Had a silly idea; I now inflict it on the rest of you. Stroppy teenager Devon and exasperated Dad Maul are my jam
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Had a silly idea; I now inflict it on the rest of you. Stroppy teenager Devon and exasperated Dad Maul are my jam
Maul: I won’t let Sidious take children from their homes, kill their loved ones, and put them through torturous training.
Maul: I’m going to do all those things MYSELF.
The idea that Mace Windu coming back would be the thing that makes death meaningless in Star Wars is so funny to me. Girl, come on, it’s Star Wars.
Ahsoka Tano just died and came back to life for the third time. Maul survived being cut in half, with no apparent repercussions. Cere Junda fell into lava and wasn’t even burned. If you’re stabbed straight through the stomach, you only have a 25% chance of dying.
Find me a single person who actually believes that Moff Gideon is dead. It would’ve been too unbelievable to kill Thrawn in Rebels, so they jetted him off to another galaxy instead. Bad Batch fans were absolutely convinced a character was Winter Soldiered because the writers don’t ever kill anyone off.
This is the Somehow Palpatine Returned franchise. Death has not meant anything since A New Hope.
I suppose my issue with Mace returning is not that I find it unbelievable that he survived, but just I can't see a scenario where he's going into hiding instead of doing a Yojimbo; getting healed up, getting his arm replaced and then kicking down Vader's door.
Another clone wars practice, i still need to get used to the style!
I have a real soft spot for "one-off Jedi who are clearly only in the story to get killed off by the plot." You can probably think of a half dozen off the top of your head. It's an especially reached-for trope recently, particularly in post Order 66 settings. Barriss's unnamed tragic they/them Jedi. Jod's desperate, short-lived Master. Poor fucking Nari, whose compassion leaves a trail, but also leaves him hanging dead on the settlement gates. They're there, living on the edge, the hardy, unlikely survivors of a genocide. They made it so long, only to appear on the stage and be slaughtered pornographically at the feet of the actual protagonist, to move that protagonist's development forward.
At first glance, Master Eeko-Dio Daki looked like such an obvious, soon-to-be example of that trope. In the last six episodes, every time he gives a scary cough or gets pinned down in a fight, I'm looking at my screen like 🫣 ohh here we gooo bye-bye dino jedi i loved u
But I'm actually pleasantly surprised he's made it this far and has had - not exactly what I would call development, but some time to actually breathe on screen and be established as THE important person in Devon's life. He's that kung fu film trope of the old, worn-down, sloppy Master in the gutter who suddenly flares to life in a brilliant display of swordsmanship. I love it when he tells her to run, and far from the tired old sacrificial last stand, he comes rocketing up onto the roof after her in whirl of blue. You see him and understand why he and Devon have made it this far. I have no real optimism about his long-term survival in a series looks like it's moving toward Devon getting a reason to join team Maul (which! very fun, but where Eeko-Dio's death would make such a convenient catalyst) but damn.
I'm putting that lil old dinosaur in my pocket.
My favorite was literally named Master Ima-Gun Di and I miss him and his hunky clone captain.
I have a soft spot for Verla, who survived Order 66 and kept receiving visions from the Force to go and get a lightsabre but she actively ran away from it and stayed in hiding.
As for Daki, he is definitely getting either Inquisitored, Vadered, or Taloned. But I do live for the scenario where he survives, and he and Maul end up in a co-parenting situation.
I am enjoying the exasperated dad and sulky teenage daughter vibe between Maul and Devon. I hope they continue this
Apparently, Ahsoka is alive in the post-TROS timeline. Which is in some ways 'ugh' but in other ways great because it means you can have a story about Rey (knows nothing about the Jedi except they drink green milk) and Ahsoka and Barriss (have seen this thing burn to the ground twice in their lifetimes and are determined to do things properly this time) come to blows over what the Newer Jedi Order should look like.
I think one of the big strengths of fanfiction as a medium is that it can, on average, assume the reader has a way higher degree of familiarity with canon than like…canon can. If you’re in the Star Wars AO3 tag you probably like Star Wars enough to remember more things about it than the average Star Wars-enjoying-ten-year-old. Which makes it way easier for fanwriter a to get to the juicy stuff and really engage with the worldbuilding or minor characters without having to spell out like. Who Wedge Antilles is for everyone who forgot or never noticed him in the first place. You could write a book about Wedge in the old EU because EU readers could also be assumed to be serious fans, but you can’t make a new canon Disney+ show about him. Those cost money to make and are intended for a broader audience.
