La pasticherie de Petra

1. My career in science is over. (Eight o'clock: TV hour, Project Hail Mary gen, all ages)

2. Chewbacca knows -- oh, how he knows -- that Han is not very well-behaved, but it's hard to train Humans. (Kashyyyk Kennel Club-Certified Humans, Star Wars multi crack for general audiences)

3. John Oliver: Our main story tonight concerns Petrova Truthers: the few, the stubborn, the people who refuse to believe in astronomy. (Petrova Truthers: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO), an in-universe episode of Last Week Tonight for Project Hail Mary, gen like canon (i. e. John is hot for Grace who is unmoved), Teen and Up)

4. "Fuck your mother too!" Vorenus yells. (I don't like to brag and I won't 'cause I don't have to, gen Rome (HBO) drabble, Teen and Up)

5. A spotlight comes up on the corner of the stage. (Macbeth, dir. D. Nichols, 2026, Slings & Arrows gen crack drabble, all ages)

6. Ray flipped down the sunglasses on his glasses. (Ways to say "I love you", due South Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski drabble, all ages)

7. "No glitter," Geoffrey said. (Real vampires don't sparkle, Slings & Arrows gen drabble, all ages)

8. "Rocky," I said, as soon as he came into the enclosure in his suit. (Well, Grace never!, Project Hail Mary gen about language learning, all ages)

9. "Grace need sleep," I said. (Grace touch penis, command, Project Hail Mary Ryland Grace/Rocky, explicit)

10. The twentieth time through what has got to be the worst, and longest, day anyone has ever experienced without dying irrevocably, Obi-Wan wakes up on the Negotiator, checks the chrono to be positive of the date and swears a bloody streak, then comms Anakin. (One must imagine Sisyphus horny, Star Wars Prequels time loop, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker, explicit)

N. B. I didn't count limericks and I skipped a drabble to get the last one in. Poetic license: I has it.

I'm working on identity porn for tomorrow because the Virginwan Weekend over on tumblr has it as a prompt, and y'all could've knocked me over with a feather when I saw it listed. A fest for deflowering my blorbo, and it has my word? OMG!

Even though what I meant back when I arguably made the word up (c. August, 2005 | Fanlore) and what the AO3 tag means do not tend to coincide.

My version is "A and B know each other extremely well. They have complicated identities -- maybe secret, but not secret from each other. They kink on acting out a subset of their identities for each other."

I am writing My Kind of Identity Porn on the occasion of Anakin's knighting.

( It goes like this. )

*

Tagging this put Patricia O'Callaghan's cover of Leonard Cohen's "I'm Your Man" in my head, so here, have Charmax's awesome femslash vid to it.

The other day, I posted If you wanna know if he loves you so, a 150-word story about a boy meeting his soulmate(s)(?).

I included discussion questions in the first comment because I had recently had a Tumblr conversation with teland where I linked her to someone floating the possibility of discussion questions on fanfiction with the implication that the questions, and responses, would be AI slop.

She responded by writing discussion questions for her seminal DC Comics identity porn story, A clarification of range, written before we called it "identity porn" and long before the term got diluted into "X doesn't know Y's secret identity... yet!" which is more properly, if less catchily, (if I do say so myself) anagnorisis.

If you have any knowledge or inquisitiveness whatsoever about DC Comics, run, do not walk, to read or reread that story. I still laugh about it regularly, and I have to remind myself it's not canon. I read it before I read any of Young Justice or the relevant Teen Titans, and it built foundational parts of my characterization.

Here are teland's questions:
( Students! Did you know 'The End' is just the beginning? Follow along with me, and the story will never die! )

My response was:

Tonight’s homework: Read Whither Kelvin Trillion, Wither the Republic (Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Explicit, the one in which one character writes filthy limericks about everyone else in canon worth boinking and a few who aren’t.)

Pre-reading: Given your knowledge of the author, speculate on the pairings.

( Discussion Questions )

Té and I had a good laugh about it.

Then we got talking about soulmates as a trope, and I wrote the story linked at the top with discussion questions.

sanguinity's comment threw me bodily to the floor, convulsed with giggles of joy. It's considerably longer than the drabble-and-a-half I wrote and shows an attention to detail I cannot but applaud.

I may have broken kayfabe in my response. Can you blame me?

See, sometimes a good grade in commenting is normal to want and possible to achieve. I definitely got a good grade on the story and questions, so it's only fair.

