Now Playing: III-XVI. Desperate Measures

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.

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Now playing: III-XV. Desperate Times and Desperate Measures, pt. 1

In which Padmé makes a difficult decision, and Vader spends some time with his apprentice.

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

AI in Quora, and in fandom spaces?

I just have to ask. Why does Quora have an AI tool now for some questions?

Isn't the whole point of Quora... you know... asking people things? Getting people's input?

And yet, browsing around through Star Wars stuff on Quora last night, I found this:

Like... how is this helpful, O Great AI Bot Writing Helpful Answers?

It's a subjective question to begin with, so why would an AI be offering information on it? It seems like a question to debate, not a question to answer. And the Quora answers from people, of course, were

And the idea of trying to have a nerdy discussion with ChatGPT is just... weird, like there's no interest or fascination or theorizing, you know? Just this clinical-sounding summary. ChatGPT doesn't care about the characters, or the stories, or the worldbuilding, or any of that. It probably just scraped through the opinions of people who do care, and then spat out a soulless regurgitation.

[Or, heck, who knows. Maybe ChatGPT took one look at the opinionated discussions and was like, "oh hell no. i'm not touching that with a ten-foot pole. make your own moral decisions, you stupid squishy human."]

Seriously, though. AIs in fandom stuff? Weird. Fandom stuff is so oriented around people and opinions and connection, and AI... eh... until AIs reach the point of, say, Artoo & Co., it just doesn't seem like a great fit.

332nd team building exercises on Scariff, playing some space!football. (Fives succeeds, palpatine dies, everyone else lives AU)

Another top gun x Star Wars piece. :) (see top gun maverick)

this took me many many hours and felt like it would never end, so please see the details

Was supposed to be writing, but oops, I got distracted. (Am I procrastinating working out Vader's reaction to what he discovered in the last chapter of Fortune's Rule? Absolutely.)

I had the rough sketch of Luke, Leia, and Mara (as kids) playing with glowsticks in Krita, and decided to see if I could make something that looked a little nicer. It worked! The clone layer + Gaussian blur filter worked quite nicely to make the sticks glow, too, and I had fun playing around with highlights to make the figures show up better on a dark background. Leia and Galen's hair could use some more highlights, but I'm quite pleased with how Mara's turned out!

Luke is supposed to be included in the detail picture, as well, but that will have to wait until another day. Three children in one day is enough.

(What the heck, Galen, really? Four glow sticks at once? Is that absolutely necessary?)

Now playing: II-XIX. Know Thine Enemy

The final chapter of Part II, in which Vader's hope and Ahsoka's fear are confirmed, and Padmé realises the truth about her Imperial contact.

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.

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.

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)

Part Five: Epilogue

When Sidious dies, Jedi and other Force Sensitives across the galaxy sense it, even if they don’t all know precisely what it is that they’re feeling. The Force reverberates with the death of so powerful a being – with the shattering of so many significant shatterpoints. A heavy, oppressive cloud has lifted. The Force hasn’t felt this way since… longer than some of them even remember. The older among them do remember the days when the Force was lighter and their foresight clearer, but even they hadn’t realized how bad things had gotten until the fog of the Dark was gone.

Padme, with her low midichlorian count, is not particularly attuned to the Force, but she feels it too. Somewhere deep in her bones, she knows that something has changed. And Padme has always trusted her instincts.

So when Anakin bursts into her office in the Senate and announces that he just killed Chancellor Palpatine – oh, and that Palpatine was a Sith Lord who orchestrated the entire war, by the way – she isn’t quite as shocked as she probably should be.

(Which is not, of course, the same thing as not being shocked at all. Because Palpatine? A Sith Lord? She’d been concerned about the executive powers he was accruing and the policies he was putting into place, of course, but…)

“Are you all right?” he asks, dropping to his knees in front of her chair.

“Me?” she says. “I’m fine, Ani. I’m not the one who just fought a Sith! We need to get you to a medic.”

“Only if you get looked over too,” he says. He hesitates then adds, “Is there anything you, uh, wanted to tell me?”

He gestures awkwardly in her direction with his flesh hand.

Padme stares at him.

“I’m sorry?” she says, eyeing him worriedly.

Who knows what kind of damage he might have sustained in his encounter with Palpatine.

“You know,” he says. “Any, um, family news?”

“My family is fine, last I heard,” she says slowly. “Ani, what’s going on?”

He takes a deep breath.

“Padme, how is the baby doing?”

She stares at him. 

“What baby?”

There is a choking sound near the door.

…which, she realizes in retrospect, they never closed after Anakin barged in like a gundark. 

“An excellent question. Is there anything,” a particularly exhausted-looking Obi-Wan Kenobi says dryly, one eyebrow arched, “that the two of you would like to tell me?”

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