And all this means that like. A good fic writer can and often will surpass canon when it comes to like. Thematic resonance and stuff, because they can really dig into something. Star Trek 2009 gave Kirk a new, more generic tragic backstory because it couldn’t expect the average moviegoer to be familiar with Kirk’s old, way more interesting tragic backstory. (Frankly, I’m not sure jj abrams knew about TOS Kirk’s backstory) whereas I have read a LOT of well-written, interesting, deeply resonant fanfic examinations of Tarsus IV, and what it means for Kirk’s character that he’s a genocide survivor. Star Trek 2009 answers the question “why did Kirk cheat on the kobayashi maru?” With “‘cause his dad crashed a spaceship when he was a baby.” A close examination of TOS canon implies the answer is “because he lived through a real-life Kobayashi that did have a win option, but which wasn’t taken.” BUT—and this is significant—even the TOS canon movies can’t really assume knowledge of the full TOS tv show, so that implication is never examined or made explicit. Instead it’s fanfic (and maybe spin off novels? Idk I’ve only read 2 trek books, if there’s one out there that covers this that would be really cool) where we get dives into that thread, where Kirk gets a commendation for original thinking because he can look a testing board in the eye and say “I’ve seen what happens when someone is entrenched in this kind of thinking, and I cannot let it happen to me. I understand the lesson, but it’s not hypothetical anymore and it never will be. I did what I had to do.” And that’s interesting! That’s meaningful! That can’t happen in a summer blockbuster. But it can happen in fic, easily, and that’s a strength of fic, I think.
I hope you don't mind me adding to this very good post, but in general i think the financial supremecy of movies and (more recently) tv has lead a lot of people to assume that the best stories can be interchanged between mediums. That every book can be adapted into a movie, every light novel into an anime, every movie into a video game etc etc
and that's the same attitude that underlies all the 'the goal of fanfic is to file of the serial numbers and publish it' or 'fanfic isn't real writing because real writing is novels and fanfic is usually structurally so different from a novel' type of takes come from.
this assumption that the medium is largely coincidental to the story being told
when that's just not true.
the very best adaptations always change things, because mediums are not interchangeable, and they fundamentally shape the stories told in them.
there are things you can do in fanfic that are simply not possible in a traditional novel, because you're starting from that possition of love and knowledge, and because you aren't bound by the need to be canon compliant, so you can ask questions like 'if these characters met in other lives, under different circumstances, what would they be like? how different would they be? how much of what makes them them is tied to the circumstances they found themselves in?' or 'what was it like to not be the heroes, to not be actively involved in the cool exciting bits? what was it like to be a minor character, left behind to deal with the consequences' because your audience is already invested, they'll show up for questions like that in a way a movie or novel or tv audience wouldn't.
there are things you can do in a podcast or radio play that are not possible in visual mediums like film or tv, because you're relying on the audiences imagination. there's a reason the best radio comedy tends to be surreal, and the best podcasts tend to be horror, those are both genres that thrive when the audience's imagination is allowed to fill in blanks.
there are things you can do on TV that are not possible in a novel or a movie. the way WandaVision completely changed its visual style with each episode is something that would not work in any other genre, but it's essential to the story. TV usually exists in very defined seasons, but cannot traditionally be consumed all in one go, which is not true of almost any other medium, and that dictates a specific type of pacing. combine that with the fact that it's a visual medium, and you get something like the overarching stories of the 9th Doctor's season of Doctor Who. No other medium could have delivered the resolution to that storyline as effectively.
Video games can force the audience to consider their own part in events. No movie could do what Spec Ops did, when it gives you a button prompt to commit a war crime, and then turns around and asks you why? why did you do that? was it too easy? do you think it felt like this when the US government committed the exact same war crime within living memory? Was it easy then too? A novel or a movie could show you walker doing this terrible thing, but it could never convey the point with the same effective simplicity, and it could never make you the audience feel culpable. only the author is responsible for the actions of the characters in a novel, but in a game, it's the audience who bears that responsibility, and that allows for moral questions other mediums struggle to effectively convey.
