Yellow Is An Interesting Color Choice For Sith Eyes. Red Eyes Are Quite Common For Fictitious "bad Guys,"

Sometimes, being a writer is taking a 30-minute detour from writing to go on a wild goose chase after a word you're pretty sure maybe hopefully exists, and dragging in all the word-nerds in your family to help along the way, because the thesaurus has utterly failed you.

And all you can tell them about the identity of this missing word is, "it's somewhere between castigated and in the doghouse, and kind of a cousin to disgraced."

Because, of course, you only have the breath of a shadow of a ghost of whatever-this-word-might-be lurking in some back alleyway deep in your brain, and you can't even remember what letter it starts with. If it really does exist at all, which, after three of your fellow word-nerds fail to identify it, you're beginning to question.

We eventually found the word, by the way. After a few wrong turns past chastened, chastised, discredited, and besmirched, we came upon abased, and concluded it to be our elusive quarry.

The crowning absurdity in all of this? I just looked up disgraced again in the thesaurus. And there was abased, not quite halfway down the list. (My apologies to the thesaurus. It seems I need to read more carefully in future.) But at least we all got a nice, little linguistic evening stroll.

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

Chancellor Palpatine, secret Sith Lord, is not having a good day.

In fact, one might venture to say that he is having a terrible day.

His underlings are certainly having a terrible day. 

This includes, but is not limited to: 

The Senate aide whom he hit with Force lightning.

(In an irritating turn of events, this meant Palpatine was forced to kill xir and dispose of xir body, as well as create a coverup explanation for xir disappearance.)

The staff in charge of cleaning his office, which is currently littered with minuscule ceramic shards from the set of priceless vases he threw across the room.

Darth Maul, who, having failed to kill Kenobi yet again, is being… creatively… punished. You don’t want to know how.

(Let’s just say that the second half of the punishment involves a too-small cage, the bars of which are coated with an acid that burns skin upon contact. Oh, and Ysalamiri. Lots of Ysalamiri.)

The hapless Neimoidian Trade Federation representative who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and is now Very Dead. 

Count Dooku, who has been reminded that unless he produces results soon, he will be replaced as Sidious’ apprentice.

Dooku’s underlings, as Dooku is taking his anger out on them.

Dooku’s underlings’ underlings, who have to deal with the collective brunt of the Separatist leaders’ frustration.

Palpatine’s personal chef, who has to deal with him repeatedly sending his food back with lengthy and finicky complaints.

The bounty hunter Palpatine-as-Sidious hired to kill Kenobi, who not only failed miserably in his objective, but also got captured and is currently being interrogated by the Jedi.

(He doesn’t know it, but he’s actually very lucky to be in Jedi custody. Palpatine wouldn’t have let him live whether he’d succeeded or not – but since he’d failed, he would have been severely and inventively tortured before he was killed.)

No, Palpatine is not having a good day. 

Unfortunately for him, it’s about to get worse.

Keep reading

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.

So, I wasn't going to do a second illustration for the most recent chapter of Fortune's Rule, but it demanded to be done, and consequently I ended up doing it anyway.

Used the same technique as last time with an even base layer and then colored pencil over it, but this time the base layer was watercolor, instead of marker. Wasn't sure I had enough ink left in my grey marker for Vader. The background was also done in watercolor this time, and then I added pencil to enhance. No pen lines in the background this time, because I realised that the background pen lines are one of the things I don't like so much about the Ahsoka drawing; they make it look too busy and choppy, or something, the horizon line in particular.

I originally used a reference pic of Obi-Wan fighting Dooku, substituting Vader for Dooku, but ditched that because the stance didn't look aggressive enough for Vader. The perspective/angles aren't perfect; arms seem a little wonky, still not sure I got Obi-Wan's legs right, and his head looks a little too big?

The pencil worked really nicely for the flames, which just looked extremely blobby when I only used paint. Pencil also gave the smoke a nice opacity that I wasn't sure how to achieve with watercolor.

And my favorite thing about the whole process.... After finishing up and taking a pic, I realised that behind Obi-Wan, there's a shielded fortress, while behind Vader, there's a flaming wreck; kind of some fun parallelism going on there. And the way the building is on elevated ground, while the wreck is at the bottom of an embankment, also makes for a nice little "Mustafar-reference-if-you-squint." All the symbolism works out super nicely. It was also super unintentional. 😂

Art: Mother and Daughter

Padmé and Jobal Naberrie.

