#My chronological reading of SW canon

[vergencescatter]

One of those pivotal moments in history. Certainly it is one of the most iconic events in the High Republic era.

In the moment, as the Final Protector fell, reading how it happened (both in the novel and comics) felt to me as though the currents produced from the crash had enough force to shift the future path of the entire galaxy. The symbolism alone was astonishing.

[The Battle of Jedha and the Balance of the Force / Battle for the Force series, issues 5-6]

[vergencescatter]

Barash is awesome! I do hope her story continues in later books.

I wish there were more books following the adventures of Porter and Barash as a duo. They are brilliant together, and I find their partnership compelling.

I already know some of the key points in Porter Engle's development, and where his story goes. I am looking forward in actually reading the books when the time comes chronologically, for instance Light of the Jedi.

The High Republic The Blade #4

That was really, really, good! I loved Barash a lot and her whole arc was incredible! It was so heartbreaking to see her realize that she wasn’t listening to the force and needed to take a leave of absence. I NEED to know what she does next! I truly hope we get more stories with her. But really this entire story was great! I loved the manipulation. General Viess. And of course Porter Engle was awesome as always! I cannot wait for more!

-Chuck

[polgarawolf1]

Barriss Offee Day - Character Study

Sorry for the wonky format - it's because I'm too wordy for Tumblr's limits to have all my notes formatted like I want them to be!

This is rough and not really edited (the title is just a working title right now!), but I'm posting now because it's Barriss Day today!

I feel as if I can't say this enough: please be aware that this character study piece is meant to go along with a SW AU series of mine that I've been writing in, off and on, since the same summer that RotS came out in theatres! This is my headcanon Barriss for that specific AU series, which is my main SW AU series, so she's based mostly on the old SW EU (or Legends, as DISNEY calls it) with some of the newer DISNEY!SW canon adapted enough to be useful to me/make sense given that she's a Jedi Healer, but she's still an AU version of both versions of the official SW Barriss Offee character!

Title: “Barriss Chanah Offee: Jedi Healer and Jedi Commander”

Pairing: None as yet, though Kornell “Uli” Divini definitely has an enormous crush on Barriss during their shared time at Rimsoo (Republic Mobile Surgery Unit) 7, on Drongar, during the Clone Wars.

Rating: Uhm, probably a borderline PG-13, maybe (?)

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from Star Wars, more’s the pity! What I do have is an extremely contrary muse that refuses to shut up and leave me alone . . .

Summary: This is thirty-three random but chronological moments from the life of Barriss Chanah Offee, a strongly Force-sensitive Mirialan given to the Coruscanti Jedi Temple for training as an infant. Barriss is technically not quite an agemate of Anakin Skywalker’s, though she’s often grouped with those who are. She becomes close friends with Ahsoka Tano over the course of the Clone Wars and is generally known for her empathetic heart, her healing touch, her calm and grace, and her unshakeable loyalty to her friends and Jedi family. There is an actual story here – one small thread among the vast woven tapestry of life that is the living history of the galaxy, stretched out and twisted, knotted into the whole, curled down among the roots of time, connecting various moments together – but one must read between the lines to capture it. It is not precisely the truth, for the subtle story of these moments is sketched out here in words, and, in the sin of writing down a life, it inevitably changes the shape of things. But it is nevertheless a form of truth. (From a certain point of view . . . )

Warning: This story functions as a sort of compressed codex for Barriss Chanah Offee’s life, as she has been and is going to be written (or at least referred to) in my not even nearly complete AU Star Wars series You Became to Me. If anything doesn’t make sense, please, feel free to ask!

Author’s Notes: 1.) For anyone interested, this not-quite-a-story is compatible with my SW AU series You Became to Me, including the trilogy Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith, if you squint at a few things sideways and view a couple others solely through the lens of Barriss’ eyes. This is probably also technically compatible with a lot of other potential AU ’verses where the Clone Wars do not, ultimately, end up going like Sidious plans, but the majority of it should be at least mostly consistent with the old EU (barring what I’ve altered about Ferus Olin, etc.), at least up until roughly the Battle of Coruscant during RotS.

2.) My Barriss is and has always been based on the version of the character as she originally appeared in certain scenes/cut scenes for AotC and RotS and was initially written in the old EU, prior to the reboot for the Clone Wars period associated with the animated film and TV series. Thus, she’s closer in age to Anakin Skywalker than she is to Ahsoka Tano, a natural Jedi Healer, and does not end up falling prey to despair and the Dark Side and bombing the Coruscanti Jedi Temple, as is portrayed in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. I have made some concessions to the version of Barriss found in Star Wars: The Clone Wars and the current DISNEY!SW version of canon – she is about a year younger than in the old EU, for example, and does take part in some missions/battles that also involve Ahsoka and Anakin – and I am technically in the midst of revising/expanding Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith to include some more characters from the show, but please be aware that my main SW series is an AU and so certain characters and events and the timeline for the prequels/the war in general involve a slightly different/longer timeline as well as multiple changes from what’s depicted in the show (and even in the old EU, occasionally).I’m aware that Barriss is considered a Muslim-coded character, in large part due to the show, though it’s rather horrifying for me to consider that Filoni et al apparently made the choice to present her as being coded this way and yet still deliberately turned her into a terrorist bomber.

Please be aware that, since I first started writing what would become my Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith trio shortly after Revenge of the Sith first came out in theatres and I saw it and read (as fairly new hardbacks) both the novelization for RotS and James Luceno’s Labyrinth of Evil (which, for those who don’t know, acts essentially as an immediate predecessor for RotS) and I had it in my head from fairly early on that my AU ’verse would (eventually) involve the survival of a useful version of bota and, thus, Barriss Offee as a Jedi Healer (as I’d already read the MedStar duology by this point), a lot of my personal headcanon for Barriss (and also, by extension, for her Jedi Master, Luminara Unduli) and for Mirialan culture in general predates by at least three-four years both the start of the show and my awareness of the fact that she’s considered Muslim-coded. (It took me several years before I ever watched any of Star Wars: The Clone Wars and I am not a techy person, so it’s probably more like ten years plus before I had any actual personal knowledge from watching the parts of the show that include the ret-conned version of Barriss.) If anyone has any questions or is upset or bothered by anything, please let me know!

3.) Although this is technically modeled on part of a prompt set that I found ages ago and made a copy of from somewhere or another on the LJ, it’s not really meant to function as a response to whatever the challenge actually is or was that’s associated with said LJ prompt set. I just used the specific prompts to give me a reason to string together a backstory of sorts for Barriss and, since I’m working under a time constraint for the Barriss Day celebration, it’s entirely possible that I’ll come back to this and expand on it at some point in the future.

4.) Readers interested in knowing who the physical models are for EU characters (such as Uli Divini) or for original characters (like Jedi Shadow Knight Leyala Riani), for that matter, should please just probably ask me, rather than consult the latest versions of my posted lists of cast original and EU characters and for handmaid(en)s and other important Nabooian characters, which are available on my LJ, since I need to update all of them and what’s on the LJ (https://polgarawolf.livejournal.com/) is very old! Please note that characters who may be alluded to but not referenced by name (certain family members of original characters, for example) are considered too minor to be cast at this time, and that readers should feel free to imagine them howsoever they wish!

5.) Mirialans are considered near-human (they are cross-fertile with human norms in the EU and, likely, with many other types and/or species of near-humans, as well) and resemble human norms closely enough, physically, that I’ve always considered they may very well have originally evolved from human norms due to specific conditions found on their homeworld, Mirial (many of the “near-human” species in the GFFA seem to be humans with just enough genetic differences – from adapting to living on specific worlds/moons, mostly – and/or just enough cultural differences from more generic human norms to have been given a specific label, based on their homeworld). I mention this here because my headcanon is that Mirialans essentially age/mature like human norms do and also because I believe the tradition of Mirialan Jedi Knights/Masters taking on Mirialan Jedi apprentices is based on wanting to pass on direct knowledge of Mirialan culture and Force-based spirituality, not any form of xenophobia.

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“Barriss Chanah Offee: Jedi Healer and Jedi Commander”

01.) Incidence: Though one would hardly guess it, from the raw numbers alone (evident humans or human norms outnumbering so many other known sentient species in the galaxy by such a large margin), statistically speaking, as an entire species, Mirialans have an even higher overall incidence of sensitivity to the Force than human norms do (most likely due to the fact that survival on Mirial, their largely cold, dry homeworld, requires them to be more naturally in tune with their surroundings – and, thus, more open to the Force and its influence – than most of the worlds and moons where humans have proven both willing and able to settle); this greater percentage of Force-sensitives doesn’t always translate individually to higher levels of stronger Force-sensitivity, though, meaning that there are many Mirialans who make their homes both on Mirial and elsewhere who have midi-chlorian levels that are higher than average and yet still lower than is generally required for admittance to the Jedi Order for training, and so the number of Mirialan Force-sensitives in the Jedi Order is lower than that of human norms (and, indeed, several other types of near-humans, as well), enough so that the Mirialans in the Order thought it would be best to establish a tradition whereby Mirialan Jedi Knights/Masters would, whenever possible, take on Mirialan apprentices to train, so that Mirialan culture and customs could be taught directly from Master to Padawan, along with Jedi traditions and training.

02.) Process: Barriss Chanah Offee is found not on Mirial or any other inhabited planet, moon, or station, but rather on a starliner in deep space, by a Jedi not on a traditional Search but rather simply en route to Coruscant after a successful undercover mission in the Corporate Sector, who is still in the process of settling back into her own skin (after living under a false identity for the better part of four months rather than as Jedi Knight Leyala Riani) and is rather startled to find herself called to the ship’s infirmary, where a routine blood test given to a newborn has yielded a midi-chlorian count easily high enough to justify admittance to the Jedi Order for training (the infant is named by her tearful parents, given a slightly modified traditional blessing, and then promptly given over to the Jedi Shadow, who manages, after only a handful or so of incidences of usual unexpected interruptions, to safely get both herself and the by then several month old baby to the Coruscanti Temple).

03.) Routine: Barriss’ first real memories are of the Jedi Temple’s crèche – of having patient, kindhearted Jedi Carers helping her with her meals and with the layers of her youngling robes, modelled after the traditional Mirilian dress of a Force-sensitive spiritualist leader-in-training and a little more complicated than many of the robes worn by her crèchemates and friends; of accidentally running into a friendly Jedi Tender during a game of tag and being sent laughingly back to the proper Sept or age-group of her Initiate Clan; of going practically everywhere in a crowd of younglings, all in the same age-group or Phratry if not necessarily all belonging to the same Clan; of having a compassionate Twi’lek Docent gently drying her eyes after taking a hard tumble and spilling the contents of her lunch tray seemingly everywhere; of entering the Halls of Healing for a routine inoculation and being drawn to the Healing Crystals blazing with the Force in the hands of a gifted Jedi Healer, who, noticing her rapt attention, promptly made a notation in her permanent file indicating an interest in and likely proclivity towards Force healing – and of Master Yoda, watching her with a pleased, benevolent smile as she uses the Force to retrieve a favorite toy (a blue ball, just the right size for her small hands and exactly the same vivid color as her own eyes) gone astray, bouncing from the crèche out through an antechambers and into one of the main large open spaces of the Temple proper.

04.) Manage: Crèche Masters and other Jedi whose calling place them either exclusively in the crèche or else mainly in the Temple as trainers and teachers – the Jedi Carers and Tenders who specifically look after the younger Initiates; the Clan Leaders who are in charge of the various Initiate Clans and the Sept Heads who manage the specific Septs or age-groups of those Initiate Clans; and the Jedi Instructors and Pandits, as well as certain Jedi Artisans, who lead specific classes, training courses, and hands-on modules for both younglings in the crèche and Padawans who’re still in training – routinely go out of their way to offer both methods and means by which individual Initiates and Padawans can learn about and even (to an extent, at least) incorporate the cultures of the specific peoples and species from which they hail in their day-to-day activities and lives, though of course no one is ever forced to learn or to do anything in regards to such a culture if that individual finds a tradition or custom uncomfortable: Barriss thoroughly enjoys such cultural seminars (including almost all of the more generic modules that cover other near-human and humanoid cultures), though she takes it for granted that, if she eventually trains as a Jedi Knight (and eventual possible Master) instead of joining one of the branches of the Jedi Service Corps, she will eventually be taught more about Mirialan culture and spirituality when she’s taken on as an apprentice by a Mirialan Knight or Master.

05.) Path: Her personal path forward as a Jedi – whether as a Knight and possible future Master or as a member of a branch of the Jedi Service Corps – would be easier (or at least more assured) if she were only drawn towards healing or if she were only drawn to the path of Knighthood, since then she could either declare for the Medical Corps or else focus more on what would make her more likely to be chosen as a Padawan; however, she feels equally drawn towards both callings, which is somewhat problematic, given that all of the Mirialans currently in or associated with the Order are either younglings like her or else they’re members in good standing of one or another of the branches of the Jedi Service Corps or Knights or Masters of the Order, meaning that there are currently no Jedi Healers who are either Knights or Masters who are also Mirialan.

