#been a while since i've done one of these fic plugs on tumblr but

[clonecumber]

I have a LOT of thoughts about the Cuy'val Dar, but I'll save that for a second "ask." Correspondence is very silly here with such a small character limit, lol. As for Jango, the kid was only 8 when his family is killed on Concord Dawn! Jaster brings him along not only to let him avenge his parents, but to help plant a bomb and blow up some Death Watch. Then, just six years later, Fett is leading 1/3 of their forces at Korda 6 when he's just 14! Gotta figure Jaster kept him on the front lines...

That last one about Jango was ZangZip. More on the Cuy'val Dar. Whenever I'm workshopping a new character in ff a series I co-author set on Kamino, I always go to this quote from KT's blog on the group: "[they] either needed the fee very badly, or they were insanely loyal to Jango, or they wanted to disappear for reasons best known to themselves..." Yeah, definitely scum and villainy, but also True Mandalorian die-hards who would follow Fett to the literal end of the Galaxy. ~ZZ

And one more from me to round out this character limit. My unsolicited plug for the Cuy'val Dar fanfic series, lol. It's long, ongoing and very much character driven, but the biggest plot thread we tackle focuses specifically on the trainers and their struggles when live-fire exercises start. Tumblr won't let me post links, but it's called Friends in Strange Places. I've got the chapter index in my gallery on DeviantArt under "zang-zip" Check it out if you're ever hankering for more Cuy'val Dar.

*waves!*

Thanks for your asks. I'm enjoying this conversation! If anyone is interested in Cuy'val Dar fic, ZangZip has an offer. (I haven't read it myself, but it's there if any of you want to try.)

I looked but I couldn't verify the ages you quoted anywhere, and I can't access my copies of Open Season to check. I also couldn't find anything that contradicted you though, so I'll go with what you said, that Jango was 8-years-old when orphaned, and 14 at Korda Six, which would have been his first experience with command.

Nice.

I feel like there are two ways to take that which is,

1) Jaster Mereel is one of those fringe groups that starts full-on training and taking their kids to war very, very young. Possible! Also kind of interesting to think of Jaster as this force for so much change who nonetheless is still a product of his own upbringing.

or

2) I have thoughts on this and will not shut up about them whoops okay here we go...

OKAY. So,

Gotta figure Jaster kept him on the front lines...

I'm not actually sure? Or at least, I can come up with some alternatives and I'm gonna toss them at the wall since I have a spare hour and wanna see if anything sticks. (This is, of course, just my own idle speculations. I'm not arguing with your own interpretation or trying to say I think you're wrong, since I don't! I just have some ideas. Could-bes, you might say. Maybe if's.)

If Jango was 14 at Korda Six, that would have him about a year post-verd'goten if Jaster followed that approach. If Jaster started him on fully participating in combat at thirteen-ish (outside the extenuating circumstance of already being involved in the battle by dent of being orphaned right in the middle of it ala Concord Dawn), that's at least a whole year of practical experience already, gotten while the True Mandalorians have been at active war and opportunities for combat experience are probably thick on the ground. This on top of four-to-five years of learning the "basics" (basics by Mandalorian mercenary standards).

Most real life officers have significantly less training before their first posting (for better or worse) (but then they also tend to have greater brain development because they aren’t actual children so maybe it balances out but if I scream about the lack of child protection laws in Star Wars I will never get anything else done), and Jango was only one squad commander out of three, and had the most straightforward of the units to work with.

(It's also difficult to tell the size of these units; they say "squad" in the same breath as "company" (Montross) and "division" (Jaster) and "group" (Jango), so...those words don't mean what you think they mean, Star Wars? but it seems like Jango had the smallest number of people to work with? Maybe, maybe not. We'll say it was an even 1/3 for argument's sake, since I don't feel it changes too much of my point - Star Wars also has green-as-a-reed 14-year-olds fresh off the ship acting as Commanders during the Clone Wars in active conflict so this is apparently just a normal sort of "baby's first" command thing with this universe. We'll let it slide. I guess.)

They also didn't really expect Korda Six to have much by way of resistance, and Jango's infantry unit's primary tasking was rearguard and covering escape routes, at least before shit hit the fan and the initial plan went out of the window. That's probably about as milk run as it gets. If Jango only really started going to war when he was twelve or thirteen, giving him one-to-two years of practical experience before he assumed a command role, I can definitely see the timing working out.

HOWEVER. Let's assume Jaster did keep Jango in/nearer the active fighting after he adopted him, straight from 8-years-old and on, because I'm not done yet:

Still could be that Jaster is “one of ‘those’”, sure. But the True Mandalorians were also at active war with an extremely aggressive and tenacious enemy who didn't draw the line at killing/imprisoning, torturing, and brainwashing even civilian children, much less the kids of their actual enemies. To me, it's possible that this extenuating circumstance created a situation where Jango (and any other children of the True Mandalorian clans, probably) were pushed through their training faster than they otherwise would have been whether their parents wanted them to be or not. This might have been viewed as a grim wartime necessity, however, rather than an ideal*. And like, they could have sent their kids somewhere to hide, maybe, but I'm not sure a Mandalorian parent would necessarily feel that having their kid out of their reach - to protect and train - is the better option.

