a gate to many wonders

[melannen]

I spent much of my snow day cleaning, and as a result, I found the USB drive I lost several months ago that had all my writing on it! This wasn't as much of a disaster as it could have been, because I have been writing so slowly that there were only a few things that had been changed since my last backup, but one of them was the Force Ghosts story with the Taoism.

And re-reading it on the recovered drive, I realized that I'd actually gotten to a pretty natural stopping point, and the odds of me finishing the entire planned story were fairly low at this point, so I cleaned it up and posted it! Here it is. (There may be more in this universe that gets written someday? I really want to write something with Han and Finn, if nothing else. But there may not be more. At least not before the next movie comes out.)

a gate to many wonders (3643 words) by melannen
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Characters: Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Yoda (Star Wars), Anakin Skywalker, Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Additional Tags: Force Ghost Luke Skywalker, Force Ghost Han Solo, Force Ghost Yoda (Star Wars), Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Force Ghost Anakin Skywalker
Summary: "Dying, for a Jedi Master in the line of Yoda, was a gentle thing"; or, "Hi, Not Listening To This Anymore," Han said, appearing suddenly. "I'm dead."

My writing files became a confused mess during the period the drive was lost, so I'm hoping in the next few weeks to go through the WIPS and sort them into "Never going to write any more of this, clean up what you've got and post it as a forever-WIP"; "This was supposed to be the start of a 100000 word epic but you are never going to write the epic so get it to a stopping point, cauterize it, and post it"; "This was meant to be a short thing and you were only a thousand words short when you lost your nerve so just do it already"; and "actual WIPs." So hopefully maybe you'll see some results from that coming through soonish.

On the Star Wars front, I have been reading the Doctor Aphra comics, because lesbian chaotic neutral archaeologist during the Rebellion era written by Kieron Gillen, yes please. And it is very good but now I have run out of her solo series and I am at serious risk of getting sucked into the Darth Vader comics she first appeared in and if I go that far, then who knows how far down in the pit I will end up? If I start posting about Grand Admiral Thrawn or something, somebody throw me a rope.

Comments

[stellar_dust]

Embrace the Darth Vader comics! You know you want to.

One of my friends has been telling me the new Thrawn novels are pretty good, too! :D

[melannen]

*falls to knees* NOOOOOOOO

Have you been reading the Doctor Aphra comics? So much really really bad archaeology! That knows it is really really bad archaeology, because Aphra is a bad archaeologist.

[stellar_dust]

I only know Aphra from the Vader comics several years back! Her yuletide stories this year were good though.

[petra]

Somewhere in my soul (that has not in fact read the New EU or whatever it's called *other* than Vader & Aphra) a voice is really insistent that making up a universe of art history for the sake of writing Thrawn would be AWESOME.

It is not right but I support your rabbithole adventures.

[melannen]

Has someone written Thrawn vs. Aphra yet? Because that seems like a natural set of nemeses and it would be AMAZING.

[petra]

I haven't seen it but ooooo I want it.

[sylvaine]

*bursts out laughing at "hi, I'm dead"*

[melannen]

A man doesn't get many opportunities to use a line like that! You take 'em where you can get 'em!

[duskpeterson]

Congrats on finding the USB! Have you considered cloud backup in case this happens again?

Great story summary, by the way.

[melannen]

I don't trust cloud backup for a couple of reasons. Although the main reason I was keeping stuff on a USB was for writing on the work computers, where I wouldn't be able to use the automatic cloud backup services anyway. We aren't allowed to use USB on the work computers anymore (for... stupid reasons) so I've mostly been writing in email or google drive anyway (part of the reason my files are a mess) which I guess is technically cloud anyway. But I'd rather not. I tried it repeatedly back in the day when "cloud backup" meant "ftp to your network/web space" and had the service that was running it lose my files or change its TOS so I lost access to my files, or whatever. I'm not saying the modern cloud backup places will do that - but I'm not saying I trust them not to, either. (And I definitely don't trust them not to stick their noses into my data and sell the results to the Cambridge Analytica.) Finished stuff gets cloud-backed-up to email or DW or AO3 anyway, and the rest I'd rather keep in my own hands.

If I was doing something where losing the USB would really mess me up, I might, but a few thousand words of fanfic between manual backups isn't really worth it.

[mindstalk]

If you have the right tools you can encrypt sensitive stuff locally, then upload it to one or more services, where Cloud or AWS or "some Linode I run". Easy for me in my command line world: gpg -c locally, then a script or makefile that uses scp or rsync to various accounts.

[melannen]

This goes back to what I was talking about a few posts back: so many solutions assume people are going to be doing most of their work on computers they control, have sole use of, and that have a reliable and fast internet connection - none of those things apply to how I currently use computers. Any solution that requires having access to anything other than webpages, requires installing software, fails if I'm offline, or that requires me to be continually logged in to something is a solution that would currently be a lot harder for me than "remembering where my usb drive is".

If I was using gpg encryption specifically, I'd probably have to carry my private key around on a flash drive anyway.

Honestly, the main problem moving to cloud backup would solve for me is "no longer having people recommend the cloud to me".

(if it's something important enough that I specifically want offsite backup in case of volcano, I put it on at least two offsite spaces, but there are very few things that important, and fanfic wips are not one of them.)

[mindstalk]

Fair enough. My solution doesn't require continual login but does fail your other points.

One note though for reference: the -c option to gpg is for symmetric encryption, i.e. "encrypt a file with some passphras", not public/private key.

Also, I have nothing against having a USB key! But they can get lost, stolen, or simply fail, so backups of backups are good. But yeah, hard to protect without being able to use programs.

Not impossible! Firefox Accounts has a clever approach: your password encrypts your data locally, and generates a login credential, so the FF servers are never able to see your plain data. But I don't know of a cloud general file storage that does something similar.

[kore]

Honestly, the main problem moving to cloud backup would solve for me is "no longer having people recommend the cloud to me".

WOW, that sounds familiar (and the mantra before this was "but it's so easy to go from Windows to Unix").

[kore]

Rey and Chewie had told him about Han's death, cut down by Kylo's lightsaber in the escape from Starkiller Base, but neither of them had gone into detail. Luke grinned. He'd wondered how Han had let himself be that careless, and it hadn't been carelessness at all. "Did you go to your death willingly and open-hearted? At one with the Force? In the purity of love, but with good work left undone?"

Han glared at him.


OMG, this is marvelous.