06.) Honor: When Luminara Unduli – a Mirialan Jedi Knight and a Master by courtesy (given that she is currently helping an orphaned Commenorian Padawan by the name of Suanne Tephee through what should, hopefully, be the last handful or so of years of training and preparation necessary to make her ready/able to pass the Trials of Knighthood) – approaches her, Barriss fears, at first, that she will be forced to make a decision between eventually training towards Knighthood and training as a Jedi Healer that, in her heart, she knows she cannot make and does not feel as if she should be forced into trying to make, either (she understands, logically, that, since the annihilation of the Sith and their Brotherhood of Darkness and the consequent end of the New Sith Wars, the so-called “restructuring” of the Galactic Republic and the Jedi Order by the Ruusan Reformations essentially dissolved the Jedi Army of Light and stripped the Jedi of much of their authority and power in the galaxy just when the Jedi would be most needed, out in the greater galaxy, in order to help heal the wounds of that disastrous and exhaustively extensive conflict, meaning that the pathway of Jedi Knights all but instantly became much more important than it had been even at the height of the war. That Barriss can understand it rationally, though, does not mean that she has to like the fact that, in almost thousand years since then, the prestige of being a Knight has grown so much that the pressure on Jedi Initiates to choose that particular pathway [whether it would suit them as individuals or not] has concomitantly increased, too, to the point where younglings consider themselves to be failures if they aren’t chosen as Padawans and instead end up in one of the branches of the Jedi Service Corps, such as the MedCorps, even though Jedi likely to be injured in combat logically would need trained Healers to tend to their injuries and Jedi Healers are, frankly, able to do things with the Force to help preserve life and speed healing that even the most gifted and experienced of non-Force-sensitive Healers simply cannot do); happily, though, Master Unduli indicates that, if Barriss continues to show excellent progress in her training as an Initiate and she is willing, Luminara will happily arrange for her to have further training in the healing arts with Jedi Healers if Barriss will do her the honor of one day becoming her apprentice.

07.) Attention: Although Barriss normally tends to listen to others more than she talks (except for in classes when she knows the answer to whatever the instructor happens to be asking and she’s not sensing anyone else particularly wanting to be the one to be called on to answer, of course), the Jedi Order is essentially one enormous extended family of choice made up of many, many generations of interlinking lineages of trained Force-sensitives and many more who might, one day, be given the choice to join and extend those lineages, so there actually are very, very few real (serious) secrets among its members (it’s not so much that Jedi are prone to idle chatter as it is misleading to claim that Jedi are too good – or too snobbish and self-important – to gossip when, at least most of the time, there’s simply no need for idle chatter or rumormongering when it comes to the vast majority of incidences that happen both in the Temple and during mandated missions since both any official reports and private, individual deductions and conjecture about such occurrences tend to all quickly become known by virtually everyone who’s paying even a modicum of attention to the Force – which, after all, is naturally constantly being influenced and shaped by the thoughts and actions of basically all living creatures, especially those strong in the Force, and also frequently quite deliberately being outright given strong emotions, both negative and positive, by Jedi who want to establish better control over themselves – and/or what’s going on around them in the Temple, including what individual Jedi are actually physically telling the High Council about their specific missions, when they return from them, and what those same individuals are also either gleefully spinning stories about or else quietly complaining about outside the Council Chamber) and, since scandals (or even just possible indignities or outrages) tend to spread at a speed easily comparable to that of light, especially when a Temple favorite or a favorite of Yoda and/or one of the other High Council Masters is involved, she’s well aware of (and has opinions about) Qui-Gon Jinn and his tendency to essentially blame everything on the will of the Force (often quite blatantly in order to win arguments or to get away with doing or not doing something he really shouldn’t be allowed to do or to shirk doing) long before he brings an almost ten-year-old boy by the name of Anakin Skywalker to the Temple and shocks everyone by telling the High Council that he ought to be allowed to take the youngling on as his apprentice (even though he already has a perfectly wonderful Padawan, one who, so far as Barriss can tell, most of the residents of the Temple all agree Qui-Gon Jinn does not deserve. She’s heard so many incredible stories about Obi-Wan Kenobi that, if she weren’t Mirilian, if Master Unduli hadn’t already spoken to her about becoming her Master, and if she weren’t aware of the fact that there’s at least one youngling, just enough older than her to be in the next age-group up from her, who’s made it extremely well known that he believes himself destined to one day become Obi-Wan’s Padawan, Barriss might actually be tempted to try to catch Obi-Wan’s eye, in hopes of eventually being asked to be his apprentice) because the boy’s midi-chlorian count is supposedly so high that (according to Jinn, who’s widely known, much like his former Master, Yannis Dooku, to be just a little bit too interested in Force prophecies, to the point where some claim that they’re both obsessed, to unhealthy degrees, with Jedi mystics and the records of their so-called “visions”) it must mean that he’s the Chosen One.

08.) Potential: Anakin Skywalker blazes in the Force like a star that’s somehow continually going nova – there’s no disputing this fact and Barriss honestly doesn’t see the point in even trying – but he’s simultaneously far too old for the crèche and both too untrained and too young to become the Padawan apprentice of anyone expecting to go on any active missions outside of the Temple for likely several years to come, and, from everything she’s heard, he also pretty clearly doesn’t have the right sort of temperament to become a Jedi (he’s afraid, but he not only won’t admit to it, he refuses to acknowledge his fear and even outright lies to the Council about what he’s afraid of/for and why; he’s unabashedly angry when the Council Masters try to point out that he’s not telling the truth about his fear and, worse, he behaves as though the Council Masters are the ones at fault for pointing out his lie, rather than him for his dishonesty; and he’s undeniably all too attached to the single parent he’s ever known, who has, for some reason, been left behind – in slavery, as it eventually comes out, months after the fact, when it also becomes widely known that Skywalker’s mother was left behind due to the fact that, even though Qui-Gon Jinn apparently thought nothing of gambling with the lives of others and even the potential wellbeing of an entire system’s worth of imperiled people, if it meant that he could legally take Anakin with him, even if it meant that he would have to take him as a slave, he evidently didn’t quite care enough to cheat on the bet that he made with Anakin’s owner sufficiently to include the boy’s mother in his potential winnings, along with the boy. There are many people in the Order, besides Barriss, who are quite upset, if perhaps not necessarily all that surprised, to learn about these facts, and many of them also feel sorry for the boy, though it’s difficult to maintain much empathy for someone who so clearly has a chip the size of a Hutt on his shoulder about his background – on Tatooine, a Hutt-controlled world in the Outer Rim Territories that Barriss is fairly certain she’s never even heard of, before, and which turns out to almost be far enough out to qualify as bordering on Wild Space), so she honestly doesn’t understand why it’s ever even a question whether or not Skywalker should be accepted for Jedi training (either with or without Qui-Gon Jinn), high midi-chlorian count or not and prophecies of the Chosen One or not, not when, if anything, Skywalker seems far more suited to something like the Exploration Corps.

09.) Secret: Barriss honestly can’t decide which piece of news from Naboo is more shocking and upsetting – that the Sith not only apparently survived Ruusan, somehow, but have continued to survive in secret for almost a thousand years and have not only revealed themselves now, in the process all but proving that they’ve been involved in some way with the Naboo Crisis, but have also killed a Jedi Master in the process, or that, following the death of his Master at the hands of one of those Sith, Obi-Wan Kenobi evidently not only swore that he would fulfill his Master’s dying wish and take on Anakin Skywalker as his Padawan, with or without the approval of the High Council (and, thus, the legitimacy and backing of the Jedi Order), but that he essentially told Master Yoda this (in effect essentially blackmailing the Grand Master of the entire Jedi Order into allowing him to apprentice Anakin, once he’d been acknowledged as a Jedi Knight, for having defeated and slain the Sith Lord who’d just murdered his Master) – but she knows that she’s not the only one who thinks that Knight Kenobi has gone from somehow having a Master who definitely didn’t deserve him to having a Padawan who almost certainly doesn’t deserve him, either, and she finds herself in the rather unexpected position of feeling sorry for Ferus Olin, currently one of the most popular and widely respected younglings near to her age in the crèche (even if, to be honest, she’s always felt somewhat ambivalent towards the slightly older boy. Ferus generally gives every indication of being a good sort, but everything always seems to come awfully easy for him, in a way that doesn’t feel quite right, somehow, and the way that some of the other younglings act around him – like they’d cheerfully do anything he might ever even think of asking them to do – makes her feel weirdly almost vulnerable, in a way that both bewilders her and makes her want to avoid him altogether, which makes it strange to feel sorry for him now), since a Jedi can only have one Padawan at a time and this means that (short of Anakin Skywalker somehow dying in the next two years or so, which she would never want to happen, no matter how messed up the whole situation with him and newly Knighted Obi-Wan Kenobi might be, and which seems extremely unlikely to happen, anyway, since he’s not likely to make it back out of the Temple again until he’s made a serious effort to catch up on all that he’s behind on, from having come to the Order so comparatively late in life and from almost certainly having a less than thorough education on Tatooine, even if that’s not exactly his fault) Ferus Olin can never become Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Padawan.

10.) Sense: One would think that a boy from a desert world would know better than to allow himself to be goaded into accepting a challenge involving swimming, of all absurdly unsuitable things for him to try to do, but then, Skywalker does seem to be rather more emotional than any Jedi with sense would ever allow themselves to be, so perhaps the overly emotional numpty will prove her wrong and actually manage to get his fool self killed at some point while essentially confined to the safety of the Temple and Obi-Wan Kenobi will once again be free to choose his apprentice by himself (rather than being stuck with his former Master’s choice, which is just so many different levels of wrong that it makes her want to grind her teeth down to dust for sheer frustration over the fact that Qui-Gon Jinn is dead and now she’ll never have a chance to get away with telling him to his face that he’s an arrogant, self-centered twat) and Ferus Olin will prove to have been right all along and will become Knight Kenobi’s new Padawan.

11.) Behind: Skywalker may very well be behind on essentially everything except for anything having to do with mechanics, droids, maintaining all sorts of different kinds of vessels (from basic skimmers to advanced starship fighters), and piloting in general – the stories about how he managed to accidentally destroy the Trade Federation’s Lucrehulk-class Droid Control Ship are entirely too crazy to be made up and actually makes Barriss want to like him, despite everything else (the Trade Federation did horrible things to her homeworld: as a Mirilian, she feels all but honor-bound to side with someone who’s had such an important role in thwarting their plans to do the same sort of awful things to another inhabited world and system, even if she’s starting to wonder if the High Council Masters only allowed Knight Kenobi to take Skywalker on as his Padawan learner just to keep him somewhere they could keep an eye on him and be sure that the Sith would have a hard time trying to get to him. Knight Kenobi might have killed the one Sith, but the general consensus is that there should have been two of them, meaning that the surviving Sith would have multiple reasons to be interested in a boy like Skywalker, who’s so strong in the Force, so emotional, and has the kind of traumatic background he has, especially since the Sith were so clearly involved in the Trade Federation’s plans for invading and conquering Naboo) – but it seems as though he’s a natural with a lightsaber and, much to her surprise, she finds herself enjoying the times when she’s practicing in the salles at the same time that he is, in part because it’s astonishingly fun to see how quickly he picks up many of the different formal katas meant to help students master some of the different forms of lightsaber combat and partially because he’s such a shockingly unpredictable fighter, when turned loose to spar instead of just practicing basic katas, that he seems determined to combine apparently random bits of various katas from entirely different combat forms (so it’s always interesting to see which combination of moves he attempts will or won’t actually work together, whether she’s the one who’s been tasked to spar with him or not, though some of his more disastrous efforts make her very, very glad that training ’sabers aren’t actually strong enough to do much worse than singe fabric. Sometimes, it’s even more fun – and even instructional, when some combination of moves that doesn’t seem as if it ought to work actually does – to watch than to be the one trying to match his unpredictability. They don’t really talk, much, but it doesn’t truly bother her, since she’s of the opinion that sparring partners are actually more useful when they aren’t also friends who might be tempted to hold back out of fear of hurting each other’s feelings), which tends to make sparring against him a nice challenge, even if he does tend to win a ridiculous number of bouts for someone so new to Jedi training.

12.) Fear: Her Healer training is going well – in addition to the more basic courses required of basically all Jedi Padawans, she studies under a handful of different Healers, based on who’s available when and who specializes in or knows more about what, all of them operating under the oversight of Master Healer Vokara Che, who’s already made it quite clear that she expects Barriss to one day join the Circle of Jedi Healers, which is simultaneously both a wonderful and a mildly terrifying thing to know, since the Circle is comprised of the most gifted and powerful and absolute best of all Jedi Healers – she’sfound her kyber crystal in the ice caves of Ilum and successfully built her own lightsaber, and Master Unduli is evidently so pleased with her overall progress that she’s already talking about how best to coordinate things so Barriss shouldn’t fall behind in her Healer training when they undertake her pilgrimage to Mirial (a time-honored sort of rite of passage generally undertaken around fifteen or so standard years of age), but Barriss is beginning to fear that her apparent inability to keep ahold of her new lightsaber long enough to truly master even the most basic of katas is going to end up rendering the entire issue moot and her apprenticeship with Master Unduli void when a Jedi Knight, noticing her struggles with her lightsaber in one of the smaller, less often frequented training salles, introduces himself as Tutso Mara (actually Tutsoded Bayardeth Mara, though few refer to the half Kiffar and half Chalactan Jedi by his full name, at least according to Knight Mara) and then kindly shows her the proper hand grip for her lightsaber (after which, with her permission, he physically adjusts and readjusts and keeps on readjusting her grip until Barriss finally has it down pat and her grip – evidently adequate enough for a training ’saber but not at all sufficient for the power of a real blade – is no longer throwing her off, no matter which training kata from which form of lightsaber combat she attempts), sparking a mentorship and eventual friendship that will push her to learn a Jar’Kai version of Djem So (a combat form using two lightsabers or a lightsaber – be it a single or a double blade – along with a shoto) as well as the Soresu and Shien that Master Unduli favors.

