Do You Ever Have A Writing Idea That You're Pretty Meh About, And You're Not Sure You Can Make It Work,

Now playing: III-XIV. A Scathingly Brilliant Idea

In which Ahsoka and Rex head to Christophsis; Luke and Leia begin putting their plan into action and run into an old, uh, family friend; and Padmé has no idea what's coming.

When two straight hours of sitting and listening to presentations at a conference starts to wear on you...

Drawing lightsaber blades with just a black ballpoint pen was an interesting challenge!

Mayday, mayday!

Characters have hijacked the chapter, and now the writer is just getting towed along for the ride.

I'm not sure what this chapter was originally supposed to be, but somehow it's turned into "Girls' Night: the ex-Senator/ex-Jedi-Sith's widow/ex-Jedi-Sith's padawan/Jedi dropout/Rebel agent Version," because Padmé and Ahsoka decided they wanted to hang out and chat.

I feel like Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton.

My mom has zero sympathy. "Enjoy the ride! 😂" she says.

Teeny II-XIV spoiler below, don't click if you don't wanna know!

Oh yeah, and then Vader decided to stick his nose in, because why wait until next chapter like you're supposed to, when you could make a totally unplanned appearance in the current chapter, instead?

What if ghosts regard séances as being haunted by the living? Or, what if that's how they view people visiting cemeteries or places where their ashes are scattered? And then when living people and ghosts bump into each other, they're both startled?

Maybe, during a social call with one of her spectral neighbors, one ghost confides, "There's an intruder in my house, Edna. I think he's taken up residence. He walks around, existing in some other plane, and he makes things go bump in the middle of the day, and it's really quite disturbing."

And Edna's ghost replies, "Oh, that's nothing! Cecily, my dear, there are children in my house, and they're the eeriest thing; I declare, I'm sure they can see me sometimes. They watch with wide eyes and secret, knowing little glances, and it's driving me quite to distraction!"

One of the fun things about writing is how, sometimes, you accidentally write things a certain way, and then, weeks later, you realise that what you wrote actually has significance to the story, and it adds a cool little detail to some aspect of the plot or characterisation.

In Fortune's Rule, I've written Starkiller bowing in the presence of his master. Just today, though, I realised that the more proper Sith thing would be to kneel. The true explanation for the bowing instead, of course, is that it was entirely unintentional and in fact carries absolutely no meaning whatsoever. I was a little sloppy and didn't think things through sufficiently.

However, in-world, it looks like some sort of choice on Vader's part. He taught his apprentice to bow (more a Jedi thing, I think?), rather than kneel (a Sith thing, and more subservient). Perhaps Vader's Anakin is showing a little bit, in not wanting to make Starkiller demonstrate the extreme subservience that a Sith master usually expects from their apprentice (i.e. that Sidious expects from him). At the same time, I think it also fits with Vader's character. He's a military leader, not a political one like Sidious, and as such probably prioritizes utility over ceremony. There's no need to bother with the whole kneeling thing, when a bow will do.

I love things like this, because they show how, for all that a lot of planning and intentional symbolism may go into writing, sometimes what the reader sees as significant is just a surprisingly functional mistake. (And it also makes me wonder how much of the stuff we analyzed in high school lit classes was intentional, and how much was coincidental.)

More art for the Vaderkin Creative Exchange 2024!

From @sinvulkt ‘s prompt “Vader being kidnapped by someone, not happy at all and loudly complaining”

This was pretty fun, i wonder what kind of hijinks these four can get into on Sakaar >:)

Bonus:

Wonder how disappointed Rex would be to hear that the 501st is now called “Vader’s Fist”

Behind the scenes...

The Paint Incident in Fortune's Rule II-XV was inspired by two separate incidents from my childhood.

Kids painting all over themselves comes from one time when I was two or three and drawing with markers. Was happily drawing with markers on paper, as intended. Mom turned her back for a couple minutes. When she turned back, I had somehow managed to cover most of my epidermis in purple and black scribbles. Fortunately, that was just washable marker. Of course, the Chaos Twins needed to take things up a couple notches, so for the Paint Incident, the paint became much more permanent. (Note: For years after the marker incident, I thought she was really mad about the incident, but then at some point in my teens, I found out that she actually found it funny.)

And the cadaver conversation, when Luke thinks it would be cool to see a body without skin in order to find out how muscles work? That was inspired by this one time when my brother and I were at Red Lobster with our mom, grandparents, uncle, aunt, and cousin. Our aunt ordered crab, and we somehow got ahold of one of the smaller claws. It still had short tendons connected to the base of it, so we were pulling on the tendons to explore how they controlled the opening and closing. It was super cool! So, I figure, the chaos twins might be fascinated and not super grossed out by the concept of a cadaver.

The crab claw exploration also totally grossed out our aunt, which was just an added plus. So, her reactions somewhat inspired Padmé's reaction when Luke wants to see a corpse.

20 Questions For Writers

Thank you, @sinvulkt! I saw someone else post one of these a while ago, and it looked fun, so thanks so much for the tag! 💛💛💛

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

Seven. Technically eight, but one of them is part of another and just separated for logistical reasons, so it doesn't really count.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

190,105 words

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Star Wars

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Fortune's Rule, 536 kudos

Missing Pieces No More, 142

Whispers From Tomorrow, 126

Petrichor, 42

Threadbare, 30

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Most of the time! Sometimes it takes a while because busy + tired, but I enjoy it when other authors respond to my comments, so I want to respond other people's comments. :)

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Probably Threadbare. Wouldn't say it's a full-on angsty ending, because I tend to go for angsty beginnings/middles and happy endings, but it's the closest I've got.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Whispers From Tomorrow, by virtue of it being a pre-Order-66 fix-it.

