Excited To See What Happens Me F W Vader, Padme And Starkiller… Wondering How Those 3 Will End Up On

AI in Quora, and in fandom spaces?

I just have to ask. Why does Quora have an AI tool now for some questions?

Isn't the whole point of Quora... you know... asking people things? Getting people's input?

And yet, browsing around through Star Wars stuff on Quora last night, I found this:

Like... how is this helpful, O Great AI Bot Writing Helpful Answers?

It's a subjective question to begin with, so why would an AI be offering information on it? It seems like a question to debate, not a question to answer. And the Quora answers from people, of course, were

And the idea of trying to have a nerdy discussion with ChatGPT is just... weird, like there's no interest or fascination or theorizing, you know? Just this clinical-sounding summary. ChatGPT doesn't care about the characters, or the stories, or the worldbuilding, or any of that. It probably just scraped through the opinions of people who do care, and then spat out a soulless regurgitation.

[Or, heck, who knows. Maybe ChatGPT took one look at the opinionated discussions and was like, "oh hell no. i'm not touching that with a ten-foot pole. make your own moral decisions, you stupid squishy human."]

Seriously, though. AIs in fandom stuff? Weird. Fandom stuff is so oriented around people and opinions and connection, and AI... eh... until AIs reach the point of, say, Artoo & Co., it just doesn't seem like a great fit.

So, I was watching Randy Rainbow videos on YouTube this evening, and it occurred to me that there would probably be someone like Randy Rainbow in the SW galaxy, out there criticizing Palpatine, Vader, the Moffs, etc., with "interviews" and clever, witty showtune parody holos.

Sure, this individual would have to be in disguise and doing the holos from a super-secret location, but you know somebody out there would be doing it... and oh my, would I love to see those.

Kind of random: this cool, analytical article on the Papyrus font!

So, I had no idea that Papyrus is apparently a hated font? I thought it was pretty cool-looking when I was a kid. Trying to use it now, though, yeah, there's something just not quite right about it. Thought this article was fascinating because of its in-depth analysis of the font. Knowing nothing beforehand about font construction, it was really neat to see all the considerations that can go into font design.

In an nutshell: Papyrus, unlike Comic Sans, is actually a pretty well-structured/balanced font. The flaw is that it's too perfect: intended to look "handmade," yet every letter is identical the other letters of its kind, and so it comes off looking fake.

Design for Hackers

In Defense of Papyrus: Avatar Uses the World's Second-Most-Hated Font to Signal the Downfall of Civilization

The same reason you hate Papyrus is the reason it's the perfect font for the movie Avatar.

hey so fun question, Vibe wise, Palpatine is dealing with a rebellion that is actually Wildly more competent/coherent out of the gate in a way? Ignoring just Anakin/Vader Power aand skill as a warrior, the fact that in sheer military experience Vader blew literally everyone else left out of the water did so much heavy lifting at first when folks are scrambling for years. reason why I enjoyed such things as them stealing Venerators and Super Charging them up because they KNOW their needs.

Yeah, I'd say he is! In this AU, we've got Padmé alive and working behind the scenes during the first couple of years of the rebellion, which was probably a major contributor in and of itself. She has a political motivation to take back the galaxy from an autocratic Emperor, but she also has a very personal motivation to take down Palpatine. So, she would have really pushed for things to get done, for alliances to be made and intelligence networks to developed. Add to that, then, the fact that she and Obi-Wan were both staying with the Larses, so she was able to pull him into the rebellion effort; there was probably a whole bunch of strategic input that came out of that collaboration, e.g. things like the Venator retrofitting program, and a more organized approach to the whole rebellion thing in general, especially with regard to the military angle. Meanwhile, Rex and Ahsoka's work regarding finding/dechipping/helping/recruiting clones post-Order 66 would have helped with strategy and organization as well, taking advantage of the clones' years of military training and wartime experience.

The Empire still has far more resources, in terms of money, ships, weapons, and recruits/conscripts, but the Rebellion in this AU does have a pretty solid foundation when it comes to experience and tactics, and they're able to use their personnel's experience and ingenuity to adapt and make the most out of their limited resources. They still have to be careful—they can't just take on the Empire in all-out war at this point—but they're in a much better position overall, with a unified movement already underway, instead of a scattering of independent rebel cells.

Hope you are taking care! Eagerly awaiting your next chapter!! 🙏🏽🙌🏽❤️

Hi! Sorry! Work/life in general have been keeping me busy lately, but the next chapter is almost done (hoping to have it out tonight or tomorrow) :)

Thanks for your message; it's helped to motivate me to keep chipping away when the chapter is being stubborn! 💛💛💛

332nd team building exercises on Scariff, playing some space!football. (Fives succeeds, palpatine dies, everyone else lives AU)

Another top gun x Star Wars piece. :) (see top gun maverick)

this took me many many hours and felt like it would never end, so please see the details

Hear me out.

