Last night I finished and posted a fic with a newish-to-me ship: Hux/Dopheld Mitaka. Although I glanced along the side of this pairing in Between Alpha Shifts, last October, that fic only had Hux figuring out that he had tender feelings and inviting Mitaka to his quarters later; nothing more happened between them. This one has more smut.

The fic starts out funny, and turns angsty, then tender, with a sweet Happy For Now ending.

CONTRABAND: ACCESS DENIED
Author: ArtemisDart
Fandom: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Ship: Armitage Hux/Dopheld Mitaka
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Wordcount: 5,294

Summary: General Hux is aghast at the truly horrendous pornography coming out of the New Republic.

Unfortunately, he takes it a bit too seriously...

But will Lieutenant Mitaka hold it against him?

I gave the fic to irrationalgame and JayneSilver, who were the two people in the Discord chat coming up with hilariously bad descriptions of sex, which I used in the first part of the story to horrify General Hux. It was hilarious to imagine him scandalized and aghast at all the terrible sex scenes coming out of the New Republic.

As of this morning, there are 800 separate subscriptions to works of mine! Plus 85 subscriptions to me as a user -- each and every one of which I treasure. It's humbling to think that eighty-five different people have all independently decided that whenever I post ANYTHING, they want to know. Wow.

Here are the 55 works of mine with subscriptions (out of 112 works total), and how many each one has. Four of them are unfinished.

Unfinished?	Subscriptions	Title
X	149	Uncage Me
	138	Bloodlines
	96	Pocket Too Deep for Play
	46	Stays on Peridea
	45	What Happens on Peridea
	29	Key Change
	29	Not Out Yet
X	27	Three and a Half Steps
X	25	Cat on a Plasteel Roof
	24	Hux's Special Cultural Envoy
	24	Spanks For The Memories
	14	Mission Failed Sucessfully
	14	Blow the Man Down
	13	Liquor is Quicker
	13	#lifegoals
	11	Hard Reset
	10	Snake Eyes
	9	Left in a Lyft
	8	Dotted Lines
X	7	Six of a Kind
	6	So Figging Good
	6	The Hothouse
	5	Falling for His Rival
	4	The Real Deal
	4	Tell me why can't it be true
	3	Hammer Time
	3	Sunny Skies with Extreme Turbulence
	3	Wordplay
	3	One Hundred Heaping Helpings
	2	Okay With It
	2	Internal Conflicts
	2	Sharp as a Knife
	2	Curiouser and Curiouser
	2	Feast of Innocents
	2	Body of Knowledge
	2	Non Sum Dignus
	1	The Value of a Man's Tongue
	1	A Shortage of Priests
	1	How the Light Gets In
	1	Tipping the Scales
	1	Rise up and Take the Power Back
	1	Good Things Come in Threes
	1	The Sweetness of Honey
	1	Painted on Her Skin
	1	The Ritual of Scattering Seed
	1	One Less Thing to Worry About
	1	Best Girl
	1	Yet My Mouth Waters Still
	1	Sticks and Stones
	1	Between Alpha Shifts
	1	The Fool
	1	Flattery Will Get You Nowhere
	1	Up Close and Personal
	1	The Blending of Flour with Salt

There's no way to know which user subscribed to which work, although I can guess that a lot of my fellow Gingerpilot enjoyers may be subscribed to the two Gingerpilot WIPs I have at the moment.

Subscriptions aren't something I pay particularly close attention to. I don't track them in my database, because I'd have to harvest those numbers manually at regular intervals -- there's no email that notifies me about them -- and I don't want to take on the extra work. Still, a nice round number like 800 deserves at least a post about it. :)

I've been getting into two new fandoms recently; one old and huge, and one new and small.

Warhammer 40K is a whole world. I've only read two books in the world so far: Helsreach, where I got the ship Merek Grimaldus / Andrej Valatok, and Pariah, which is the first of a trilogy. I have the next book in the series and need to read it as well. So far I don't have any good ships from this cast of characters.

I don't like all the war in Warhammer, which is fairly awkward, since 'war' is right there in the name. Reading scene after scene of 'good guys' pulping orks was just not very much fun for me; I only made it through Helsreach because I'd heard that ship I mentioned existed in the book (it did... barely...), and I wanted to have enough background information to write about them.

Although I don't like the 'war' part, I do enjoy themes of ruined, noble men suffering bravely and dying for a noble cause. I also enjoy the obvious Catholic symbolism, and everything that comes with it. It's easy to weave in themes of vows of chastity, sexual guilt, religious guilt, sacrificing one's self for a greater good, and so on and so forth. I love that stuff! Plus, I have always enjoyed partners of very different sizes where the smaller one is in charge.

Then, just a few days ago, my husband and I started watching Murderbot. It's an adaptation of some books by Martha Wells that I haven't read, but I've heard a lot about it and I've seen the IP pop up in exchange after exchange, so I thought I'd give it a try.

I LOVE IT SO MUCH! It has so many themes that I gravitate towards in stories -- hurt/comfort, noble self-sacrifice, philosophical ponderings about what it means to be human, a large cast of well-drawn characters, a dystopian setting with flashes of hope if you look for them hard enough, cutting social commentary -- oh, and hot people. The fact that Murderbot is played by Alexander Skarsgård is certainly no downside. (His father, Stellan Skarsgård, played Luthen in Andor -- such a great role.)

There's even recognition in the story of polyamory and other alternate family arrangement styles being commonly practiced in Preservation Alliance. There's even a poly triad forming -- well, maybe -- out of three of the experts on the mission. It's honestly great to see some scrap of poly awareness in media. Too often, it's treated as harem building on the part of the man, or as inherently toxic and destructive. As someone who's been practicing poly for almost twenty years, I love to see more realistic and positive representations in media.

So, even though my husband and I are only up through episode nine, I've started reading Murderbot (TV) fan fiction on AO3. There are only 80 fics, and many of them are quite short, and were obviously written without all the information that later episodes revealed. There's room for me to contribute, if I can think of any original ideas that haven't already been done!