8. Do you get hate on your fic?

I've gotten a little. You know how FFN can be. There was this one kinda funny one instance where somebody was silent for like 20 chapters, and then absolutely flipped their lid in a comment after I killed off a character. Not even a main character! Oops....

9. Do you write smut?

Nope.

10. Do you write crossovers?

Not as a rule, but I did start scribbling down this weird idea for Anne Shirley, from Anne of Green Gables, ending up in the GFFA during the Clone Wars via some witchery in the Haunted Wood. What gets me is how I told my brother about it, and he promptly started nagging me to write it because he wants to read it XD

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, but feel free to do so if you're interested!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic?

No.

14. What‘s your all-time favourite ship?

Meh, not really a big shipper.

15. What’s the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

WIP I will never finish? What are you talking about?

There are no unfinished WIPS in Ba Sing Se.

Seriously, though, probably my Padmé ROTS time loop fic. I had this idea for Padmé to keep looping back to some point in ROTS after she dies. I love the idea, it's roughly outlined and I've written some snippets, and there's this one scene that I'd really like to include, but I'm just not sure how to make the time loop AU work in this scenario.

16. What’s your writing strengths?

Grammar, usage, and mechanics. And maybe angst, oddly enough. Never figured myself for an angst writer, but then I started writing Fortune's Rule, and here we are.

17. What’s your writing weaknesses?

Speed. I write slowly. I also tend to end up going down research rabbit holes that suck up my time and energy. And I have a really hard time saying no to adding more characters, which adds to the whole writing-takes-a-long-time thing.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

Sure! I've enjoyed putting little bits of Mando'a and Huttese into Fortune's Rule.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Calico Captive, by Elizabeth George Speare, when I was in my early teens. Never managed to get a whole fic out of it, and what fragments I did write were terribly underdeveloped, sentimental, and shallow. But we all have to start somewhere!

20. Favourite fic you’ve ever written?

Fortune's Rule, all the way! I know it's not finished yet, but it is my precious and my problem child, and I love it to bits!

In a way, it's a very self-indulgent story, because it's got all the tropes I most adore, and it's like a puzzle, trying to figure out how to put all these different elements together in a way that's believable, and how to have characters develop to where I want them to be.

Plus, it's also given me some fun surprises, like Padmé and Ahsoka being besties, Ventress becoming Obi-Wan's confidant for a certain matter, and Piett becoming a friend/confidant/emotional support admiral for Starkiller.

And there's so much more fun stuff planned, especially as we're getting close the start of an arc I've been planning since before I started posting the fic in 2021! (There will be child hijinks. There will be pirates. There will be sand, and angst and fluff galore. And I am so kriffing excited.)

Tagging (If you're interested! I'm doing like sinvulkt and tagging some authors I've interacted with a bit on AO3; hope this isn't a nuisance to anyone! :) ) @musewrangler, @clawedandcute, @xxiamnotokay666xx

From a Certain Point of View

Or, how Ben Kenobi’s boldfaced lie prevarication saved the Galaxy (but not in the way he thought it would).

(See Part One, Part Two, Part Three)

Part Four

The Sith were a bit too clever for their own good when they made the clones’ biochips all but impossible to fully remove. If Marshal Commander Cody had been de-chipped when Order 71 came in, he wouldn’t have known what the fark Order 71 even was. 

But because his chip was neutralized rather than removed, not only is Cody no longer compelled to obey Order 71, but he also knows precisely what Order 71 is… and thus precisely what he needs to do to in order to avert it.

Cody is quick and he’s smart and he’s tough, but most of all he’s adaptable. It’s not as though he attained his current rank and position by pure chance.

So when the hooded figure appears, he immediately starts recording the holo transmission.

He then takes the recording – and his realizations – straight to his General.

Here’s the thing: 

The Jedi have a few recordings of the mysterious Sith lord, largely retrieved from abandoned Separatist strongholds. None of them still have audio, however, and despite their specialists’ best efforts, they haven’t been able to glean any useful information from them.

This is because Palpatine normally obscures himself very well on holo transmissions, in addition to ensuring that the channel is highly encrypted and the signal untraceable.

But he got sloppy this time, assuming that as a chipped clone, Cody was already on his side, so what difference would it make anyway??

Upon being presented with this new data, Obi-Wan Kenobi is gobsmacked.

The Chancellor is the Sith master they’ve been searching for all these years?

It… makes a disturbing amount of sense when he stops to think about it. Palpatine has always been there in the background, always conveniently around to benefit from bad situations. And he’s always been far too interested in Anakin for Obi-Wan’s comfort…

Anakin.

Shaavit.

Anakin is not going to take this well.

Keep reading

Fortune's Rule art: Chaos Twins!

A bit of chaos twins mischief for the next chapter of Fortune's Rule! (Which is currently in the process of being written.) Was the paint supposed to end up on Luke and Leia's faces? You bet it wasn't. But we can't let extra paint go to waste in the middle of a Rebellion, now, can we?

It was hard to decide whether I wanted to make this a nice, sketchy pencil drawing or go with clean pen outlines and a bit of color. Pen and color won, because I haven't used that style yet for an illustration in this fic. Plus, it's been a while, and seemed like a good challenge!

I'm mostly pleased with how the illustration turned out, especially the way the fabric wrinkles around the sleeves! Surprised myself with that one. The hands, though... oof. Hands. Why so hard to draw.

A lovely evening, cozily painting on the floor! (Oh, that sounds kinda bad, actually.)