13.) Return: The traditional pilgrimage to Mirial (which is both colder and drier than the norm for most inhabitable planets/moons with Type I atmospheres and sentient populations, in ways that make the more customary sorts of Mirilian costumes, with their layers, long lengths, and head-coverings of one sort or another for essentially everyone, make all kinds of practical sense. Much of the land is either desert or tundra, with some taiga towards the far northern and the far southern tundra and some grasslands at the borders between the taiga and the deserts, much of it occasionally broken up by high plateaus and mostly extremely tall, jagged mountains. Though Mirial has technically been known to much of the greater galactic community and considered part of the Galactic Republic’s Outer Rim Territories for approximately four thousand years, when the Trade Federation “rediscovered” it some two hundred years ago, in one of the Great Reunification’s last pushes to supposedly “reconnect” with and discover more about the Outer Rim and Wild Space, its greedy representatives pillaged the entire system of much of its natural resources, often using crude, cheap strip mining techniques to get at precious ores and carelessly discarding slag and poisonous wastes without bothering to treat any of it, to the point where the planet is still recovering from all of the habitat destruction and environmental contamination. Truthfully, Barriss finds Mirial rather sad and, afterwards, is not entirely sure that she’s felt a real connection with either the planet or its people, even after all of her cultural studies and even though she truly does respect the traditional Mirial view of the Force and their widespread belief that each individual’s actions contribute not only to that specific person’s destiny, building on both past successes and failures to ultimately drive those beings towards their fates, but that such actions also ripple throughout the Force, affecting the destinies of not just the individuals directly involved but of whole peoples and, at least potentially, in some cases, even species all across the galaxy, which, to her, seems like a somewhat simplified version of the Jedi understanding of the Cosmic Force) goes well enough, but she’s both more tired and more glad than she’s expected to be, when they finally return to the Temple.

14.) Master: Luminara Unduli is, in many ways, a wonderful Jedi Master – she’s very grounded and steady, a formidable fighter who’s also a highly respected diplomat often called upon to act as an advisor to several high-profile system and planetary leaders and politicians, many of them in the Galactic Senate, meaning that she’s well-suited to understand the needs of an apprentice who’s drawn to what, to outsiders, might seem very opposing ways of being a Jedi – but she’s also downright tricky, sometimes (Barriss isn’t entirely sure she’s ever going to completely live down the fiasco of trying to force herself to master Floating Meditation in the space of a single afternoon, so she could rise high enough to accurately count the number of pastries in a bakery’s window across the way, when, at any time, she could’ve simply stood up on the balcony Master Unduli had brought her to in order to see them), often in ways that seem embarrassingly obvious after the fact and remind Barriss almost painfully of Master Yoda’s particular brand of teaching by trickery in order to fully and memorably drive a point home, and, though she’s increasingly sure that she wouldn’t ever want any other Master, sometimes Barriss can’t help but wish that her Master would spend just a little less time being cleverly oblique and a great deal more time just straight out telling her whatever lessons she’s trying to teach her, if only so she wouldn’t feel as if she’s wasting so much time failing to immediately grasp whatever moral or object lesson has been so cunningly hidden in or only hinted at sideways by whatever random task or strange, rambling story Master Unduli has decided to indulge in using to teach her by first tripping her up or otherwise tricking her.

15.) Hair: It takes multiple cups (and pots) of nice, calming teas and more than a few cups (and pots . . . and jugs) of tea bracing enough to (as Knight Suanne Tephee [“Suanne, please! Really, just Suanne is fine. You’ll make me feel old, otherwise, Barriss!”] would jokingly phrase it) put hair on one’s chest, but eventually, with some help from her not quite older sister in lineage (but not quite not, and so they all basically act as if she is, including Knight Suanne, on the rare times she’s in the Temple and not so exhausted or so injured, following a mission, that she’s stuck either in her rooms all the time or else in the Halls of Healing and so not up to visiting) and, shockingly enough, some really useful tips from Skywalker (who very nearly physically trips over her in the Room of a Thousand Fountains one day and ends up earnestly explaining that she’s focusing on the wrong bit of the exercise – the meditation part, not the floating, which, as Knight Kenobi has explained it to Skywalker, basically translates to a kind of very personalized field of antigravity – and that she should be thinking of it less as something mental or spiritual and more as something that can be physically done with the Force, closer to telekinesis than to actual meditation and strong enough, in an emergency, to help either save a Jedi who’s falling from a dangerous height or else to rescue someone else falling or about to fall from a potentially lethal height); much to her satisfaction, though, she does eventually manage to properly learn (if perhaps not to completely master, as she’s eventually capable of using it to keep herself from a bad end, after flinging herself – under Master Unduli’s watchful eyes, of course – multiple times out of various windows and off of several balconies in the Temple Council Towers, but isn’t entirely sure she’d be able to use it on someone else in a true emergency) Floating Meditation.

16.) Information: It’s next to impossible to truly keep secrets in the Jedi Temple – in terms of knowledge for training, information can be restricted to things like Jedi Holocrons, datachips, info crystals, and even old-fashioned books that are themselves regulated, so that only certain kinds of individuals can access them, but in terms of what happens in the Temple or what is spoken of in the Temple, well, it’s difficult to all but impossible to keep things a secret from individuals strong enough in the Force to not only regularly use it to help augment their senses and abilities but to be able to sense things (such as the thoughts and emotions of others) through their connection to the Force – which is why (even if impossible and improbable aren’t quite synonyms) it’s so weird that no one seems to really be talking much, afterwards, about the disastrous mission to Korriban, to apprehend dangerous criminals Jenna Zan Arbor and Granta Omega, even though four Masters and their Padawans were sent there but only the Masters and three of the Padawans returned alive . . . at least not until after Ferus Olin has been dismissed from the Order for intentionally manipulating the minds and wills of Jedi (from Masters all the way down to Initiates, apparently) and not only purposely causing a mechanical defect in the lightsaber of a fellow Padawan (Tru Veld, a fertile unfixed hermaphroditic metamorph Teevan – meaning that Tru can and often does phase from male to female and back again, basically at will – who’s apprenticed to Jedi Shadow Master Ouwain-Kli Ry-Gaul. Barriss isn’t much more than vaguely familiar with either one, since Jedi Shadows tend to keep to themselves and Veld’s nature has all but guaranteed that the Teevan would become a Shadow since the moment Veld first came to the Temple) that would directly lead to the death of another Padawan (the apprentice of Master Soara Antana, Darra Thel-Tanis, who apparently threw herself in the pathway of a deadly blaster shot, even though Tru almost certainly could have survived being struck by it, given the ridiculously rapid rate of regeneration Teevans are [in]famous for. Barriss is a little more familiar with Thel-Tanis, but can’t imagine why she’d ever do something so foolish, which makes her wonder, a little sickly, just how much influence Olin might have had over her, at the time), but attempting to conceal his actions by deliberately, maliciously shifting the blame for the lightsaber’s failure at the critical moment to yet another Padawan (Anakin Skywalker, whose Master evidently had to all but break down the doors of the Jedi High Council Chamber – and is rumored to have called on the Force in a way that somehow instantly shattered all of Ferus Olin’s manipulations – to save his apprentice from being wrongfully accused of negligence and being at cause for Darra Thel-Tanis’ death, which likely would’ve resulted in Skywalker being unjustly cast out of the Order), and then she’s left at least halfway wishing that the relative silence about the mission had never been broken, even though she knows, logically, that nothing good could have come of keeping Ferus Olin’s perfidy (which apparently even extended to his own Master, Siri Tachi, who’s such a wreck, afterwards, that the Council orders her on a five-month spiritual retreat, to recover) a secret.

17.) Help: It’s not exactly fair to feel wary of Skywalker, after the mess on Korriban and Ferus Olin’s banishment from the Order – Barriss knows that, even if it only serves to make her feel frustrated with herself for being overly cautious and even less inclined towards thinking all that kindly of (must less trusting) him – but she’s still not completely sure that having Skywalker on Ansion is going to be all that much help with the mission (even if it means that Obi-Wan Kenobi will also be with them) until after she’s been knocked off of her suubatar into Torosogt River, Skywalker’s immediately leapt into the water to try to save her, and they’ve both managed to survive their dunkings none the worse for wear (at which point she starts to think that it might actually be possible for them to become good friends, if only Skywalker will prove to be even halfway as willing to open up and speak honestly with her as he has been to fling himself – however wholly unnecessarily, if undeniably gallantly – headlong into danger on her behalf).

18.) Horror: Geonosis is . . . unspeakably terrible, so much needless death and suffering (and for what? For the pride and satisfaction of a former Jedi like Yannis Dooku, who deserted the Order after the murder of his former apprentice, Qui-Gon Jinn, during the Naboo Crisis? The traitor is essentially endorsing those responsible for the situation that allowed his former Padawan to be cornered and slaughtered by the Sith! If not for the greed of the Trade Federation, Master Jinn would [probably] still be alive, for pity’s sake!) that she’s quite certain that she’s going to have nightmares about it for the rest of her life . . . though the news, shortly afterwards, that the battle is only going to be the beginning and that the Republic is now officially at war with the self-declared Separatists is so awful that it very nearly eclipses even the horror of Geonosis.

19.) Fire: It’s not very Jedi-like of her, but after the third time that she essentially almost dies because of Geonosis and the second time that she’s only survived because of Ahsoka Tano’s ingenuity (and sheer stubborn refusal to ever give up) and just the absolute horror of one of those times involve parasitical brain worms that burrow into a host and essentially turn said host into a mindless zombie at the control of either the worms or the Geonosian Queen, Barriss believes that she should be forgiven for feeling as though they should just gather every ship they can get their hands on and have them all open fire on that entire blasted world from high orbit until there’s not a single living thing left alive on the entire accursed planet and it’s all reduced down to slag!

20.) Fortune: She honestly doesn’t expect to like Ahsoka Tano as much as she does – the young Togruta is almost painfully brash; she has no concept whatsoever of subtly; she’s so blasted busy rushing headlong into everything that she wouldn’t recognize the concept of strategic thinking if it became embodied and bypassed her two side lekku to deliberately bite her on her rear head-tail; and she quite clearly feels no loyalty whatsoever to her original Master, Togruta Jedi Master Yrannia Tey, since she’s thrilled when the idiots in the galactic press start calling her the Golden Child of the Golden Team (though, to be fair, as Barriss eventually finds out, there’s a very good reason for that. Xenophobia to the point where one believes that only a potential apprentice of the same species as one own self is not a good reason for taking on a Padawan, no matter what Master Tey might believe. Meanwhile, Master Kenobi and Knight Skywalker would literally give their lives for Ahsoka’s and she would do the same for either one of them in a heartbeat, so obviously she knows how to be faithful and she’s just as patently chosen the correct Jedi to give her devotion and allegiance to): on the other hand, she’s one of the most constant and reliable Jedi (if also easily one of the most stubborn, which is saying something, given she’s essentially been apprenticed by the Golden Team while her so-called “real” Master recovers from all of the damage she took at the First Battle of Geonosis. Master Unduli is right: those three Jedi truly do deserve one another, no matter what anyone else might seem to think on the subject, and they would all do anything and everything in their power to keep each other safe, just as they’d do all that they could to help a friend in need, as Barriss herself has had reason to learn, Ahsoka having saved her on more than one occasion that otherwise likely would’ve been hopeless) Barriss has ever had the good fortune to meet – but she trusts her to a degree that, rationally speaking, likely should be frightening, and faith, like friendship, is something that is not easily won, in these dark days of war, so Barriss fully intends to keep that trust and so remain worthy of their resultant friendship, however unexpected it might’ve initially been and however occasionally frustrating it might occasionally be.

21.) Fall: Umbara is such a complete horror show and Barriss is just so messed up from it (not only because of Jedi Master and General Pong Krell’s treachery and fall to the Dark Side, but because she can’t help but realize how much worse it could have so easily been, if Commander Rex had simply obeyed orders from Krell and hadn’t had the courage to contact Master Kenobi and, thus, discovered General Krell’s duplicity before he could deliberately pit unwitting clones from the 501st against clones of the 212th Attack Battalion. Krell still lost far too many men and slaughtered still more, when he was revealed as a traitor, but things came so appallingly close to being so much worse that Barriss feels sick whenever she thinks about it) that, afterwards, she barely even knows what she’s doing, much less what anyone else is saying or doing around her; that’s really no excuse for taking so long to realize that Letta Turmond (the wife of an Abyssin Temple worker and a self-professed pacifist who keeps trying to strike up a conversation with Barriss about why the Jedi aren’t doing more to end the war and how Barriss could be doing more to help stop the fighting) is a liar or just how conniving, hypocritical, and homicidal she actually is, though at least Barriss and Ahsoka manage to contain most of the explosions from the nano-droid bombs, even if they do kill both Turmond and her seemingly unwitting dupe of a husband and inflict enough damage on that specific Temple hangar both to injure a few dozen nearby Temple workers, clones, and even Jedi and to kill more than a handful of other innocent bystanders (though, thankfully, no Jedi die as a result of the only mostly thwarted bombing, or else Barriss honestly doesn’t know how she’d ever be able to live with herself, afterwards).

