Sometimes, Being A Writer Is Taking A 30-minute Detour From Writing To Go On A Wild Goose Chase After

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.)

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

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?

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?

Now playing: III-II. Division

In which Padmé sends the twins to Tatooine, Starkiller makes progress, Piett begins to get in over his head, and a conversation is had which has been a long time coming.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a Senator survived. A Jedi did not forsake society. Two siblings were never separated. Nor were two Commanders. And a Rogue found comrades.

The Empire has risen, but the embers of the Republic yet glow in the hearts of the just. The stage is set for rebellion, and both within the Rebel Alliance and outside of it, many fates shall interweave, for the luck of the Disaster Lineage and its associates has ever flowed in a peculiar current. And if that current is stirred, from time to time, by the enterprising Pirate… well, not for nothing has it been said that Fortune rules life.

Aka, Padmé lives. The fractured Chaos Clan begins to reunite. Tarkin suffers a raging case of Hondo-induced identity theft. Vader dials the wrong number and ends up connecting to the commlink of a Rebel agent called Revenant. Add in some youngling hijinks, and all of this is slowly building to a massive headache for one Sheev Palpatine.

Art #2 for the Vaderkin Creative Exchange 2024, for @unlikecharlie, same prompt as for art #1. (It was a fun one, what can I say?)

Done in alcohol marker and Pigma pen on mixed media paper, with some colored pencil on top for texture and subtler shading.

In hindsight, maybe I should have put the pair in the Room of a Thousand Fountains or something. (Was dying to get to the coloring step as I did the initial pencil sketch, and then I got there. And realised it was all. brown. and tan. Whoops!) Although, I do like how the two blue lightsabers stand out against all the blandness.

References were a TotJ scene with Ahsoka in the Temple training room, and a pic of Kit Fisto from the Legends Form I page on Wookieepedia.

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!"

Productively procrastinating on writing a difficult piece of chapter by practicing with alcohol markers, and decided to draw Padmé because why not?

I used a reference, and eh... guess it kind of looks like her? Not sure why her hair came out looking weirdly 1930s/1940s-ish, or something, though. But I'm pretty happy with the drawing on the whole, especially since it was just supposed to be a practice thing, and pleased that I was able to achieve more texture than in the Vader and twins alcohol marker drawing from last week.

This was done with the Ohuhu Honolulu 104-count marker set. I like the set pretty well so far, although more cool browns would be nice, and a navy blue wouldn't be amiss.

Green background was added digitally as an afterthought, using Krita.

The nightmare that is AO3 tagging

Okay, so maybe that's being just a touch dramatic. Seriously, though, it seems like there's a lot of tagging advice on Reddit, etc., that talks about not using a lot of tags, only tagging the really major characters, keeping the tags relevant and useful for sorting, and all that. I've kind of freaked myself by reading those conversations, and then looking at my own fic like... oh... dear... you have so many tags... do people find that obnoxious?

I dunno. Personally, I love all the fun, silly, casual, chatty, cracky, creative tags that authors use. Maybe they're not much good for sorting, but they make me smile. I don't mind reading through a huge block of tags, because apparently mine is a bit of a magpie brain, but instead of shiny things, it wants words. Plus, when there are a lot of tags, there's that much more opportunity to find a fun one!

It's also usually nice when there are a lot of characters tagged, because then I can see who all is in the story, not just the MCs. Same goes for relationships. When it comes to tagging my own fic, of course, I'm like, "Major characters? Important relationships? But they're all important! I want to tag them all!"

So, I totally don't blame people who do this as well. And if you prefer to be efficient and tidy, that works, too. Seems like, it's your story, and you know how you want to present it, so why not tag away as you see fit?

**Now that I think of it, though, there could be one very valid caveat to this perspective. Do the majority of AO3 tagwranglers find it frustrating to deal with the zany, one-off tags?

I love that the refinement levels of Obi-Wan and Count Dooku mean that you could definitely imagine both of them simultaneously preparing for a lightsaber duel while also rebuking their teammates who are asking them to do the efficient thing and use a blaster. Maybe they can confide in each other during the duel.

LOL yes, and when they're force ghosts they can bond over hating blasters without having to duel

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