Sketched in pencil on watercolor paper, outlined in pen, and then used paintbrushes to fill in with pigment from Derwent Inktense blocks. I've barely touched the Inktense blocks since receiving them about ten years ago, so it was really cool to actually, finally use them for a finished piece, rather than just messing around! They worked super well for both intense and subtle coloring, too.

The scene is based on the image from the Wookieepedia Legends page for Padmé's mausoleum.

Something funky's going on with Padmé and Jobal's arms, and the angle of the stone under the stained glass ended up a little off somehow, but on the whole, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out! (Especially Padmé's cloak; I don't quite know how that happened, but glad it did!) The stained glass worked out much better than expected, and Inktense was a really nice medium for getting the tonal variations. Could just be me, but it seemed easier to move around on the page than watercolor, which made it more forgiving if an area ever became too light or too dark.

Excited to finally post this! I made it a while ago, for last week's chapter of Fortune's Rule.

This one was done with alcohol markers (going off of a pose reference I found on Pinterest, see below), black ink, and watercolor for the background.

Pinterest

Art pose (not mine) in 2023 | Art poses, Drawing reference poses, Anime poses reference

Jul 14, 2023 - This Pin was discovered by ally ♡. Discover (and save!) your own Pins on Pinterest

Knight Tano art

Illustration for Fortune's Rule, done in watercolor (mostly Daniel Smith, which I adore for the saturated colors), and then enhanced using the Google Photos editor pop setting. (OG version shown below.)

I like the softer OG version, but the vividness of the enhanced version seems more appropriate for Ahsoka. Less passive, maybe. Something about the OG reminds me weirdly of a Victorian maiden. I think it has to do with the structure of the tunic/dress/thing? (Very vaguely reminiscent of the late 1870s/1880s natural form era dress style?) And maybe the downcast eyes and quiet expression? And I think the higher contrast and brighter colors of the enhanced version help to counteract that effect.

I didn't do a pencil sketch, just started by putting down paint. This piece felt truly middle-schoolerish at first (and, okay, throughout most of the process), but I was pleasantly surprised by how much it [eventually] improved! The strictly-profile view added to the awkward, amateurish feeling, even though I actually wanted to do that view, but I think it worked out fairly well in the end. Her arms turned out a bit too short (or her torso is too long), but I'm super pleased with the shading, especially on the tunic/dress/thing!

Click below to see the progression!

I'm back to playing through KotOR 2. This is based on a conversation between @for-the-love-of-starwars and I, where she suggested I draw Kreia with a mug saying "#1 bad space mom." I ended up shortening it to "No. 1 Worst Mom."

I see Kreia's relationship with Revan as something of an emotionally abusive parental figure who also can't understand why her successful, adult child wants nothing to do with her.

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The Prosaic, Now-Perennial Paper

This started out as a vocabulary assignment way back in middle school, with the article "Venerable Citizen Exonerated: A Follow-Up to 'Mr. P.G. Tips in Hot Water.'" Then I ended up continuing it into a whole mini-newspaper personifying various teas in the kitchen, and their society and escapades. It's been an off-and-on project over... egads, the last ten years, I think. (Sheesh!) Anyway, thought I'd post the more recent issues of the paper (those from the past 3 years). The earlier ones are a bit sillier, the ads aren't as well-done, and the quality of the writing is lower.

Where to begin?

Fortune's Rule. It's an appropriate title in more ways than one.

Two years ago, I would have laughed myself silly at the very notion that I might ever write a Star Wars fanfic.  Or maybe just looked askance at whoever had made such an appalling suggestion.  Then I saw Clone Wars.  And now, almost seventy thousand words later, I've finally achieved a secret wish of over ten years' duration—to write a novel's worth of continuous story.  (A novel's worth, not a novel, because ye gods, this thing is far from complete!)

It's really weird.

Anyway, before I start posting about writing and anything else that strikes my fancy, I just wanted to say thank you ever so much!! to all the AO3 users who have read/kudo'd/commented on/subscribed to/bookmarked this pet project of mine, as well as to my brother and my mom/moral support/editor/typo sieve.  Fortune's Rule is by far the longest, most detailed, most in-depth story I have ever written, and there's no way in the world that it would have come this far without all of you! So, thank you!!!