22.) Demand: It is not just and it is not right that the Jedi High Council should essentially punish Ahsoka for her efforts to help Barriss fix the mess that her distraction and failure to see what was directly in front of her nose so very nearly caused and, in some measure, did still cause, even with the both of them doing their utmost to try to either keep the explosions contained or else to channel them somewhere that they couldn’t cause any (measurable, irrevocable) harm – Yrannia Tey has no right to demand that Ahsoka be given back to her as if she were nothing more than a thing the Togruta felt she owned, as if she were a child throwing a tantrum because someone else has been playing with one of her toys while she’s been indisposed! Ahsoka may have said that she will go back to her old Master and Knight Skywalker and Master Kenobi may have allowed her to make that choice, but anyone who knows anything about any of the three Jedi involved in the decision must know that they have only done so because all of them are unwilling to be the cause for the High Council has a reason to issue the kind of formal censure and reprimand that would just end with all three of them being ordered apart from each other – and Barriss feels so betrayed by Yoda and the majority of the other High Council Masters (nine of whom have, like the Grand Master, backed Master Tey’s demand that her apprentice be returned to her) that, for a few moments, she almost wishes that she could just be selfish enough to simply turn her back and leave the Order that is so clearly failing three of the absolute best of its members behind.

23.) Bribe: Knighting Barriss so soon after Ahsoka has been ordered away from her true Masters and back to Yrannia Tey feels awfully like a bribe for not raising a fuss about such a perfidious act; Master Unduli insists that she deserves it (that what Barriss still has to learn of the Force can only be learned by taking on the duties and responsibilities of a Knight who might, one day, be both able and willing to take on an apprentice of her own), though, and, when Knight Skywalker and Master Kenobi (who know about it because Master Kenobi is a member of the High Council and apparently voted in favor of her being Knighted) take the time to comm and congratulate her on her Knighting, Anakin earnestly adds that, if she were able, Ahsoka would absolutely be the first in line to tell her that she deserves it, so, after most of a day and a night of quiet reflection, Barriss decides that she’ll allow herself to accept the honor, even though (in her heart of hearts) she’s still not entirely sure that she deserves it or that she even truly wants it, any longer.

24.) Chaos: Drongar somehow seems to evoke all the chaos and all the energy of the Living Force all concentrated into one bizarre planet of adaptogenic, mutagenic insanity and, if not for the bota fields (which both sides covet for its miraculous medical properties, though there are other forces at work – criminal cartels – who’d gladly steal the bota out from under them both if they could. No one has actually come out and said so, but she’s fairly certain that part of the reason why she’s been assigned here, to Republic Mobile Surgical Unit 7, is because someone in a position of power here is highly suspected to be working with one of those cartels and the High Council would prefer, if possible, to put an end to such nonsense without having to involve any military tribunals. Given what Tarkin almost managed to do to her and Ahsoka – which was only stopped because of the support that Master Kenobi and Knight Skywalker and, by extension, Ahsoka have in the Senate, not because of anything that the Council Masters did or said – she finds it almost painfully ironic that the Council has chosen to send her, rather than someone else, more likely to still feel strong bonds of trust and loyalty to the High Council), Barriss honestly isn’t sure that anyone would find the myriad (and often changing, usually for the worse) risks involved with trying to establish a military presence there at all worth it, particularly given the fact that almost everything else on Drongar except the bota seems designed to make trying to live on Drongar in any kind of safety as dangerous and close to impossible as is at all possible.

25.) Wrong: It is an injustice so great and so unequivocally wrong that a vicious, sadistic thug like Phow Ji should be reported as a hero, when he’s been caught on cam outright murdering Salissian mercenaries employed by the CIS who’ve already surrendered and has essentially deliberately suicided by Separatist drop ship and thermal grenade in order to escape the so-called dishonor of having to live with the knowledge that he not only owes his life to a Jedi Healer like Barriss, but that he owes his life to her specifically because she’s used the Force – which he’s always loudly claimed does not exist – in order to heal him, that she’s not at all surprised that Den Dhur (the Sullustan reporter who’d written an exposé about the Bundukian mercenary and Teräs Käsi champions murderous ways) ultimately refused to have his name on the story at all, after his editor essentially changed everything in it, with the excuse that the Republic needs more stories about heroes during such turbulent times (and not, apparently, hard-hitting exposés about war crimes being perpetrated by mercenaries on the Republic’s payroll).

26.) Amateur: Healer and specialist surgeon Kornell Divini of Tatooine – Uli Divini, as he smilingly insists on being called – is both younger than Barriss has expected (she knows that Jos Vondar, the Chief Medical Officer and another Healer who’s specialized in surgeries of all sorts on multiple kinds of sentient beings, likes to complain that Healer Divini looks as if he’s about fourteen, but that’s clearly an exaggeration – or even a complaint – and not to be taken seriously. She’s been expecting someone in his early- or even mid-twenties, given the sort of education and training he must’ve had, to be stationed on a Rimsoo, but “Uli” looks like he’s very close to her own age, meaning he’s almost certainly not even twenty standard years of age yet. He reminds her of Anakin Skywalker, in a way, and not just because of his accent or his fair hair and blue eyes, though his skills as a surgeon, however phenomenal, can’t quite compare with Skywalker’s prodigious strength in the Force), and kinder than she quite knows what to do with, particularly when he somehow charms her into letting him see to an injury she’s accidentally inflicted on her right foot that she could have dealt with entirely by herself, with the Force, explains that he’s out in the swamps of Drongar in the first place (after she challenges him about being in the swamp) because his mother (renowned mudopterist Elana Divini, as Barriss eventually realizes) collects Alderaanian flare-wings and he’s interested in seeing what sort of comparable insects might call Drongar’s jungles home, smiles in a way that makes her realize that, once he’s old enough to have laugh lines, he’s going to be stunningly handsome (though why such a thing should ever even occur to her – why she should be looking at the young man closely enough to ever realize something like that – completely escapes her ability to understand), and leaves her so unbalanced that she feels even more like a rank amateur pretending to be something/someone she’s not than she had when, only moments before, she’d somehow managed to let herself be startled enough by an unexpected, brief but strong shift in temperature to lose control in the midst of a routine kata to the point of hurting herself with her own lightsaber (even though she hasn’t fumbled her lightsaber badly enough to injure herself since she’d been nine, and then it had only been a small nick to her left wrist, far less serious than the puncturing gash she’d inflicted on her poor foot).

27.) Precious: Bota is known to act as a potent broad-based antibiotic on humans and to have similar effects on several kinds of near-humans, as well, and the clones, being based on the genetic profile of Jango Fett (a registered genetic [if borderline] human norm Mandalorian originally from Concord Dawn, according to the Bounty Hunters’ Guild, which keeps track of such things), qualify as human norms (for the most part, anyway, though the few truly obvious aberrations tend to number among those the Kaminoan cloners categorize as genetic deviants only worth decommissioning, so they often end up – occasionally after being literally rescued by Master Shaak Ti or another Jedi stationed on Kamino if Master Ti cannot be there, even though Knight Kenobi demanded that all such decommissionings stop when he “accepted” the clones from the Kaminoans and every Jedi on Kamino since then who’s been there long enough to speak to any of the Kaminoans about the progress of the clones still in training has reiterated this order – in support positions in the Temple, rather than in the fighting forces of the GAR), which is almost certainly why Zabrak Healer and specialist surgeon Zan Yant had gone to the trouble (prior to his tragic death, during a Separatist attack on the Rimsoo) to seek out patches of bota growing wild and to (illegally) process it (bota being so prized that all of it is supposed to be shipped offworld, for sale, the harvested and stabilized/processed bota being considered too valuable to “waste” on mere soldiers) and put the results in muscle-poppers in the first place, which is why (after Jos Vondar admits what he’s found, when gathering up and clearing out his friend’s belongings from their shared quarters, and they take the risk of trying it – to miraculous effect – on a dying clone soldier) Barriss thinks of attempting to use one of the precious few bota poppers on a Rodian lieutenant with chronic smashbone fever, in hopes it will help (she’s already decided that, if Healer Yant could be brave enough to find and illegally process wild bota, so he would have some on hand to use on the worst cases in the medical wards, then she can and must do the same. Bota grows wild in many places in and around the swamps and jungles. There will be more poppers, if this one is ineffective. It won’t be a waste to try it, and it could very well help with a disease that, as yet, has no cure), and why, when caught by surprise by a particularly strong muscle spasm, she ends up accidentally injecting herself with some of the bota.

28.) Unique: Bota, like basically all known lifeforms native specifically to Drongar, is naturally both adaptogenic and mutagenic and always has been, at least to some extent – though it’s not (yet) been proven so, logically speaking, it’s adaptogenic properties likely have a great deal to do with the fact that bota has different kinds of effects on and medical uses for so many different species and no known negative side effects to any of those species, even though they use it for such wildly different reasons (from narcotic painkillers to powerful stimulants to broad-based antibiotics) – so it probably shouldn’t be so surprising that the plants (which technically aren’t exactly plants, being instead a unique type of lifeform somewhere between a mold and a fungus. Since no one has yet bothered to try to formally classify what bota exactly is, yet – it being more important to protect it and harvest it so that it can be dispensed or tested further on new/different species – most beings refer to bota as a plant, anyway, for simplicity’s sake) are mutating (and apparently have been for some time, though someone with deep pockets – most likely hoping to profit from the information somehow – has apparently been going to great lengths to try to keep this fact from getting out) towards the likelihood that bota might, one day all too soon, become, for all extents and purposes, inert and therefore useless (and worthless) as any sort of drug; given the reactions Barriss has had both to her unintended injection and the injection she’s deliberately given herself, to see if it would replicate the effects of her accidental dose, though, the fact that they could lose bota before ever discovering what it could mean, to Forceful individuals like the Jedi, it means that she has to contact the Council of Reassignment and, thus, the Circle of Jedi Healers and the MedCorps, as well as the High Council, at once, so that the Masters will know what bota can do to strengthen/deepen one’s connection with the Force in time to try to do something to save it.

29.) Communiqué: She is, in all honesty, shocked to see Master Kenobi (he isn’t a Healer, after all, though he is known for being an excellent emergency battlefield medic and it is, thanks to the war, increasingly becoming obvious that he’s among one of a handful of the most powerful Jedi currently in the entire Order. He explains, only a little sardonically, that he has contacts with the AgriCorps and, since the hope is that a fixed or stabilized version of the most potent remaining extant strain of bota [which, hopefully, will be unlikely to ever mutate to an ineffective form] can be successfully transplanted to at least a few suitable planets/moons known only to members of the High Council and a few high-ranking [and/or sworn to secrecy members] of the ExplorCorps and then raised and harvested by highly gifted and thoroughly vetted AgriCorps members for processing by the MedCorps and use by them and Jedi Healers, he’s here at the request of both the Council of Reassignment and the rest of the High Council), among the various Jedi Healers and Jedi Service Corps members who’ve stealthily responded to her communiqué (she’s even more astonished to see him without Knight Skywalker at his side, though the explanation that a majority of the High Council has decided that his friendship with Chancellor Palpatine – who, after all, is responsible for the policy that forbids the Healers on Drongar from using bota on their patients – makes him too much of a security risk to know about what they’re trying to do here); ultimately, though, Barriss ends up being extremely glad that he’s come, as she’s almost certain that they wouldn’t have succeeded in their aims without Master Kenobi’s raw strength in the Force and his startling ability to persuade the bota to grow in a way that should make it much hardier (and, thus, more likely to survive being transplanted) and perhaps even more potent, in the long run, since its nature should now be prone to adapt only to make it harder to kill and not to keep wildly mutating until it share so few similarities with what it is now that it will no longer be effective as a drug.

30.) Traitor: To keep their actions (which are illegal according to the Chancellor’s policies and Republic law, though she would argue that it is the laws that are immoral, not the actions of the Jedi, especially not once she learns that the hope is that the transplanted bota will thrive so much that the MedCorps will be able to experiment a little and perhaps come up with a bacta-bota mix that can surreptitiously be added to every Jedi’s standard field pack and be regularly provided in bulk to clone medics and other such doctors and healers in the field, with the explanation that it’s an experimental Force-enhanced strain of extremely effective bacta, for emergency use. Bacta technically is also legally restricted – Chancellor Palpatine has, over the course of the war, quite foolishly limited its production even further than it used to be, instead of expanding it so that the GAR will be guaranteed more than enough supply, supposedly to make it harder for Separatists to get their hands on any of it – but it’s always been something of an open secret [among Jedi, in any case. It’s not their fault if the politicians and the corporations have forgotten!] that, because of their Service Corps, the Jedi can and do produce their own bacta, and frankly Barriss regards the decision to secretly try to save and transplant an effective strain bota as an extension of the same policy that’s seen the AgriCorps and the MedCorps producing bacta for Jedi use for the past four thousand years or so), a secret, she must act as if she’s dismayed when the secret comes out, about the bota mutating to uselessness and the order comes that the Republic is abandoning Drongar; she doesn’t expect another traitor (Eqani Minder Klo Merit, of all beings! The loss of his homeworld has evidently driven him mad – after all, the Jedi have no records of a Republic weapons test, such as he claimed destroyed Eqanus, and they would surely know, if it were true – as well as driving him to betray the Republic to the CIS) to be exposed and shot by Jos Vondar in the chaos of the Separatist attack that very nearly derails the Republic retreat, though!