But it's not a perfect grade, due sanguinity having good enough taste not to have watched the Star Wars prequels. Gotta deduct points for not reading the deeply silly text.

Also open to people for whom it is Not Dark Outside in the Southern Hemisphere.

Let me know if you'd like a holiday card, with or without short verse or prose, or a short piece of fiction in your inbox.

Even if you know I have your address, if you want a physical card, I would appreciate your leaving it in a comment on this post -- all comments are screened -- so I don't have to hunt for it. I'm in the US and have a pile of domestic and international stamps just waiting to come see you.

Please format your request like so:

I would like [a physical card/just a physical card, no fiction/just a piece of fiction or verse sent digitally], please.

If you want a physical card:
Envelope Name
Address formatted the way your country likes them done

Card Name (if different from envelope name):

If you want some words:
Please write me a [drabble or poem], [silly or serious or smutty or author's choice], for [one or more of these fandoms (the fandoms I know)] on the theme of [my favorite trope(s)]. Please avoid mentioning [winter holidays I don't celebrate].

Optional if you want to reciprocate:
I'm planning on sending holiday cards and don't have your address. Please provide it [at this link or in a reply comment].

I posted 10 drabbles to the Wanksgiving fest, which is currently anonymous. If you didn't get me to write for you, and you spot something in there that you think was me, leave me a comment with an "I think you wrote this!" and a request and I will follow up with you when I am not mid-giving-thanks.

I worked on my 2025 story index and found myself capable of forming the thought: "O poor pitful barely-productive me! I have been so depressed that I have only posted 199 fanworks so far this year."

It is definitely time for a seasonally-appropriate vacation and a hug or twelve.

"Yes, but so many of them were limericks!"

Fuck off into the sun, inner critic. Just because I would've liked to have written novels and haven't does not make the things I have made entirely negligible.

Criticism.

Literary criticism, specifically.

unspuncreature's tag on the space Buzzfeed article about an anonymous space tweeter writing limericks slew me:
"fic of all time. tenured professors will be teaching petra in 400 level poetry seminars."

And then I got a comment on this Murderbot drabble that not only included Picking Up On Themes, but the line, "Back in the days of Honors English, I bet I could get a whole paper of meaning out of your little drabble."

The first lines of my last 10 stories (not counting drabbles and poetry, which means these go back 40 works because I write a lot of short stuff), in reverse chronological order.

If this meme looks like fun to you, consider yourself tagged!
( 10 stories )

portraitoftheoddity wrote:
Fic that appears to be an AU where the characters have a little low stakes meet cute and are having a sweet little romance, only for it to be revealed that no, this is in-universe and they both have amnesia and all the other characters are trying to find them and are losing their fucking shit

--

I want this for all of my blorbos.

The more high-stakes the Going Missing is, the better.

Would anyone like to play with this as a prompt meme on AO3? If you would, let me know! Because I really, really want this.

*

The following plotbunny pile-up starts out as a chatlog and devolves into alphabetical order because I had too much fun.

( DCU )

( due South )

( Discworld )

( Marvel 616 )

Then I started reading my list of fandoms.

( Agent Carter )

( Aubrey-Maturin )

( Black Sails )

( Brooklyn 99 )

( Cabin Pressure )

( Doctor Who )

( Doctrine of Labyrinths )

( Farscape )

( Hornblower )

( Jeeves and Wooster )

( Leverage )

( Life on Mars )

( October Daye )

( The Old Guard )

( Peter Wimsey )

( Rivers of London )

( Rome )

( Scott and Bailey )

( Star Trek: TNG, DS9 )

( Star Wars Original Trilogy )

( Star Wars Prequels )

( The Thick of It )

( Vorkosigan )

( The West Wing )

( White Collar )

( X-Men Movieverse )

I am over 25K of the way into a story in which there will, if I get my way and the characters stop having plot long enough, be deaged!Obi-Wan/Anakin/Padmé set partway through The Clone Wars.

Thus far there's Anakin/Padmé and a lot of Anakin POV yearning, plus a considerable amount of plot. The way things are going, Obi-Wan will be eighteen before anything more explicit than yearning happens to him on the page.

( The first five paragraphs as a teaser )

I am absolutely planning on finishing this story, but it would be a lot easier with at least one alpha reader telling me it makes sense. My poor beloved, beleaguered beta would probably appreciate it if I found a beta who actually gives a flying fuck about this era of Star Wars, too, but that might be more of a lift.