Now Playing: II-XVII, Pitfalls Rising

Petrichor, Chapter 4

It's not abandoned! There's just been a severe idea drought for... oof, the past few months? (This is my other SW fic, a time travel fix-it focusing on Obi-Wan and Anakin.) I guess the upside of struggling with the last chapter of Fortune's Rule Part II is that it led to the productive procrastination that resulted in this chapter?

Chapter 4. In which first thing in the morning is a bad time for delicate discussions.

I fell asleep last night to the comforting sounds of Anakin working away at repairing my appliances.  It was the most restful sleep I have enjoyed since the commencement of the old war, and now I feel unusually refreshed—fortunately so, for today I shall be required to soothe my fractious padawan’s anxieties anent returning to his own era.

Anakin slumbers still.  I rise and set about breakfast preparations; when they are complete, I take a moment to study him.  In sleep, he is peaceful, and despite the deep shadows under his eyes, his youthful features pretend an innocence to match that of the boy who lives across the wastes.  A smear of grease adorns his cheek, and I obey an irresistible impulse to wipe it away.  My hand lingers to brush a few stray hairs out of his face. As he shifts like a sleeping tooka under the touch, tension melts away which I had not realised he was holding.  Even now, I cannot read him as well as I ought, and so I withdraw to the table with a sigh.  His presence in this time, beneath this roof, is no mere chance.  The Force has placed him under my auspices.

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.

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!

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

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.

Why Vader calls the 501st clones in Fortune's Rule by their CC/CT numbers

One of the trickier things I've had to decide for Fortune's Rule is how Vader should address the clones who are still in the Imperial 501st. Although I was tempted to have him use their names, I ended up having him call them by their CC/CT numbers. It still feels weird and clunky, but it seemed like maybe he would actually do that because Anakin would of course refer to the clones by name. So, in distancing himself from his life as Anakin Skywalker, Vader might deliberately choose to do the un-Anakin-like thing and call the clones by their numbers.

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.

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.

All Our Scattered Remnants

Threadbare, oneshot on AO3

Ahsoka stared into her mirror. An old woman stared back at her. “You’ve outlived your usefulness,” she observed to the crone in the mirror. “Outlived your friends, and even your enemies. Why are you still hanging on?” Aged and world-weary, Ahsoka sets out to see the galaxy and rouse herself from her melancholy. At the end of her journey, she heeds the call of the Force and ventures to Jakku, where she encounters a Force-sensitive young girl. Ahsoka is not going to take a padawan. (But then, neither was her master, and look how that turned out.)

Yet another side project, yes. I developed this weird urge to write Ahsoka as a jaded old woman.

I'm planning to make this a short oneshot series.

Haven't seen the ST, maybe shouldn't be writing this under those circumstances, but the degree to which I care is limited, so. We'll see how this goes.

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.