31.) Two: Barriss knows that the High Council have been assigning both orphaned Padawans and Padawans whose individual Masters have been injured to the point where they can no longer adequately do their duty by their apprentices and continue see to their training to other available Knights and Masters without waiting to see if anyone will volunteer for such a responsibility or even bothering to ask, first, if anyone has a particular preference – she’s friends with Ahsoka Tano, so she cannot help but know how Master Yoda persuaded (most) of the rest of the High Council to assign Ahsoka to Knight Skywalker and Master Kenobi – but she’s barely been a Jedi Knight for two standard months, so the absolute last thing she’s expecting, when she returns to the Temple after Drongar, is to be summoned to the High Council Chamber and informed that she’s doing such an excellent job that the Council Masters are assigning her Selonian Padawan Zonder – whose Master, Armann Asantuen, one of the two dozen Corellian or Green Jedi who decided to fight with the Republic, even after Senator Garm Bel Iblis invoked Contemplanys Hermi and the entire sector technically closed its borders, back when the war was just beginning, is currently missing in action – until either Zonder’s Master can be found or else definitive proof the man’s demise is discovered.

32.) Awkward: She and Zonder are doing their utmost to try to make the best they can out of a truly awkward situation (though neither one of them is really all that comfortable with the High Council assigning them to one another. Zonder insists that his bond with his Master is unbroken, meaning the man is alive [a fact that she likely finds entirely too reassuring, given the likelihood that the High Council will just assign someone else to her if Zonder’s Master turns up and is able to take Zonder back on again], and that he should be out there looking for him, which Barriss can understand, even if she doesn’t quite agree with him. There are Jedi Shadows who are looking for Master Asantuen, after all, and Shadows are far more suited for such work than any Padawan could hope to be) and she’s tentatively beginning to think that they might be starting to find a rhythm together that works when the Separatists suddenly invade Coruscant, General Grievous kidnaps Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, and things proceed to pretty much try to go to the lowest levels of Sith hells in a bloody handbasket.

33.) Attack: They were supposed to be dispatched to Felucia, but the unexpected invasion of Coruscant and all of the chaos surrounding that derailed those orders long enough for Master Kenobi and Knight Skywalker both to discover that Palpatine, the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic, is actually the mysterious second Sith Lord (Sidious, according to what little they’ve been able to uncover, since the Naboo Crisis) and has quite deliberately been playing both sides of the war all along and to then confront and defeat (and, in the process, dispatch) him, after which there was the attempted attack on the Temple to deal with (because, apparently, the clones all had biochip implants in their brains that could be triggered to force them to follow certain commands and the cowardly, traitorous Sith attempted to trigger Order 66 – labelling all Jedi traitors to the Republic and calling for their immediate execution – when confronted by Kenobi and Skywalker), and then, well . . . the war may essentially be over with, but Barriss is a Healer, so she’s going to be needed to help deal with both the problem of those Sith accursed biochips and the fact that the Kaminoans so cruelly designed the clones to age at twice the speed of average human norms, so no one can possibly ever highjack the free will of any of the clones ever again and the clones can hopefully still have long and productive lives as free citizens of whatever it is that the Republic is reorganizing itself to become, now that the Sith have been exposed and dealt with and their plans have also been exposed and ruined.

[petyabux]

Dear STAR WARS community, I have not recognized the "new canon" as a canon for a long time, because I am that rare person who has read numerous books on the old republic and studied the chronology of the new one on the Internet, played in sw: kotor and I have also watched the now non-canonical Genndy films on the clone wars. The way Disney reshapes and makes absolutely illogical all the moments shown in the films makes me very confused and disgusted.

I got acquainted with the Star Wars film universe at the age of 5, oh, I will never forget these unforgettable times, my first film of the universe was the 5th part of the chronology of the universe, I did not understand at all what was happening, but I really liked it. But it's not about nostalgia at all, my dislike for sequels appeared for the diametrically opposite reason, I was so waiting for Disney to do something new, come up with something that would surpass all the comics about Darth Krayt and Yuuzhan Vong, but the expectations were in vain.

as a fan of the universe, I watched the entire trilogy of sequels in the cinema, the visual effects amazed me, but when I delved into the clueless dialogues and storylines, I noticed similarities with the previous parts and an attempt to overtake them in "coolness" simultaneously humiliating the old heroes..

after that, my hope for the future of the films of the saga died, but when Han Solo and the Mandalorian came out, she was resurrected again, nevertheless, for myself, I stopped considering everything created by Disney and happening chronologically after the events of the Mandalorian (9 ABY) as canon.

Now I am reading the trilogy about Darth Bane, I strongly advise everyone, including those who have come to terms with the canon from Disney, because these are the events of the old republic (after all, Disney has not yet managed to invade this era).

I am waiting for your answers to this post, and I would also like to hear a couple of tips for reading several comics or books about the universe.

[girlbossk]

the weasleys are so good & i need to do a harry potter reread

[r-2-peepoo]

Does anyone else get canon mixed up with fanfiction? Is that normal for this fandom?

I’ve only been into SW since April when I watched absolutely everything in chronological order just bc my dad loves it and I wanted to get the pop culture references and I read Codywan fanfiction the entire time I was doing it and the lines between what actually exists in universe and what is made up by fans is completely blurred for me atp.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that Helix and Bones are not real clones and that Bly and Aayla aren’t actually together and needless to say I am still devastated about it.

[gffa]

Hey Lumi, I have a tiny itty bitty silly question. I am ashamed to admit this (there is no anon option so I have to attach my face here and I’m crying) but all the Star Wars media I’ve been consuming so far is in the form of movies/tv shows/games and fanfiction.

I know, I know. It’s horrible, I should have went straight for the good sources a.k.a comics and books the way I did with Marvel/DC. It’s just that when it comes to Star Wars I have no idea where to start from and I get overwhelmed … Does that makes sense? I guess what I’m trying to ask is… where do I start from?

Because I wanna know EVERYTHING but I wanna read the proper works and not wookieepedia. And I can’t ask my best friend, she will absolutely laugh at me if she has to make me another list with titles to read or important pop culture things to see. You are my only hope.

Hi! First of all, I am firmly of the opinion that Star Wars generally works best when watched in priority + chronological release order, because the way Star Wars stories often work is that they assume you've seen/read the previous thing to base your current understanding off the other story, even if it's set as a backstory. For example, a lot of people suggest watching the prequels then the originals and I think that undercuts a lot of what you're meant to get out of the story. You're meant to know Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader, that's a huge part of watching the prequels. You're meant to know that Palpatine is going to become the Emperor, there are all these little comments about future plans, you're meant to know what the Death Star is, so when you see the plans on Geonosis, you understand the gravity of what's happening here. This also applies to reading supplementary material, because the books and comics assume you've watched the movies and the TV shows first, often times your understanding of them is based on that knowledge. So, you're doing things right so far! And that's why I usually suggest, whatever you're looking to get into, whatever you're interested in reading, do it in order of release, because a lot of stories assume you've seen/read the stuff that's already released. The second issue is a bit more of a "It depends on what you're interested in!" one because, well, it depends on what you're interested in! XD If you're coming to me, generally, I'm going to assume you're interested in the prequels characters and my list of Must Read materials will cater to that. (I do have a more well-rounded list here, it's a bit old at this point, but honestly I wouldn't say any of the current books have been must reads in awhile, aside from maybe the Thrawn and Alphabet Squadron books. This is slightly more up to date, but has a lot of the same suggestions. XD) My recommendations are: - Darth Vader (2015 - Kieron Gillen) + Star Wars (2015 - Jason Aaron) - These two series are meant to be read concurrently for at least the first six issues, read issue #1 of SW, then issue #1 of DV, then issue #2 of SW, then issue #2 of DV, etc.  They’re events crossing over into each other and are meant to be seen from different perspectives at the same time and it’s still one of the best series the Star Wars comics have had in Lucasfilm canon!  Gillen’s Vader is more the mystical, unknowable nightmare version of Darth Vader and he does an excellent job of getting into that space with the character.  Aaron also writes the original trio really well and it fills in a lot of the gabs just post-ANH so well, this is a great starting place for reading comics.  You get to see Vader’s moment of realization of who Luke Skywalker is and it’s one of the best comic moments in all of the franchise. - Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith (2017 - Charles Soule) - As tempting as it might be to read them in chronological order, I still think release order works better, and this one is set just after Revenge of the Sith and it’s all about digging into the psychology of Anakin Skywalker choosing to be Darth Vader.  Choosing it over and over and over.  This Vader is INCREDIBLY extra, but underneath the hilarious dramatic antics of this series (HE IS SUCH A DRAMATIC ASSHOLE IN THIS SERIES, IT’S SO FUNNY), there’s genuinely a story that looks at how afraid Anakin was to face his own choices, how Vader’s issues are Anakin Skywalker’s issues, how he goes from Anakin to the Vader we know in the OT. This is still my favorite piece of SW supplementary media, but I may be biased. - Shattered Empire (Greg Rucka) - This is a four-issue mini series that’s basically 100% pure connective tissue between the aftermath of Return of the Jedi and where things were headed to in the future.  The entire point is to show a variety of characters and nothing but focusing on the aftermath, rather than too much of a plot-focus.  Which makes it really satisfying, because it’s finally some breathing room for the characters--plus, it has stunning artwork to go with it. - Princess Leia (Mark Waid) - More aftermath, this time focused on Leia’s character in the days after A New Hope and the destruction of Alderaan.  It includes her going to Naboo (though, she can’t figure out too much, of course, there’s some lovely nods to the Force whispering in her ear) and trying to figure out how to be a princess of a world that’s in ashes, and it’s a lovely look at her character. - Obi-Wan & Anakin (Charles Soule) - A five issue mini series set between The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones and when I first inhaled it, it seemed like a bit of a filler adventure, until I went back to really pay attention the second time and suddenly all these connections and all this groundwork was being laid for understanding where each of these characters was coming from.  It’s a fantastic look at Anakin’s doubts about being a Jedi, that he’s planning on leaving, Obi-Wan’s interactions with him over that, and why Anakin ultimately makes the choice to stay, along with so much of Palpatine laying down groundwork to undercut everything the Jedi are helping to teach Anakin.  Add in the most gorgeous artwork you’ve seen, and it’s a hell of a read. - Poe Dameron (Charles Soule) - I really did not expect to love this comic as much as I did, but it’s incredibly good character work for him (the absolute best Poe-related material) and it does a ton to set up and flesh out the story of the sequels (in as much as anything can) and it’s just very, very easy to settle in with and read.  It’s got great pacing and a great plot and was really, really addicting to read. - Age of Republic (Jody Houser) - There are eight issues in this maxi series (and you can go on to read the Age of Rebellion and Age of Resistance comics, they’re in the same format--four issues about heroes, four issues about villains) and they tell stories of various characters and they’re all really solidly good.  My favorite is the Obi-Wan one, it’s another great look at his relationship with Anakin, though, the Anakin one had some great character stuff and the Maul one got me in the feelings place. - Jedi of the Republic: Mace Windu (Matt Owens) - Heads up about this one, the art style is wonky as hell, including some real nightmare fuel Yoda moments, so you gotta power through that aspect of this mini series.  Once you do, though, it’s a stellar look at Mace Windu’s character!  It’s not necessarily plot-heavy, but the chance to understand more of Mace’s mindset, the incredible Jedi he is, the good man he is, how hard he worked to become the person he is currently, all of that was excellent. - Star Wars Adventures - The series started in 2017 and then was rebooted in 2020, all of them are very worth reading!  They’re aimed at a younger audience, so you’re not going to get too much darkness in any of the stories, but that doesn’t hold them back from being some of the best Star Wars comics.  They’re all little stand-alone stories with characters from all across the three trilogies and you’ll get some wonderful stuff, like Luke and Leia on Naboo, Anakin and Padme going to see a play, baby Leia being told about Padme by Breha, Mace Windu rescuing a young Twi’lek child and giving her a pep talk, Rose Tico having adventures, Obi-Wan and Dex having an adventure, etc.  They’re adorable and super fun! - Kanan (Greg Weisman) - While parts of this have been a bit overwritten by The Bad Batch (to the detriment of the story, this version is so much stronger), the Kanan mini series is absolutely stellar for understanding the character, getting to see the prequels Jedi from the perspective of the Padawans, instead of just the Knights, and getting some great worldbuliding and character work.  It’s split between Kanan’s time in his present with the backstory of what happened to him after the Jedi genocide and it’s brutally heartbreaking in all the right places, hopeful in all the other right places, and the artwork is just stunning. - The Clone Wars - Battle Tales (Michael Moreci) - This is in the same vein as the Adventures comics (and may even be under that label?) so it’s pretty light-hearted but it has some absolutely baller comic moments for the clones and the Jedi.  It’s a quick read, but you’ll have a scream of a time doing it! Books are a more complicated issue, because a lot of the Star Wars books have moments of great quotes, but overall aren’t great stories, in part because they can’t do character work in the same way comics can and all the really good stories are being saved for potential TV series, I suspect.  But two books I always recommend starting with are Matthew Stover’s Revenge of the Sith novelization (nobody has ever come close to the heights that book has achieved) and Star Wars: Propaganda by Pablo Hidalgo, which is an in-universe look at the entire timeline (such as it was at the time) and how art and propaganda shaped things and, oh, it’s so good. Other than that, I like the Thrawn books, the Ahsoka book was solid, Bloodline did a lot of character work for Leia in the sequels, the Aftermath trilogy is one I really love but I personally think you almost have to listen to the audiobook versions because the text versions just bored me while the audio versions gripped me, Dark Lords of the Sith by Paul S. Kemple is more “Vader being Vader” goodness, Resistance Reborn was probably the best sequels book for me, I legitimately enjoyed Phasma a ton but given how her character just kind of fizzled out in the movies, I’m not sure how it would stand up without the excitement around her character, and I enjoyed Catalyst a lot, but I’m a sucker for a book that does connective tissue stuff between the prequels and the originals. I also highly recommend looking up “movie” versions of the Battlefront II storyline and the Jedi: Fallen Order storyline on YouTube, both are excellent stories if you’re not into playing the video games yourself.  You won’t get the full experience (you get much more invested when you spend a bunch of hours running around as your character, after all XD) but they will tell you the stories and they’re both very good and you’ll see connections pop up fairly often.  I also loved the Vader Immortal storyline, but because it’s a VR storyline, you’ll probably only find shaky footage of it and that may hit your motion sickness.  Still totally worth it even though I almost (literally) threw up trying to watch Vader be an asshole. That’s a lot to dump on you all at once, but I promise the stuff goes quicker than you’ll realize and this will give you a very solid foundation of having read the good stuff in Star Wars franchise!

