deleting gdocs and never looking at it again. Gah.

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Bret Devereaux, of in-depth military historian's analysis of LotR fame, is back again with a deeply satisfying breakdown of what made the worldbuilding in Rings of Power so broken. I have complicated feelings about RoP: it gave me a shiny new blorbo who I love to pieces (Adar, bby <33333) and I'm defensive of it thanks to all the ridiculous right-wing outrage about Black elves and female leads, but it was also just really bad, and not even in a fun trashy way, but in a borderline unwatchable way. I never put much thought into exactly what made it bad - the extent of my critical engagement was nodding along angrily with Erik Kain's coverage and ranting to my sister about how bugfuck crazy it was that Amazon put two guys with zero IMDB credits in charge of such a massive production - so I really enjoyed seeing all my vague 'something's off here' feelings laid out in Devereaux's trademark pedantic detail.

But I'm not just linking the article for RoP hatewatch reasons. It has interesting things to say about writing craft and the 'rules' of worldbuilding in general, and also some very interesting facts about volcanoes.

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Some great new metal finds this week!

All That Was Promised by Hath got recommended in a 2022 best-of that Bandcamp emailed me, and was good enough to make me forgive the fact that I've opted out of Bandcamp promo emails multiple times now so shouldn't have received it in the first place. It's blistering, richly emotive death metal with strong blackened and melodic elements. My days of being hopelessly weak for harsh vocals seasoned with just a tiny pinch of cleans are clearly coming to a middle.

Freedom of Fear win massive bonus points for being 1) Aussie and 2) female-fronted, but they honestly don't need the help. Per AMG: "influences including 90’s symphonic black metal, traces of the classic Gothenburg sound, and a heavy dose of blistering tech death". I hope they tour near me soon. I already know I won't go, but it would be nice to entertain the fantasy that I might.

Just Before Dawn fill a hole in my collection of bleak war-themed death metal that I didn't even know was there. Seriously, it feels like I should have been listening to these guys for years. They remind me a lot of Hail of Bullets, minus the really distinctive vocals but no weaker for it. Link goes to one of their newer songs about the Vietnam War. I've got WWI, WWII and plenty of War Not Otherwise Specified in rotation, but I don't think I've ever listened to metal about Vietnam.

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Edit, I almost forgot: new trailer for Jedi: Survivor, the sequel to Fallen Order! IT LOOKS AMAZING OMG.

Books
First and most importantly, osprey_archer has released a new book, Enemies to Lovers! It's f/f, fandom-savvy, full of all our favourite tropes, and the very next thing on my reading list once I get through my current crunch. I've unreservedly loved all of osprey's writing that I've read to date, so I already know it's going to be good.

Also new on the to-read pile is Sisters of the Vast Black by Lina Rather, which has promised me nuns on a mercy mission in space. Ever since I read and loved The Book of Strange New Things, I've been poised to find the idea of interstellar Christian outreach appealing, so I'm looking forward to giving it a try.

I do have one book that I've managed to finish recently - about the admittedly niche topic of housewives' duties in 1880s Australia - but I enjoyed it so much that I'm saving it for a post of its own.

Video games
I'm most of the way through Horizon Zero Dawn, and enjoying it hugely. It's an AIs-gone-rogue apocalypse story told through the eyes of a girl, Aloy, living generations later in the aftermath; her personal quest to uncover her own origin story intersects with a much bigger push to learn what happened to humanity's ill-fated ancestors and prevent long-lost history repeating itself. The worldbuilding is super impressive: at the start you're given this sort of reverse-cyberpunk setting, where Aloy's small, insular tribe is living a rough hunter-gatherer lifestyle using broken bits and pieces of salvage from a clearly much more technologically advanced society. Their religion is built around a sealed 21st century bunker with a computer-operated, LED-lit blast door behind which they believe the Goddess lives; all other similar sites are forbidden places, and an elaborate system of superstitions has grown up around technology in general due to the tribe's fear of provoking the gods to unleash Metal Devils on them like they did to the Old Ones. The terrain is strewn with the wreckage of tanks and futuristic war machines that paint a clear apocalyptic picture to the viewer but make very little sense to the characters. You can collect stray items like 'ancient chimes' (car keys) and 'ancient vessels' (ugly mass-produced mugs with corporate logos on them - at least one in-game merchant has devoted his life to studying the possible ritual uses of these rare artefacts, and will pay you a handsome price for your finds).

As the game progresses, Aloy's able to piece together the full story of the apocalypse through the surviving digital records that she finds while delving in her tribe's forbidden places. I don't want to give too much of it away in case anyone else here is interested in playing it, because this game is a rare case where I haven't wanted spoilers: despite knowing from the start that the Old Ones' story will end in tragedy, the suspense of not knowing exactly how or why they died is exquisite, and the gradual reveals have had me sobbing my heart out through multiple cut scenes. Watching the fall of my own civilisation through a heavily clouded historical lens, knowing that all these ancient people (who, timeline-wise, could include my children or grandchildren) are doomed, seeing their desperate efforts to prevent the total extinction of the human species even though they themselves never survived to find out if it worked ... it's intense.

I also really like the gameplay, though it took some getting used to. Combat never lets you forget that you're a squishy, under-resourced human fighting giant metal machines; you're forced to get clever about laying booby traps, exploiting small weaknesses, and switching up your gear depending on what kind of robot you're fighting. If I have any complaint, it's that the game does take a while to really hit its stride; the setup at the start really does feel like setup, and the game mechanic tutorials are so boring that I skipped most of them and then had to learn very fast on the fly when facing actual enemies. But it was so worth pushing through that first hour or two of ambivalence to get to the good stuff. I hardly know how I'm going to concentrate on my work today, knowing that the last few pieces of main quest are waiting for me.

