Well, The Writing Muse Is Currently Sulking In A Corner And Tearing Out Her Hair, But The Art Muse Has

Excited to see what happens me f w Vader, Padme and Starkiller… wondering how those 3 will end up on the same space 😇😅😅😅

Ah, I'm looking forward to getting to that point too! Suffice it to say, for now, that shenanigannery will be involved at some point, as it should (yes, thank you, Luke and Leia), and some of them will spend some time together sooner than others.

Hoping to get the next chapter out this weekend, by the way... we'll see... between words not wanting to word for the past month or more, and the chapter turning out to be something of a behemoth, it's been slow going, but I think I'm finally on the downhill!

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).

Part One

Shortly before the beginning of ESB, Luke accidentally winds up in the past, conveniently appearing right next to Anakin Skywalker, new Jedi Knight. 

After convincing Anakin that he is indeed his son from the future – this takes a great deal of time and no small amount of effort – Luke begins to warn him about the Dreadful Future that awaits the galaxy… only to be returned to his own time/universe before he can finish the story.

But hey, Luke is sure that Anakin won’t have any problems figuring out the Emperor’s true identity. At least he was able to get across the important information, yeah? 

At least he got to warn his father about Darth Vader.

There’s just one little problem: Luke doesn’t know that Vader is the same person as Anakin Skywalker.

So when Luke warned his father that some student of Ben’s was going to go Dark Side, destroy the Jedi, betray and murder both Ben and Anakin himself, and probably kill Luke’s mother while he’s at it, Anakin drew the obvious conclusions:

#1: He (Anakin) is the only padawan Obi-Wan has ever had.

#2: If that Dreadful Future of his son’s is to come true, that obviously means that Obi-Wan is going to take on another padwan in the near future. 

#3: Therefore, in order to prevent the nightmare that is Luke’s world, all Anakin has to do is make sure that Obi-Wan never gets another padawan.

Easy, right? 

…Right?

Keep reading

Now playing: III-III. Nothing Ever so Broken

In which Padmé struggles to deal with the fallout, Obi-Wan has a bad feeling, and Asajj is an unlikely source of moral support.

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.

Now playing: III-XI. All Tangled Up in This Mortal Coil, pt 2

In which Obi-Wan and Ventress have a tete-a-tete or two, Obi-Wan gives Ventress a lot of sympathy for Commander Cody, and Vader is Having a Day.

Google, dear, we need to have a word about what you consider to be synonymous ideas. Because you've been bolding some stuff that has literally nothing to do with the search terms I entered. And it's annoying enough when I google something about RNA, and you bold the word DNA in every result, but I get it, they're both nucleic acids. I don't agree with you, but I get it.

However, this is getting a bit ridiculous:

Suggestions are welcome if anybody knows of a more accurate search engine than this stinker!

A Tale of Three Antivirus Programs

Aka, I somehow have three different antivirus programs vying for the privilege of protecting my computer? My laptop: *fan running loudly nonstop because it's probably been... a month? since I last restarted it.* Me: Oh, you poor thing! *restarts it.* My antivirus software, next time I open my laptop: Hey, so we're going to need you to restart your device so we can install this new update. Me: Well, should have thought of this sooner, Bitdefender, because I literally just did that, and it is not happening again until things get buggy. See ya' next month. Note: Chances are that Bitdefender will do the same exact thing next time I restart. Even if I restart on a weekly basis instead of monthly, it does this. It's like anytime I decide to restart, it wants to update. Why. Bitdefender, when my laptop connects to wifi: This is your home network, yes? Me: No. Bitdefender next time the laptop connects to that same wifi: This is your work network, yes? Me: No. Bitdefender, third time connecting to that wifi: This is your home network, yes? Me: *facepalm*  why are you like this. Also Bitdefender: OMG you're on an unprotected network, turn on your VPN! The network: *is private, password-protected* The VPN: *is an extra, offered by Bitdefender, which I don't subscribe to* Me: *is suspicious that this is just a ploy to pull in more money* The OTHER antivirus software that my computer came with, and still hangs out occasionally, just to be a pest (yes, McAfee, looking at you): Hi!  Turn on web protection! Me: Are you seriously trying to get me to use two antivirus programs at once?  Do you really think that's a good idea?  Or even remotely necessary? The THIRD??? antivirus software, which my computer also came with:  *shyly knocks on the door, by which I mean pops up a humble little notification when I first turn the computer on*  Hey, would you... maybe... like to... consider turning on Microsoft Defender? Me: *wishes I could post a "No thanks" sticky note on my OS like I can on my front door* Go away. To be fair, I could probably uninstall the McAfee thing.  But at the same time, it's kind of funny having these three competing programs, even if what they're competing for seems to be the title of Most Irritating Hypervigilent Software.

I really do like you capturing that the galaxy is big and that Palpatine is of course wanting to pick every single fight that he can just cause blood suffering pain and death, spread it all around? kill jedi cant leave them to build roots anywhere but still. the not giving you the option to surrender to occupation, forcing a fight on you cause WANT the fight blood and death some of that being less capability to fight later and clean sweeps? but still galaxy is a huge place and Palps wants it all

Thank you! :)

He absolutely wants it all, and he's not going to think twice about a little violence (or a lot of violence, as the case may be) to get it! Plus, with the economic factors at play, that's just all the more reason to go full-on systemwide occupation instead of settling for diplomacy or surrender of the Jedi in the Sevret system.

And, after all, what's the point of having thousands of Star Destroyers at one's disposal if one doesn't intend to use them for a little bit of conquest every now and again? :P

On a more serious note, though, part of the reason that I made up a system outside of the Republic was that, apparently, a great many of the worlds in the GFFA were not part of the Republic, and I wanted to show how Palpatine is a threat, not only to the worlds that were formerly Republic and immediately became Empire, but also to any world with valuable resources or any world that harbors someone who could possibly be a threat to his power and his security.

And although the Jedi on Errece didn't pose much of a threat in and of themselves---allowing that ideology to survive, allowing them to exist anywhere in the galaxy and possibly go on to spread that ideology to future generations who could build up the Jedi? Who could perhaps continue the Jedi in secret, in the manner of the post-Bane Sith? He absolutely cannot allow that to happen.

(Also, just wanted to add that from a writing point of view, this chapter was pretty entertaining to scheme up because of how Palpatine thinks he's getting it all with the Sevret system. Destroy some Jedi? Check. Gain access to valuable raw materials for the Empire? Check. Humiliate his foolish apprentice? Check.)

I've been listening to Brandon Sanderson's Wax and Wayne series at work, and the kandra naming pattern reminded me of Plo Koon in Star Wars, so then my brain was like, "PloKoon? Plo as a kandra?"

What if he takes a bag of spare bones with him on campaigns during the Clone Wars, and one of the Wolfpack finds it one day—

Trooper: "Hey buir, do we want to know why you have a bag of bones under your bed?"

Plo: "Ah... those were from Little 'Soka's first hunt."

Trooper: "Um... okay, that makes sense for the nuna bones, but some of these look human, and I'm getting a little concerned for the safety of the 501st."

And yeah, the nuna bones probably are from Ahsoka's first hunt. She gave them to him the way kids give grownups useless little things they find or make. Plo of course treasures them, and they're secretly his favorite bones.

Also, just saying, being a kandra would allow Plo to survive Order 66. He would just have to sneak off as a mistwraith.

(Not sure how you explain a Force-sensitive kandra, or how a kandra got out of the Cosmere and into the SW universe in the first place, but anyways.)

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!