[wanderinginksplot]

Warning for the next few months (?)

I hate winter. Like, seriously despise it. Halloween is my favorite holiday, but November 1st onward sucks. I've never been diagnosed with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD, lol), but I just know I'm very unhappy until spring happens.

ANYWAY! To fend off The Mood, I'm going to rewatch everything in the Star Wars canon starting November 1st. I'm starting at The Phantom Menace and working my way through every film and tv show in chronological order. I won't lock myself into posting about every piece of content (especially episodes of shows since that would get very old very fast), but I'll probably be posting quite a bit.

I'm pretty excited since I've never seen Rebels before and I intend to work that in. With that consideration, I might actually be able to increase the number of characters I'll write for!

So, to summarize, expect even more Star Wars stuff starting November 1st. If you would rather skip it but still want to see my fics and other postings, block the tag #ink's 2021 sw rewatch. Thanks for reading! Have one of my favorite gifs as a reward.

[moinsbienquekaworu]

I did MATH for my OCs. Listen, I have a lot of creative energy right now, and I need to focus it on something but classes just aren't it. In other words here's the updated chronology for all my Jedi, now with Lineth, some tweaks to their ages and how long their apprenticeship lasted, and a CRC version because that seems to be what they would have been using? Timeline comparison with canon to come because I didn't feel like it tonight.

Yes, the CRC one is annoying to read, I'm considering remaking it honestly because it's almost as hard to figure out a date on it as it is on the BBY one. I could just shift it sliiiightly and it would be 5 to 10 to 5 to 10 again... hmmm.... Tomorrow afternoon when I'm bored mayhaps.

Inspired by that one post from @/spotted-newt that talks about older Padawans 😌 I just love the idea that they either needed a longer time or they just had so much stuff to learn. In Korcha's case I'm also playing with the fact Harches live centuries (how many? fuck if I know) and the idea they might mature a little slower. Debated making Reil a little older to accommodate both the few years in between his apprenticeship and Devafe's and his disability but I think 15 years is long enough for him to master what he needs and wants to know. I mean both he and Korcha have to let go at some point :') I don't know how long Lineth's apprenticeship would have lasted if the war had miraculously ended instead of everything else that happened, but she would certainly have needed time too. Lots of confidence to gain and trauma to work on :) Having their ages written down is very strange but it helps put it in perspective.

Anyway this was it, next time on Ram's OC show and tell: probably more SW OCs let's be honest they are taking up a solid third of my brain right now

[kckenobi]

ooh, 10, 21, 27 for the writing asks?

Hi friend!! Thanks so much for the ask!!

10--how do you do your researches?

I delve deep into Wookiipedia for most Star Wars things, but then I also use some of the SW books for research too. Like sometimes I'll be writing a fic that references events from RoTS or a legends novel--writing the ending of Bloodlines, I used to ROTS Novelization to get the beginning of the last chapter right, in those moments right before Anakin and Obi-Wan duel Dooku again. I also used that book to make sure all my events could fit in there chronologically like missing scenes.

And then there's the real life stuff, like when I need to know whether a certain physics or medical thing is accurate, or how space works lol. And I definitely use books or the internet too, but I also have the good luck of living with my dad who is a giant nerd, so I can ask things like "hey would replacing a standard diode with an LED on a radio-like device make it work?" and not only will he give me an answer, he'll TRY IT TO CHECK??? (He also thinks I'm a criminal rn because I'm writing a fic where someone is embezzling money and I keep asking about the most successful ways to get away with it lmao. But jokes on him bc he knows the answers so who's the REAL criminal dad?)

21—least favorite character to write

Weirdly enough I think it might actually be...Cody? I LOVE Cody, believe me I have read MANY a Cody-centric or codywan fic but he's really hard for me to write because he barely speaks in canon, and I soooo do not have his voice down. With other characters I hear the lines in my head in their voices, but with Cody I just feel like there's a lot of guesswork on my part lol

27--best review you ever got

Ahhhh does your art of When the Music Stops count as a review?? Because the fact that you liked it enough to do that just makes me 🥺🥺🥺🥺

Also, pretty much any time I get a review that pulls out specific lines from the fic they liked makes my heart explode (@lightasthesun you've brought me near tears on more than one occasion :'))))

fanfic writer asks

[vergencescatter]

Axel Greylark

I have so many thoughts about Convergence. I'm still piecing them together.

One that stands out is how I'm at a bit of a loss with Axel Greylark. I can't say I'm not surprised with how the book concludes. Particularly interesting is the final few moments of Axel in his prison cell at Prison Barge CA73Z. It's revealed, on the one hand, that he often considered the idea of sending a holo to Phan-tu and Xiri, and to his mother. I read this as him being sincere; whether out of insecurity or self-loathing, or something related, it is suggested that he always stops himself from doing so. This is insightful, because I think such instance where he wants to send a holo (assuming a nice one), or those where he reflects on remnants of his affection for Gella, show the good side of Axel.

On the other hand, although I've read some people complain that Axel's development is inconsistent, I actually think his story so far is fairly consistent in the sense that there is something bipolar about the way in which he interacts with himself and others. For example, in the final paragraphs, he thinks of Gella as though with deep fondness and care. But then, in a flash, these thoughts trigger him to spiral into a state of destructive self-loathing, yearning to feed his "chaos". Like how he picks fights when he is bored in prison, and that he enjoyed the pain when someone named Zygerrian broke his nose. It's these two sides that are consistent throughout: his self-destructive spirals that leaves him to fear that he will hurt others around him, perhaps even those he cares deeply about (his relationship with his droid QN-1 comes to mind). In prison, he thinks to himself that with him locked in a cell maybe he will then only be able to hurt himself.

What is probably a decent approximation of the truth is that Axel's mental state completely eroded after his father's death, and after so much time in a self-destructive he has a craving for nihilism (to destroy everything because everything for him was destroyed). I imagine the machinations of the Mother didn't help in reinforcing his inner "chaos". It's clear, at least on my reading, that Axel is not a member of the Path, nor is he committed to its future; but the Mother has a way of enchanting people whilst knowing what bruises to push in order to manipulate them. At the same time my impression is that Axel knows that the Mother is manipulating him, but his nihilism is pragmatic. Something about their arrangement also served a need in him.

[gizkalord]

Hi! What comics would you recommend to a fresh fan? I just didn't finish Rebels yet but I caught up with The Mandolorian in term of chronology. I'd love to read more about the characters (like TCW helped with personalities) and just, see them again 😂 What are your favourite comics? (Hope it all makes sense)

uhhh so i'm not the biggest comic reader (off the top of my head, rebelsofshield and gffa are both far more knowledgeable about them than me), but I can at least talk a bit about the ones I've really liked reading so far!

Kanan: The Last Padawan (2015) by Greg Weisman

TRULY excellent, this is the comic run that had me frothing in a rage yesterday. Highly recommend if you like Rebels, and I don't believe it has any spoilers since the present-day parts are set in early on. Gives so much insight into Kanan, as well as Depa, clone characters, and Jedi life, and you will just fall in love with them all (and get your heart broken).

Darth Vader (2017) by Charles Soule

I think this is probably one of the most popular/well-liked comic runs put out in sw, and deservedly so. A fantastic comic if you want to dive into young Vader's psyche as he struggles with his new identity as a Sith following the events of ROTS. Lots of great references to the prequels and TCW, and has some really interesting Force lore. GORGEOUS art.

Slaves of Zygerria (issues #1-6) of Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) by Henry Gilroy

This is the original comic that the tcw season 4 zygerria arc is adapted from! It’s def worth reading because there some interesting differences—some bad, some good. I like it because it goes more in-depth into the issues of slavery and the main cast’s reaction to it compared to the show. The art is subpar though, especially compared to the two I already suggested.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Defenders of the Lost Temple (2013) by Justin Aclin

An underrated one-off issue featuring a rather unique and self-contained clone-centric story. Great if you like clones, and its ending is one of my favorites. Though same as above, the art isn’t the best.

If you want more TCW, the Son of Dathomir comic is a canon adaptation of a planned Maul arc prior to TCW’s cancellation. Maul makes a reference to it in season 7.

I also recommend checking out this list made by gffa—several are on my to-read list!

And just my advice as someone who isn’t that into the comics—start off with what characters/era you like, and go from there! Like, I’m obviously obsessed with anakin and ahsoka so I’ve literally hunted down every single comic, good and bad, with the two of them. I’m also planning to read the KOTOR comics because I really like the KOTOR games. But I genuinely have next to no idea about any comics set in the OT/ST era because it’s just not my primary interest, y’know? And I think that approach has made getting into the comics feel a lot less intimidating.

[mangohub]

this update touches on almost every muse & fandom on the multi / @affcgato​, so please consider skimming!

hello beans! I hope all of you are doing well, & this week is starting to treat you gently. I know a lot of you have been having a rather hard week up until this point, so I hope it cuts that shit out. I’m currently pinging around my apartment trying to get my dog to settle down because she’s been waking up at 5am & my roommate needs to be able to get an extra hour of sleep. my solution? wear her ass out so she has no choice but to sleep lmao. this is going to be a bit of a long post, so bear with me! 

updates & info for @affcgato​!

READING SCHEDULE & MUSE UPDATES: 

I’ve finally finished all of my main reading for Andromache the Scythian, which is nice since when I circle back to her, it’s going to be thick hard-science novels & I’m giving myself a break before that. I actually changed up my reading order in the middle of last night, & I’m going to be putting off my Star Wars stuff until AFTER Chain of Iron ( Shadowhunter Chronicles ) is released, because I like to group things by similarity, & I should be just finishing Little Women for my book club when I have to dive into CoI. given the settings are similar enough, it feels weird to dive into several hundred pages of various SW stuff right in the middle of two period pieces. so instead, I’m going to be focusing on my Chain of Gold re-read, plowing through Chain of Iron, then diving back into my SW things. 

a sidebar, I did finish Sabé’s popup as much as I could without finishing Queen’s Shadow, so I’ll loop back around when I pick that back up, & fully add to her headcanons. Leia has additionally gotten a SMALL touch up, but no other SW related popups have been updated yet.

After Chain of Iron, I’m going to spend a small amount of time updating popups for the relevant muses ( Jesse, Jem, Cordelia ( test muse ), & Magnus ), which I’m giving myself a little leeway on because ya girl is burn out from coding, but then I should be back on track to plow through the rest of my reading & updates.

PLOTTING & INTERACTION:

due to unexpected demand, I’ve moved a few more muses around & loosened the privacy on a few of them so if there’s someone you’ve been eyeing, you are welcome to approach me on discord because I honestly wasn’t expecting my weirdly divergent muses to garner that much attention, but hey! let me know, we can maybe work out some plotting. 

I also have an open themed plotting / interaction call for my low thread-count muses , which includes a little bit of everyone. you’re also welcome to request a specific muse using the eight ball emoji, so please take advantage of that!

last note for this section, please fill out my interest tracker/plotting guide (found here), it makes it much much easier to keep track of who wants who, & it’ll make me less shy about approaching you, promise. 

expected updates!

Shadowhunters: popups updated for TID/TLH muses to comply with CoI release ( Mar. 2, but my book apparently comes Mar. 8, playing this by ear. ) My book came on the release date, & I fininished it in two sittings. spoilers will be tagged until April, one month out from release, unless otherwise requested.

Star Wars: Sabé & Leia will be getting updates, & Kylo + Jyn will officially be added in varying stages as I dive into their canon. I have an extensive reading list, so this update will take some time - movies don’t really help me absorb world-building, so you’re stuck with my reading speed for this one. (I’ll be reading somewhat chronologically, so updates will follow that order)

OCs: After all of these shenanigans, I expect to also update/add information for Charlotte to the multi, then I’m trading Sci Fi out for Fantasy & delving back into Ersken’s lore. 

Marvel & DC: As some of you have notice, I cut a DC muse recently. I don’t really feel bad about it because he was getting no interaction & I didn’t have the headspace to delve into his wider canon & lore, so off he went. My absolutely last priority will be to circle back & delve into Karolina Dean & Jason Todd. they’re both limited canon for the time being as far as what I’ll be adding to this blog, so I’ll be focusing on Karolina’s comic canon, & Under the Red Hood + limited comic runs for Jason. 

that should be everything, but in the event you’re waiting on something for a muse you don’t see listed here, please let me know! 

[bedlamsbard]

fascinated by the distinction drawn between "audience member" and "fic writer" bc I think I know what you mean in regards to kind of re-writing it in your own head not as the secondary way of interacting with it but as the first. But I would not have thought of putting it that way!

A lot of it has to do with the specific fic genre I write in, which is long plotty AUs that I’ll probably be working on for years -- to some extent I can set aside everything in canon that occurs in in-universe chronology after the span of my story; Backbone and Crown doesn’t have to take into account the events of the OT and ST because they haven’t occurred yet.  On the other hand, I can’t totally set aside major set piece events that involve causes and players outside of whatever characters and timeline I’m working with, because depending what I’m working with things are still going to happen whether or not my characters are involved.

