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Noticing something funny about my fanart

So, a few weeks ago, I did a drawing for one of the chapters in Fortune's Rule—a little digital sketch of Padmé and Luke. And then I'm looking at this drawing, and wondering why the heck does something about this picture look familiar, and then I realise:

It's Star Wars meets Mary Cassatt.

My sketch:

A couple of Mary Cassatt paintings:

Young Mother Sewing

Mère et enfant (Reine Lefebre and Margot before a Window)

And then, last week, I did another drawing, to use as a sort of banner-thing for the story. And I'm looking at it. And looking. And getting this creeping, yucky feeling that a certain painting style always inspires in me. And asking myself why I've just created Star Wars meets Hudson River School, because something about the lighting and the semi-desolation of the landscape is very reminiscent of that style.

My drawing:

Hudson River School paintings:

A View of the Two Lakes and Mountain House, Catskill Mountains, Morning, by Thomas Cole

Mount Washington from the Valley of Conway, by John Frederick Kensett

Seriously, why does this keep happening? Have these things have just been lurking in the brain since middle school, waiting for an excuse to escape? And what the heck is going to be next?

Now playing: III-VIII. Questions, pt 1

In which Piett is overwhelmed and Starkiller isn't helping, and Numa and Ahsoka have very different interactions with a raxshir on Shili.

A scrap of dialogue from a discarded chapter idea for Fortune's Rule---it doesn't actually work in the story for numerous reasons, but I had too much fun writing it to just discard it entirely, so here it is!

Ventress: I thought you said your contact was trustworthy! Obi-Wan: There's always a slight risk with Hondo; it's simply a matter of making the risk pay off. Ventress: This is this your idea of paying off?! Obi-Wan: Well, the Alliance has the goods. That was our objective, after all. Ventress: And WE have a Mandalorian with beskar and a flamethrower on our shebs! Obi-Wan: It's nice to break up the monotony, don't you think? Ventress: Haven't you had enough monotony-breaking lately?

The original idea was for an Obi-Wan and Ventress adventure, where they and some other Alliance forces are in the middle of a raid on a cargo transport carrying bacta from Thyferra, when they're interrupted by the arrival of Boba Fett---hired by Vader to bring in Kenobi, for personal revenge reasons and also because he has information about Padmé.

I think I oopsed, though... originally intended to have Vader contact Boba Fett in an earlier chapter, then forgot about it, didn't include it, and thus screwed up the setup for the Thyferra mission.

I'm still planning on having an Obi-Wan and Ventress adventure coming up very soon, though! A bit different from the OG idea, but the new idea also ties in better with another plot element that the OG didn't touch on.

✧₊⁺⋆.˚₊✩∘ Through time and into darkness ∘✩₊˚.⋆⁺₊✧

An artwork inspired by a prompt by @wendingways through an event by @vaderkin-is-a-lightning-rod yay! Hope you like it and the adjacent writer does too

Crossposted on ao3

So, I've got a question. In an AU where Padmé survives, fakes her death, and goes into hiding, are she and Vader still legally married? Or was that dissolved upon the registration of her death? Or, since her death certificate was falsified, would that mean that all her legal contracts would remain intact? Or would it be a legal question that would have all the experts perplexed because there's simply no precedent, and would result in a lengthy court battle? (Or a not-so-lengthy one, depending on the state of Vader's temper.) Would it even matter anyway, since she apparently didn't marry under her own name? Since neither of them married under their legal names, is it even a valid legal contract in the first place?

I'm probably going to have to end up BS-ing the legal stuff for Fortune's Rule, but if anyone knows if there's a canon answer (or Legends) to the question of whether they would still be married after she faked her death, that would be lovely.

Edit: The closest real-world example I can find is Enoch Arden laws, and while the Republic/Empire probably has something similar, those don't quite fit the situation, since they have to do with someone being missing, not faking their death.

hey so fun question, Vibe wise, Palpatine is dealing with a rebellion that is actually Wildly more competent/coherent out of the gate in a way? Ignoring just Anakin/Vader Power aand skill as a warrior, the fact that in sheer military experience Vader blew literally everyone else left out of the water did so much heavy lifting at first when folks are scrambling for years. reason why I enjoyed such things as them stealing Venerators and Super Charging them up because they KNOW their needs.

Yeah, I'd say he is! In this AU, we've got Padmé alive and working behind the scenes during the first couple of years of the rebellion, which was probably a major contributor in and of itself. She has a political motivation to take back the galaxy from an autocratic Emperor, but she also has a very personal motivation to take down Palpatine. So, she would have really pushed for things to get done, for alliances to be made and intelligence networks to developed. Add to that, then, the fact that she and Obi-Wan were both staying with the Larses, so she was able to pull him into the rebellion effort; there was probably a whole bunch of strategic input that came out of that collaboration, e.g. things like the Venator retrofitting program, and a more organized approach to the whole rebellion thing in general, especially with regard to the military angle. Meanwhile, Rex and Ahsoka's work regarding finding/dechipping/helping/recruiting clones post-Order 66 would have helped with strategy and organization as well, taking advantage of the clones' years of military training and wartime experience.

The Empire still has far more resources, in terms of money, ships, weapons, and recruits/conscripts, but the Rebellion in this AU does have a pretty solid foundation when it comes to experience and tactics, and they're able to use their personnel's experience and ingenuity to adapt and make the most out of their limited resources. They still have to be careful—they can't just take on the Empire in all-out war at this point—but they're in a much better position overall, with a unified movement already underway, instead of a scattering of independent rebel cells.

Realising that, from a certain point of view:

Ventress is Anakin's lineage great-aunt, but he's also her lineage uncle.

Anakin is both Sidious' apprentice and his great-great-grand-apprentice. Or step-great-great-grand-apprentice?

Dooku is both Anakin's great-grandmaster and his lineage brother.

Savage is Dooku's apprentice and his lineage nephew.

Savage is both Anakin's lineage nephew and his lineage great-uncle.

Ventress is both Yoda's and Sidious' grand-apprentice.

Luke is Ahsoka's adoptive nephew, and her lineage uncle, and her lineage great-great-great uncle?

Luke is also Dooku's lineage brother.

And Ventress' lineage uncle.

Anakin is Luke's father, his lineage brother (sort of in two ways?), and his lineage great-great-nephew. Oh, and his lineage great-great uncle, in a way (Anakin = Sith lineage brother to Dooku, who's Luke's Jedi great-grandmaster, in addition to being his Jedi lineage brother).

I think all of this makes Padmé pretty much everybody's in-law???

And it might require a bit of a stretch, but I'm pretty sure there are also multiple ways for Maul to be Obi-Wan's lineage relative?

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.

The Wookieepedia page on PROXY doesn't say what his specific origin is, but it does say he's a prototype created to help with training Vader's apprentice.

Headcanon time!

Vader made PROXY. Which, since Anakin also built Threepio, makes PROXY Threepio's little brother, from a certain point of view.

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?