Kyberpunk.

Like steampunk, only it's a Star Wars AU or whatever where they've somehow learned to farm kyber crystals, and have all sorts of kyber-dependent inventions. Like, kyber-augmented hyperdrives that dramatically cut travel times. Kyber is used in podracer engines, OH GEEZ what a horrible idea.

And what if there's a difference between typical farmed kyber and "natural" kyber, like from Ilum. The Ilum kyber is purer, or more powerful, or more efficient, or whatever, so of course there are people who aren't satisfied with farmed kyber and try to raid Ilum. The Jedi are pissed.

And every so often, a Jedi doesn't find their crystal in Ilum, because it's Force-only-knows-where, growing happily away in a farmer's kyber beds. And then there's a wild goose chase all over the galaxy with a gaggle of initiates and their chaperone or a master and padawan hunting down every single kyber farm until they find one with an unusually powerful farmed crystal. Once it's found, they have to convince the farmer that they shouldn't have to pay for it, because it's meant for the baby Jedi. Nice farmers will cooperate. But some are unscrupulous and decide to jack the price.

And don't even get me started on the counterfeiting issues. You can find people selling anything that vaguely resembles crystal as kyber. It's a major problem. And everybody thinks the Jedi should be the ones to take care of it, because kyber is "their thing." The Jedi are not only pissed, but also very tired. One particularly desperate individual even tried grinding up some [farmed] kyber in case it might make a good headache remedy. [It didn't. But some padawan got a holo of it, and now ground kyber is the latest holonet sensation of the year, a la Tide pods and Nyquil chicken. The Temple healers are livid, by the way.]

(This idea is free to a good home, because I will probably never write it. If anyone adopts it, though, I'd love to see what you do with it!)

Inspired by a "redraw this as your ship" screenshot I saw on Pinterest, and while I wouldn't exactly call this my ship, I thought it would make for a fun, dramatic scene!

And I'm discovering that I be slightly addicted to drawing Rebel graffiti in aurebesh.

Aurebesh font files downloaded from AurekFonts, Boba Fonts, and Pixel Sagas on fontspace.com

Been doing a little sketching to try out some new pens and markers!

I discovered that Pentel makes this cool pen called the Hybrid Technica, which has a ballpoint but uses flat black ink (like that used in Pigma Micron pens) instead of the typical, kinda shiny, oilier-looking ballpoint ink. It's fun, because I enjoy the feel of sketching with a ballpoint pen, but also like the look of the Micron ink!

Also tried out a larger Micron pen for a more graphic look, also fun. I'd only ever used the 005, 01, and 05 before, but decided to see what a 12 would be like, and it's a very different look!

My mom passed off some grey Copic Sketch markers to me, too, so I messed around with using those for shading.

"Luke and Leia have begun to find Tatooine a trifle boring...." This is the Pentel ballpoint, with Copic shading. Trying for a more Ernest Shepard-like style. I'd like to do a collection of several drawings of the twins for an upcoming chapter, all ink sketches like this, on a single piece of paper, depicting their escapades.

Also Pentel ballpoint. Supposed to be Katooni and her ysalamir, but I was working from very vague memory, so it's very inaccurate. As for the lovely little bit of FOILing... I have this habit of reaching for whatever paper is nearest when I need to jot something down. Old sketchbooks from high school? Random bits of algebra here and there. Journals from college? Snippets of biology research notes. It's kind of fun to flip back through years later, almost like a mini time capsule.

Micron 12 with Copic shading.

(Just one question. Why are they all looking off to the left???)

A scrap of dialogue from a discarded chapter idea for Fortune's Rule---it doesn't actually work in the story for numerous reasons, but I had too much fun writing it to just discard it entirely, so here it is!

Ventress: I thought you said your contact was trustworthy! Obi-Wan: There's always a slight risk with Hondo; it's simply a matter of making the risk pay off. Ventress: This is this your idea of paying off?! Obi-Wan: Well, the Alliance has the goods. That was our objective, after all. Ventress: And WE have a Mandalorian with beskar and a flamethrower on our shebs! Obi-Wan: It's nice to break up the monotony, don't you think? Ventress: Haven't you had enough monotony-breaking lately?

The original idea was for an Obi-Wan and Ventress adventure, where they and some other Alliance forces are in the middle of a raid on a cargo transport carrying bacta from Thyferra, when they're interrupted by the arrival of Boba Fett---hired by Vader to bring in Kenobi, for personal revenge reasons and also because he has information about Padmé.

I think I oopsed, though... originally intended to have Vader contact Boba Fett in an earlier chapter, then forgot about it, didn't include it, and thus screwed up the setup for the Thyferra mission.

I'm still planning on having an Obi-Wan and Ventress adventure coming up very soon, though! A bit different from the OG idea, but the new idea also ties in better with another plot element that the OG didn't touch on.