And I make compromises all the time about whether things are going to make it into the story -- there’s a whole discarded Backbone subplot about Zare Leonis that I considered really carefully before not including, even with the knowledge that leaving him and his interaction with Ezra out of the story meant that his arc in the Servants of the Empire novels will be completely changed.  Backbone covers about half the span of S1, maybe less; I was always running out the timeline of S1 to figure out what events would be happening that would or would or not be affected by the Ghosts’ changed circumstances and if that merited being included in the story.  Rebels S1 is very small-scale; going further into the timeline of the show means that opens up further and further and a lot of other factors are in play.  The earliest version of Backbone was also quite different; the Free Ryloth fleet didn’t exist, Cham and Alecto were members of the Rebel Alliance, a number of other Rebel Alliance characters were there; I reworked it after Siege came out and it was revealed that the Rebel Alliance wasn’t yet a thing.

With Gambit, otoh, there were a lot of galactic-scale repercussions; I was always running the timeline back and forth and figuring out what the originating events were and how those would play out in the altered timeline of this single-point divergence AU.  But the crucial difference is that for Gambit (and Wake), I was working is that I was working with a closed canon -- I didn’t have to worry about something down the line adding something to the in-universe chronology, and a lot of it was heavily altered by the divergence point anyway.  (Actually, that canon reopened partway through Wake when The Lost Missions dropped in a way that was relevant; the chip scenes were somewhat shoehorned in because I couldn’t leave that out.)  Crown is working in a tighter timeline but one that comes a lot closer to the set piece events of the saga; I have “where is this in relation to Rogue One?” running through my head when I’m working through any of the Rebel Alliance scenes.  There are a number of small-scale changes that aren’t immediately clear (because the story’s not finished) that have come about because of the story’s divergence point that would have a much greater influence on galactic events than they did in canon.

When it comes to out-of-universe chronology, the added canon that comes out after I’ve already started working on a story, it can be a lot harder to deal with.  95% of the time, if the additional canon deals with the character/setting of my WIP, I’m going to ignore the bulk of it but occasionally integrate details here and there as relevant (such as the name of the Tann Province in Backbone -- you may note it doesn’t show up until quite late in the story, after the S3 ep aired).  I didn’t change the names of the Inquisitors -- in fact, I made the decision early on that however I named the Inquisitors it would be different from what canon did, as that was prior to them being called “Seventh Sister”, “Fifth Brother,” etc.  5% of the time it’s something that I cannot ignore, like the clones and the chips -- that’s pretty rare, tbh, but it happens.  (I’ve scrapped a story because of additional canon; I had a chunk of Kanan/Hera time travel written where they both got thrown back to the Clone Wars, but the Kanan - The Last Padawan comic coming out threw me too badly with their clones as opposed to my OCs.)  To some extent, I try to only work with the canon that was available when I started writing that story; that’s not entirely sustainable with canon coming out so rapidly, and sometimes it can throw out a reader.

The worst part, as a fic writer, about dealing with additional canon isn’t trying to integrate it into an ongoing story: it’s that it may change how I feel about Star Wars, or if it’s done poorly, I may end up in the kind of mental place where I get very “why am I doing this when the canon doesn’t even care.”  There’s a scene in the Darth Vader comics where the Inquisitors are doing shots after killing a Jedi and stealing his baby.  When that particular issue came out, I was working on the big Inquisitors vs. Kanan & Ahsoka fight scene in Backbone, and I was so badly thrown by the disconnect that I had to step away for a few days.  I hated the Rebels finale so much that I couldn’t work on Backbone for a while even though it’a completely different universe.  A lot of what canon did with Ahsoka post-S2, and the way she gets idolized by both fandom and the PTB, has messed with my perception of her so much that with Crown Ahsoka and the backend of Backbone Ahsoka I didn’t trust myself writing her and had to have multiple beta readers just for her characterization, something I have never worried about before.  (This is one reason I did that deep dive the other week to figure out what the hell was going on in the writers room about her, and honestly?  I feel better about it now that I’ve rationalized what was going on in a way that makes sense to me.)  I had to stop reading the Doctor Aphra comics because Hera was so out of character there that I was getting really, really upset (and also the animal harm), and then I just stopped reading all the SW comics because they were making me mad and I wasn’t enjoying myself.  Sometimes you get big universe consequences stuff that doesn’t deal with your main characters (looking at you, TROS) and it’s frustrating if you don’t like it!  Then I have to sit down and try to decide “hey, am I going to use any of this Palpatine stuff?” -- this was actually a problem for Crown, because the Palpatine scenes weren’t written yet when TROS came out, and I was so badly thrown by TROS that I didn’t know how to deal with that in Crown even though it’s mostly not relevant.  Would I be happiest if I was working in a closed canon, or if at least I knew (or thought) my main characters weren’t going to get any more canon stories about them? GODS, YES, THIS IS WHY I STARTED WRITING PREQUEL FIC BACK IN THE LATE 2000S.  (Ironically, I started writing PT fic before TCW came out, then flipped fandoms and came back in 2012 -- but all my 2012 PT fic only used the closed canon of the EU Clone Wars/Republic comics, not TCW.)

Mostly as an audience member I don’t want to see my writing characters on the screen anymore -- there’s a certain amount of hypervigilance that comes with having your writing characters or settings active in canon, even if you don’t intend to integrate any of that.  I watch and read Star Wars very differently than I watch and read anything else; I mostly don’t find it relaxing because I’m always aware of the fact that the stuff I care about could pop up at any moment, or because I’m concentrating so hard on characterization/nuance/worldbuilding that my brain is going 150 mph, or because I have very specific deal-breakers.  (I do find reading in the EU relaxing because bro, that is CLOSED CANON.)  I would like to relax!  If canon finally contorts itself to the point I can relax again that will be a relief, tbh, even as frustrating as it would also be.

...this is probably a much longer response than you expected.

[padawanlost]

Hi, reading your posts explaining part of sw universe (your post really make me think in some aspects of sw that I have never thought) fragments of books and comics make me want to read it, do you have or know some post to indicate how I should start in the prequels stories and what books are the most interesting according you? I have tried to understand how to start, but its a bit confused due to the big numbers of books/comics (specially due to the legend and new canon). Thanks you very much!

Hi! I’ve a book rec tag where I suggest PT books, if you’re interested. As for where to start, my usual advice is start with what you love: your favorite movies and characters. Forget the idea that there’s a right place to start or that you have to read everything to enjoy the EU. You already know the story, the EU is about exploring the details so it does’t really matter where you start because you already know exactly how it goes. The EU does not have to be a chronological experience. 

Let me tell you how I started: wookieepedia. A knew a little about the EU but the wookieepedia got me deep into it. I used to read Anakin’s page all time and it was filled with little bits of information but I needed more. It wasn’t enough to know *something* happened to Anakin, I wanted to experience it for myself. That’s when I started checking the sources at the bottom of the articles. It wasn’t enough to know Shmi and Anakin belonged to Gardulla before Watto, I wanted to know *how* they lived. So I checked the source and read the book. My first two SW books were Stover’s Revenge of the Sith Novelization and James Luceno’s Labyrinth of evil because they focus on events related to my favorite SW movie (ROTS) and they heavily featured my favorite character (Anakin). 

I didn’t read them because I wanted to know the EU or be THAT kind of fan. I was just curious so I started with what I was most curious about. Real talk, when I first heard about the EU and thought about exploring I was thought that the only quality content was Timothy Zahn’s OT books. It’s been 20 years and I still haven’t finished a single one of his books. It’s not because they are bad, I’m simply not interested in that part of the story so I don’t go there. Don’t fall into the trap of believing you NEED to know everything. That’s gatekeeping and it’s been used to keep away from the EU for years. So my advice is always read what you want to, if you want to.

Here are my favorite PT novels (in chronological* order):

From TPM to AOTC

Darth Plagueis by James Luceno

The Life and Legend of Obi-Wan Kenobi by Ryder Windham

Jedi Apprentice Special Edition: Deceptions by Jude Watson

Jedi Apprentice Special Edition: The Followers by Jude Watson

Secrets of the Jedi by Jude Watson

The Rise and Fall of Darth Vader by Ryder Windham

Episode I Adventures 5: The Ghostling Children by Dave Wolverton

Episode I Adventures 6: The Hunt for Anakin Skywalker by Dave Wolverton

Episode I Adventures 7: Capture Arawynne by Dave Wolverton

Episode I Adventures 8: Trouble on Tatooine by Dave Wolverton

Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace novel by Terry Brooks

Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace junior novelization by Patricia C. Wrede

Star Wars Episode I Journal: Darth Maul by Jude Watson

Star Wars Episode I Journal: Queen Amidala by Jude Watson

Star Wars Episode I Journal: Anakin Skywalker by Todd Strasser

Rogue Planet by Greg Bear

Jedi Quest: Path to Truth by Jude Watson

Jedi Quest: The Way of the Apprentice by Jude Watson

Jedi Quest: The Trail of the Jedi by Jude Watson

Jedi Quest: The Dangerous Games by Jude Watson

Jedi Quest: The Master of Disguise by Jude Watson

Jedi Quest: The School of Fear by Jude Watson

Jedi Quest: The Shadow Trap by Jude Watson

Jedi Quest: The Moment of Truth by Jude Watson

Jedi Quest: The Changing of the Guard by Jude Watson

Jedi Quest: The False Peace by Jude Watson

Jedi Quest: The Final Showdown by Jude Watson

The Approaching Storm Alan by Dean Foster

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones novel by R. A. Salvatore

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones junior novelization by Patricia C. Wrede

From TCW TO ROTS

Shatterpoint by Matthew Stover

The Cestus Deception by Steven Barnes

Jedi Trial by David Sherman

Yoda: Dark Rendezvous by Sean Stewart

Star Wars: The Clone Wars novel by Karen Traviss

The Clone Wars: Wild Space by Karen Miller

The Clone Wars: No Prisoners by Karen Traviss

Clone Wars Gambit: Stealth by Karen Miller

Clone Wars Gambit: Siege by Karen Miller

MedStar II: Jedi Healer by Michael Reaves, Steve Perry

Labyrinth of Evil by James Luceno

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith novel by Matthew Stover

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith junior novelization by Patricia C. Wrede

*some novels cover many years worth of story, so listed them first.[

COMICS

If you are interested in comics, please check this post where @cienie-isengardu and I listed some of our favorite sw comics :)

GUIDES

If you still don’t know where to start  Jedi vs Sith - The Essential Guide to the Force by Ryder Windham complies the most important events of the GFFA. It’s like reading book report disguised as a history book. It’ll give you the gist of what the EU has to offer. 

Jedi vs Sith - The Essential Guide to the Force by Ryder Windham

The jedi path - A manual for students of the force by becker mayer

The new essential guide to warfare by jason fry

The essential readers companion by pablo hidalgo

Btw, this is all original canon :)

[thoseindarkness]

DtD News Nov 2020

Thank you to anyone who came back for this nonsense. For brevity I have an announcement that I want to make up front. I didn't have room for it last month so I pushed it back, but I can't anymore. I had to make one major revision to the published story. I want people to know about it.

This is the TLDR version. I tell a more in-depth story at the end.

ANNOUNCEMENT

The summary: I had a bad outline walking into writing Mistrust Goes Both Ways. I ran into a problem mid-story. Instead of stopping and taking the time I needed, I challenged myself to creatively solve my way out of my problems. I re-started with about half of what I'd written, published Mistrust Goes Both Ways, and restarting my outline with high hopes.  I was proud of myself for rising to the challenge.

Despite my best efforts, it didn't work out. In the end, I had to scrap my outline. I was able to structure the end I was going for and spent the end of 2019 trying to link the first two stories to the ending I wanted. It wasn't working. Then TRoS. Then COVID. Here we are. In June, I started experimenting with scrapping Mistrust and restarting from Read Between.

Mistrust Goes Both Ways will not be part of the finished story when I'm done. I know some of you love it. I love it. I have no intention of taking it down. I might, for a short time, when I'm posting the final story. I'll let you know if that happens and it will go back up afterward. I don't have specifics as there's no point planning for it now.

For right now, nothing is changing on my AO3 account. Feel free to read and comment to your hearts content. I promise it will stay up forever to remind me that some mistakes are worth sharing with others. I learned good lessons from this mistake. It stays.

That being said I think I owe you an actual update on the progress of this story.

WHAT THE HELL I DID THIS MONTH

After my first update I needed to re-integrate with Reylo friends. Funnily enough, that pulled me into another fic. I've been working on that between following this election. Now that it's called I can get back to writing. I tried a couple of times since I voted on Oct 30th, but I knew it wasn't what I wanted to be thinking about.

Thankfully, I've also begun doing more social/political essays lately. I'm not sure what overall form or shape those may take and I haven't published any. Still, I was creative and I did plenty of writing. Interestingly, all this political focus is good for Deceive the Deceiver. Spinning and listening to conspiracy theories is a big part of weaving a world like this one. A great deal comes from my thoughts and perceptions of the real world.

WHERE DTD IS

As of right now I am in the process of first drafting the entire story with Read Between as the starting point. That is, every one of the short stories in the series. What I'm doing is somewhere between a history, an outline and random scene writing. All of these elements are currently strung together in one long, continuous, chronological, first draft. It's everything from the history before Read Between (which starts in the 1930's), all the way to the final scene of DtD.