Music
First, the good: YouTube has been an unusually source of good recommendations lately! It introduced me to Wagakki Band, who did a gorgeous live cover of Bring Me to Life with Amy Lee. I'm in love with the three-way fusion - 2000s nu-metal, Western orchestral, traditional Japanese - and I've since been listening to a lot more of their stuff, though the Bring Me to Life cover can't help but be my favourite.

I also really love this cover of Kiss from a Rose that the algorithm spontaneously but accurately decided I would enjoy. I know I spend most of my time on this blog gushing about obscure death metal, but I'd hate to give the impression that I'm any kind of Serious Metalhead - hits are hits for a reason, my cheer-up playlist is like 90% Bon Jovi, and Seal fucking knows how it's done. So metal covers of shmoopy classic pop songs? Be still, my heart. <3

Then there's the meh: the new Darkthrone and At the Gates albums, and the new Iron Maiden single, aren't quite scratching any particular itch for me at the moment. I want to be excited about them, but after duty-listening to each of them once (Darkthrone twice, just to be safe), I haven't been back. There's nothing actually wrong with any of the music. It just isn't hooking me.

Movies and TV
Between Loki and Black Widow, most of my recent time in front of the telly has belonged to the MCU. I feel like I should have more to say, but tbh I don't, except that I liked both but loved neither. I think maybe I'm just burnt out on the whole MCU schtick at the moment. My reaction to each new sinister world-controlling shadow conspiracy they introduce has faded from 'ooooh, what's next' to 'oh, another one'. But even if the new instalments are no longer winning my heart, they're always fun and flashy and a pleasant way to kill a couple of hours. Yelena was a particular treat, and I hope we get to see plenty more of her.

It's been a weird one. I didn't realise how weird and disjointed my media consumption habits were this year until I sat down to summarise them. Not much new stuff overall - I mean, why go to the effort of consuming new media when instead you can just lie stomach-down on the living room floor watching your rats box each other? - but I did at least collect enough new things across the year to fill a post. So here we go.


TV and movies
A star war here, a star war there. I inhaled all of Rebels in the early part of the year and loved it; I watched The Mandalorian and loved that, too. I tried and failed to get interested in TCW but kept bouncing off it until I gave up. I ... uh, may have rewatched the sequels a time or two. 

I watched Star Trek: Discovery and felt very fannish about the first two seasons, though season 3 has so far failed to grab me. My little brother came over at one point and we watched Hacksaw Ridge together, which was so intense I would've probably had to stop watching without his bone-dry army boy commentary to tide me through the violent bits. I did nope out of Mr Robot and Killing Eve, despite loving what I saw of both - my threshold for darkness in live action is low at the best of times, and this year has not been the best of times. Hopefully in the new year I can come back to them.

I binge-watched a LOT of Great British Bake Off and both seasons of Lego Masters Australia. They were more my speed in terms of emotional cope levels, lol. 


Books
The same thing we read every year, Pinky: war nonfiction, with the occasional Terry Pratchett novel as a palate cleanser. I read some Star Wars bits and pieces - Bloodline, the Poe Dameron comics, the Rise of Skywalker novelisation (that counts, right?) - and am partway through Aftermath, which I'm enjoying less than the others but still enough that I'll probably read all three. I also reread the Imperial Radch trilogy with as much relish as last time, but I stalled out on Provenance. It just didn't grip me the way Breq's POV did. I didn't hate it, though, so at some point I'll hopefully go back and finish. 

Not gonna lie, I lost a lot of valuable reading time to the doom scroll. I DID read a ton of great fic, but that's probably a separate post. 


Music
I haven't listened to much new music, which is rare - I have to be dragged by my hair to watch new movies, but I'm always trying new music. It's just that I usually do most of the listening on my commute, and ... well, 2020 happened. I started the year on a black metal kick, but it just got too fucking dark. I've kept a bit of it on playlist rotation - some Gorgoroth, some Rotting Christ - but only select songs, because my serotonin is way too low to handle a whole album at a time. For similar reasons I had to stop listening to Cattle Decapitation, who were my favourite new-to-me find of last year, because their politics may be better but fuck damn do I not need to be reminded that humans are ruining the planet.

Instead I've been listening to a bunch of classic melodeath: At the Gates, In Flames, Dark Tranquillity. Bad Wolves's cover of Zombie got onto my 'take a walk daydreaming about what Kylo Ren might do in my next fic' playlist and stayed there, as did a bunch of very catchy metalcore - we've got Trivium, Atreyu, BfMV, all the good whiny shit. On a related but non-metal front, My Chemical Romance's 2020 reunion tour (lol, that went well) sent me on an emo nostalgia bender. My brother got me listening to Starset, my husband's best mate got me listening to Eskimo Callboy, and my ridiculous crush on Jisoo from BlackPink got me listening to a stream of identical overproduced Kpop that autoplays on YouTube when I'm done rocking out to Boombayah.


Video games
I ... I've been replaying Skyrim. Again. That's pretty much it.

Actually, no it's not: my husband bought an Oculus Quest as a lockdown treat, so I've been playing a ton of Beat Saber and Pistol Whip as well. I don't know if that counts as gaming but it definitely counts as fun.