*(Ohhh, except maybe some of these people saw this "grim wartime necessity" and took it as a point of pride instead, like dumbasses, and made it their new ideal? The timeline doesn't really add up for Munin, but I sort of wonder if, if this was the case, that might be used as an explanation for why this particular child-rearing tactic saw a resurgence in popularity around when Kal was applying it. It's the ~True Mandalorian way~! A really misguided show of support, basically. Like people do. Probably made it easier for Jango to recruit for the Cuy'val Dar, though?)

#ZangZip #other star wars meta I guess #I like speculating #star wars #repcomm

[shawnsprincesse]

How did you get so many reads on Wattpad? I've been trying really hard. Talking in forums and voting and commenting on other stories, and writing decent content, at least to me, and I still hardly get any reads. MAybe 4 per chapter (maybe 3 because i think one of those is me when I read through to extra make sure there is no mistakes) and still no votes or comments. I've given in and voted on all 10 chapters that I have up so far. I've had my story up for about a month an a half.

My readers for Twin Rivals which was my wattpad story doesn’t actually do me justice. Before I jumped on the wattpad wagon I was gaining millions of views on another site where Justin Bieber fans posted fanfics. I built up that reader base from years and years on twitter and I had 44k followers on my twitter when I was at my peak right before I left.

I got the million views from twitter and they do not really reflect anything but my once upon a time twitter “fame”. I’ve been a fanfic writer since 2009 and I built up a good reader base as one out of maybe ten girls at the time who posted sex stories on twitter and the jb fic place and people soon learnt to recognize me. I did a lot of twitter promo and i got a lot of attention for that story and it was hard work but I wouldn’t say the views on that piece reflects my skills as an author as it was mostly hyped up by people on twitter so the word spread easily.

My harry books we’re never promoted except the promotion I’ve done on tumblr. Posting excerpts to get people to read them was all I did. I never ask people to “hey check out my books” chances are no one wants to hear you say that and they will not want to do that. I never comment other peoples stories or anything because I don’t read them.

I got 0.5 million views on the first book and it’s been two years. That is not a lot of views if I’m gonna be honest (not compared to how much better my jb fics did). 0.5 million views in two years roughly amounts to 3000-7000k on each chapter and yes that is a lot of people if you think about putting them all in a room or if you think about me starting out with zero. However, Twin rivals at it’s peak roughly got somewhere between 10-15k on each chapter and now has over 30k on each chapter and THAT story has 1.4 million views which is still a low number for a wattpad book to be called successful. It is still not getting recommended in all the right places despite it’s success.

Wattpad is obviously not valueing their writers and they are not promoting us right. Now I’m not whining, I have a shit ton of views and I’ve worked on it for a shitlong time. However wattpad is not the writing plattform I wish it would be. I use it because I want to keep my work in one place and since TR was already posted on there I figured I’d smack my Harry series up there to.

When I shifted to the Harrie fandom I had zero Harrie friends. Everyone on twitter got pissed as fuck (bc apparently you’re fake if you leave one fanbase to join another) and the only thing I had was my loyal readers. When I posted my first chapter of MPH I was lucky to get roughly 100 people to read it- those were loyal from the belieber fandom. From there I worked my way up by updating every single day, writing replies to all nice comments, posting about it on here (I had a just become a harry tumblr so I tried to get people on here to read it) It takes a while to build up a fanbase of readers. It is hard work and you have to plug your story without forcing it on people.

Wattpad is unfortunately not willing to help smaller writers so you need to find another platform where you can post about your stories and find your readers. My book is averaging at 500 reads and that is after two years of hard work. 2 fucking years and a college auditorium is willing to read my work…. that is very poorly for someone who’s spent two years of her life on a book. (Once again not whining, just comparing)

As a writer you have a choice, you can either write for your own pleasure and fun and not worry about the views you’re getting or you can go full on out there and promote yourself to every person you come across and work hard to get the views. I chose to not do the heavy promotion for my Harry series because I knew how much work it would be. I know how long it would take to get abother 44k of a whole new fanbase to pay attention to me. It would’ve been nearly impossible.

I was lucky as a jb writer. The timing was right and I was early enough, there wasn’t much on the market especially not in the kink department at the time and I hit it off. You only get a chance like that once in your life time and it has to be so fucking perfectly timed that you’ll never figure out how to do it again. Think about all the youtubers out there, pewdiepie for example was extremely lucky and had an extremely perfected timing for his videos. NO ONE else did what he did at the time.

So unless you wanna figure out exactly how to time everything in your “writing career” right then you’re better off waiting for the slow growth and that can take two years like mine did or it can take three months. It all depends on when you’re satisfied. I consider my Harry series to be a success but I’m still shit ass nervous to start a new book because I’ll lose readers.

Mph is 0.5 million, lph is 145k and hah is 50ishk that’s how many reads i lost through each book and there’s nothing I can do about that so don’t stress to much.

I hope this long ass answer kind of explained to you how I got so many views on one book and how it’s quite impossible to do that again which shows at my other books :) i hope you feel encouraged to write despite your low views and at least find it relieveing it took this lil writer right here two years to get so many views😂😂😂

Basically with luck you can get 1.39m

Without luck and two years you can get 0.5m

#wow fuck this got way longer than expected #sorry