I'm taking all the good ideas I've created in the last couple of years and re-organizing them into a first pass. It's the skeleton and some of the meat now. I'm slowly building out now that I have a blank-er slate. It's about choosing what works and what doesn't.

I call it accordion writing. It just gets bigger and bigger. This outline will later level up into the first full story drafts for each part. I've got so much history when I finish this I might… I'm getting ahead of myself. Don't want to give too many clues away.

Another interesting thing that's happened recently is I've started pulling bits of other fic ideas that I’m just not gonna finish. A big chuck of the history I stole from a modern/academia AU where Ben and Rey are history students specializing in the ancient Jedi religion. Another was a complication between characters came from a canon story where I wanted to paint the relationship with a new layer. We'll see if I can pull that off.

I spent a lot of time prior to this year focusing on the heroes but my villains hadn't gotten much love. Filling in the history has given me a chance to flesh out the villains. All their moves and countermoves, woven through the bits I already have, are spinning a pretty tapestry. Oh, the villains are so much fun to write!

This other fic came together in the same sort of accordion fashion and it's been fun working through the kinks in the process now that I've seen some of the weak points on a scale like DtD. I think I've mentioned, but this is a writing experiment for me and I'm most invested now in improving my process and clue-threading with DtD. This other fic is helping me test it on a smaller scale.

Not that this needs to get any longer, I'm just going to throw pretense out the window and go with complete vanity. If you don't give a wet shit about my life (and I don't blame you) you have reached the end of your journey. I hope to see you next month. If not, then I leave you with this parting:

May we meet again in our next fandom, through mutes and not as rival shippers.

The following is the ridiculous story of my ups and downs with Deceive the Deceiver. I figure if I explain to you how much I'm invested in this story some of you will stop worrying that I'm going to abandon it. Trust me. I'm not.

This tale stretches from NANOWRIMO 2018 and the prompt that started it, through the ups and downs of 2019 and 2020, to the writing of last month's letter. Buckle up. I love bumpy rides.

DtD: from NANO '17 to COVID-19

This story truly starts in December 2017 when I drenched the seat beneath me during Last Jedi. I'm a TLJ shipper. I got caught on the thirst train. It hit a time when writing was becoming a really big part of my life. I've been writing since I was a kid. I stopped for a while and came back to it. It's a long story. Ultimately, I'd started writing a lot a few years earlier. A mix of fic and originals but I was running into problems so I start reading a bunch of books to get better. TLJ lit the fires. NO joke TLJ came out on the 15th. I have pages of writing from the 20th.

2018 was Reylo year! I was already on Tumblr for my previous fandom (Batman comics). I found Reylo AU week which is in August. I submitted a story for that. It was the first fic I published for Reylo. Fast-forward August to November. I'm in the Writing Den on Discord and someone throws out this spy prompt. People start running with. Throwing ideas around. One of those was the snuggie in Mistrust! I have that conversation saved and story spots for each crazy thing they threw out. Finally, I said I'd do it!

Mind you, this is November 2nd. Nano has just started and the event is about "turning off your internal editor." This prompt consumed me. I was trying to keep up with SpaceWaffleHouseTM that first year. I did, btw. We both crested 100,000. It was my first Nano. Word count is not my problem. Organizing my crazy ambitious ideas is my problem. Some of that 100k was other stories, like Custard which I wrote half of in November and the other half Jan/Feb 2019. Most of it… probably 80k of it… was DtD.

Read Between the Lies is currently 33,710. I wrote at least 20k of that during that first Nano, as well as outlines and scenes for what I thought would be the starting point. I remember wanting to write Read Between to "get into their headspace" by writing their first meeting. I didn't think it would become a whole story. I was just going with it then. Any idea that came to mind.

I took December 2019 off for a few reasons. Some personal. Some burnout. I'm one of those people that can use writing to relieve stress, but I was so exhausted from that month-long writing sprint. By the last week I was dragging to get the final four or five thousand words to hit 100k.

Also, what I had by the end (no internal editor) was a bird nest of ideas that had too many beginnings, not enough middles, and endings to go around. I knew one thing right away: I knew I had more than one story. There were so many fun ideas. I figured, what the hell. I knew another thing right away: the prompt was at the end of the story. Like, the very end. Like, the last short story. Or the second to last short story, at the earliest. That hasn't changed. Ever. That's just where it ended up.

Between January and April of 2019 I touched DtD a few times. I kept coming back to it, reading through it, trying to untangle it. I made new notes on the stories. Expanded ideas. Tried to structure it. I figured out a bunch of good notes, but no real substance. The hardest thing was figuring out where to start! Did I:

(1) Start shortly before the prompt with Ben/Rey's relationship established and fill the story with the history?

(2) Start a lot earlier and build Ben/Rey's relationship from the beginning I'd written in Read Between?

If I'm being honest, Read Between was a lot better than I thought it would be and I didn't want to get rid of it. For a while I was thinking of publishing it last as a "prequel" if people liked the series.

Funny enough, the turning point happened May fourth weekend 2019…

In the week leading up, I was struggling through another story and decided to take a break for the weekend. I'd start writing again on Sunday when I met with my writing group. I met them through Nano. We used to meet at Panera. Now they meet on Discord. They mostly sprint though and I'm not a sprinter. I miss Panera. Anyway.

May 4th was a Sunday (look it up). I gave myself a writing break for the weekend and marathoned Star fucking Wars. It was nerd weekend. I was going to nerd out. I wore exclusively SW gear all weekend. I remember it well. It was the start of something fucking magical in my life.

Have I mentioned recently I really love this story. Trust me I will fucking finish it. Oh my god the demons won't leave until I do. Get them out of my head…

I had a pretty rockstar weekend. I believe the reason I skipped the PT that weekend was because I'd watched it the month before or so. Right after finishing the Clone Wars animated series (which is awesome and I strongly recommend both it and Rebels). I skipped them and SOLO.

Starting with R1, I went through in chronological order. I stopped at RotJ. I was with my family on Saturday and they were playing RotJ in the living room during the party. We talked about my marathon. My mom came over to my apartment after. We watched RoTJ properly. Then Force Awakens. It was too late by then to watch TLJ. I know I went straight to bed after my mom left on Saturday night.

Somewhere during or right after TFA I started thinking about Deceive the Deceiver. I don't remember what sparked it. I went to bed thinking about DtD. I know this with 100% certainty because I woke up thinking about again on Sunday and I thought it was quite odd.

I dream about this story in a way I have only dreamt about a precious few. Technicolor folks. It keeps me up at night.

I went to my writing group with (a) no plan for what to write, (b) a gordian knot that I had yet to untangle, (c) a sudden urge to re-read it. I opened my notes and read DtD through all our sprints. I read most of it during that writing session. We go about three hours.

That night I had Game of Thrones at my parent's. It was the (spoiler alert) episode where Arya kills the Night King. I remember because two minutes into the episode my brother's car broken down a few blocks from our apartment and we had to go help him. Derailed the whole night (this is foreshadowing).

Side note: I live with my younger brother and he's the best roommate I've ever had in my 35 years of life. Love you, Mo!

The episode was recording so we ran out. Had to leave the car in a parking lot. Someone had already helped him push it out of a puddle but my brother was soaked to mid-calf and the engine was shot. We dropped him off at home and I rode back to my Momma's crib to watch GoT. It was only the beginning of a wild night.

I went to bed late. I had to get up a few hours early to deal with the car before work started for either of us. I guess we were both hoping to avoid taking the day off. That wasn't going to happen. I drove home but I couldn't sleep. That crazy episode and the fact that my brain was already on fire with DtD.

I spent the wee hours finishing my re-read through the rough draft of Read Between the Lies. It saw my starting place. I started writing. I wrote through waiting in a parking lot, for the tow truck, in my car, at 6 am, with no sleep. I did a voice recording as I drove from the parking lot to the mechanic where the driver was taking my brother's car. I thought about it the whole way back. I sat on the sofa a wrote some more when we got home. I went to bed at 11 am and I'd written 10k more words for Read Between the Lies.

Somewhere between the chaos of May 5th and the official publish date on June 5th, Read Between got written. I know it didn't take too long. I remember sending it off to beta (by my amazing beta team on 1 & 2: Em, Jen, and Sai) and immediately pivoting to my outline. I slapped that together far too hastily and kept moving. I was going on holiday in the UK (I'm American and I'm ashamed) in early August so I planned on trying to publish Part 2 when I got back. At the very least I wanted it ready for beta.

Also some to admit, around the middle of 2019 I was fatigued with the fandom. We were hitting a lull. I was psyching myself up for the end and the exit. I was trying to clean house. I wanted to push out unfinished fics. To make them work. There was a lot of that mood from me in 2019. I was trying to make everything work. It's why Read Between came out, and that was a good thing. It's also why Mistrust came out, and that was a bad thing.

With that mentality looming, tough outline in hand, I started writing Mistrust before the end of May. I hit my snag sometime during the period I was publishing Read Between because by the time it was all done I knew I wasn't going to have a finished story by the time I left for London. I would figure it out when I got back. I picked up another project to distracted me from my problems for a little while. That is going to be an original if it's anything. One day…

At some point after I got back I started focusing heavily on problem solving. I had two stories already and a number of plot threads I had to resolve. I have heavy, heavy, heavy notes from September to December of 2019. Lots of possible ways to run this story. It sucks that a lot of that stuff isn't going to make it, but I'm recycling shit every day and I learned so much about the characters/story in that four month period. It really shaped the finished product in an important way.

This period is where I started to look at the bigger structure and how I was going to solve specific plot problems in each short story to bring the whole together. That focus on the different parts is important because it was the last thing on my mind when TRoS happened.

December 20th (the release date) is my birthday. My ass drove up to one of those Reylo-only screenings and I was surrounded by amazing people as I watched a movie that ruined my 35th birthday. Thankfully, I spent it in incomparable company. Thank you to all the hosts and super special thanks to Jen. Not only was she a DtD beta on both, she invited me. Thank you love! You are the reason I still remember that trip with joy.

Side note: I no longer hate TRoS. I've made my peace with it. I'm a far happier person now.

Needless to say, the only Reyloing I did in January of this year was venting frustration. Then I took a few weeks away from the fandom. I'd done my purging into the void. I knew other people still needed the space to vent but I had to get away. Once the toxin is out I couldn't let it back in.

What occurred starting in February of 2020 was a series of situations in which, every time I logged into Twitter I was faced with the kind of vitriol in the fandom that I don't need in my life. Some of it was still TRoS stuff, even as late as May. I'm not judging, I'm just saying, with the world on fire (literally), I didn't need it.

I don't think I have to explain why I've avoided social media like the plague since early this year. I live in America. If you heard anything about our recent President I don't have to explain any further what this year has been like. That has been par for course all over the world.

So here's my secret to happiness. I don't fux with the trolls. Do not engage. Sometimes that means radio silence. I'm breaking that silence because I want you to know 2020 has not destroyed DtD. It's only leveled shit up.

I have pretty much been working on this story consistently since March of this year. I go back and forth with reading, history, documentaries. I'm learning to wield many new weapons. They take time to settle in. DtD is the de-stressor I go to in between the real shit.

Sometime in June I was screwing around with the order of the parts. I had worked out the end but I was trying to bridge the gap between the ending I was certain I needed to get to and the two beginning stories I'd already published. I couldn't bridge the gap. It had been a year since I published Read Between and it wasn't working. Then I had an epiphany.

What if I got rid of Mistrust? Read Between is a pretty blank slate. I didn't want to re-write it and I still don't. I have no intention of getting rid of Part 1. I may clean it up and add some stuff at the very last minute, but it will be right before the new stuff drops as a pre-cursor to the flood of subsequent stories. I may add a few new clues or alter a scene or two, but I have plenty of room to move with it exactly the way it is.

What does that mean for Mistrust Goes Both Ways? To make a long story short, there was no good way for me to continue with what I'd published and still write the story in my head. I'm sure there are cool places to take the existing story, but that's not what I'm trying to do. In truth, I should have left 1 and not published 2 when I hit a snag. Lesson learned.

In June I basically threw Mistrust out and asked myself, "Now what?" I have months of great ideas rife for reshuffling and no restrictions on how to bridge the gap from 1 to the ending I wanted. But the end had shifted.

That brings us up to speed. The last thing I did before taking a much needed break was get through 90% of the history in my accordion outline/draft. I poured the foundation that was missing. I walked away in early October and let it set. I'm going to button up this other fic I'm working on and then go back to DtD and check the foundation I laid.

I'm very confident that not only will it hold, but that with fresh eyes and the fun side stories I've had the chance to lay to rest, I will finally be able to start building the finished products on top of it.

IN CONCLUSION

I'm still as excited as I've ever been for this story. It frustrates me all the time, but that means the medicine for my soul is working its magic. Change it painful, but pain is transformative. I've embrace changed. That ache is just a sign the muscles are getting stronger. Growing pains. As I learn to live with them in my family, my country, and my job, I find that life's lesson's often end up reflecting in every place in our life if we but open our eyes to look.

Growing pains exist in my writing process too. They are as transformative in this corner of my life as they are in every other. They have revealed as much about me as a person in my writing as they have in my politics. They have taught me how to compromise with my family as I learn to compromise with my characters. As I consider how people treat each other I am reminded that struggles in understanding our fictional counterparts may shine a light on our struggles to understand our truer selves.

Take care of yourselves. Once you've got that covered, if you can, take care of each other. Feel free to poke me and say hi. If not, until next month.

Fari.