Comics can tell stories that take three decades and ten different writers to tell. Movies can use silence more effectively than any other medium because cinemas give you a captive audience and close-ups means you can reliably assume they can see everything that's happening (unlike theatre, which can use silence, but can't assume everyone has a good view). Theatre provides real time audience interactivity and a very special and unique kind of suspension of disbelief. Professional wrestling can tell ongoing stories in real time over years or decades, and walk the line between fiction and reality. Novels can immerse you more fully in one person's view of the world than any other medium (which also allows for information to be hidden from the reader without it feeling cheap the way it can when a movie does the same thing). Live oral storytelling allows the story to be adapted on the fly to fit audience reactions, allows for infinite variations of the same story, because no two tellings will ever be identical.
Fanfic isn't a genre, not really. Fanfic has genres, but it isn't a genre in and of itself. Fanfic is a medium, and like all mediums, it offers storytelling tools that are unique to it, that it does better than any other medium. and as OP pointed out, one of the big ones is that it can assume both familiarity and love from the audience to the characters depicted. We can stray far further afield from where we started in fanfic than the original creator ever could, because our anchors are not the narrative, but the characters.
You doing well? I hope so. Idk if I’ve said so but you’re an inspiration for me.
I am doing well thanks! Having a bit of a break from writing heading into New Year, so taking the time to try and work on my drawing skills which is fun!
Aww, that's so nice of you to say! Honestly really touching to know that I'm an inspiration of any sort. So, thank you for saying - I think that's made my month! :)
bring back tumblr ask culture let me. bother you with questions and statements
reblog to let people know it's ok to bother you with questions and statements
The Darksabre: The Lore and A New Dawn Breaks
Note: This post is basically my rough notes on understanding the Darksabre lore, and its mess, in Star Wars and then how I sorted through that to create the version that features in my fanfic A New Dawn Breaks. It’s mainly here because it would be too long to put in a note on AO3, but it’s spoiler free for the fic.
The Origin
Like a lot of Star Wars lore, the Darksabre is very much a case of ‘and they were making it up as they went along’. It came about because of an 11thish hour animation decision. In the Clone Wars arc where it’s introduced, Obi-Wan investigating shenanigans on Mandalore with Satine, the original plan had been for Pre Vizsla to fight Obi-Wan with a vibroblade. However, Lucas intervened and said he didn’t want a vibroblade to contend with a lightsabre. Which makes sense to me: if standard weapons in Star Wars can compete with a lightsabre then the lightsabre becomes less of a special weapon.
But pre viz was already done; if they got rid of the vibroblade the whole choreography of the fight, and possible the structure of the episode, would have to be redone. And deadlines being what they were it was too tight to scrap it. So they kept it, and did an overlay on the vibroblade tuning it into the dark lightsabre. And that’s also why it has the sword blade look rather than a conventional lightsabre blade.
And that was more or less how it stood. There wasn’t at that point a lot of lore added onto it, it was just a cool weapon that Pre Vizsla and then Maul used. It’s in Rebels that the lore gets properly fleshed out and deepened.
Rebels
It’s in Rebels where the lore starts to come out and it might be at this point where it’s officially named as the Darksabre. Here we learn of its creation by Tarre Vizla, how Clan Vizla stole it back and so on. What’s notable here, is that while Clan Vizla use it to conquer/unite Mandalore and it subsequently becomes a powerful symbol of it, the mystical aspect of it as a symbol is largely absent.
The other thing that’s noticeable different is the qualification on what it means to ‘claim’ it. When Ursa talks to Sabine about it she says something along the lines of ‘possessing it is not the same as claiming it’, with the implication that just because Sabine has it doesn’t mean she’s the rightful wielder of it, and thus the person to lead/unite Mandalore. By implication, the show suggests that ‘claiming’ it means to be able to wield it effectively, as seen through Sabine’s training.
So when Sabine defeats Gar Saxon using Ezra’s lightsabre, it’s not the act of beating him itself that it’s important for her claiming the sabre, but rather by doing that she demonstrated that she was a competent user of it.
This is further reinforced in how the sabre is passed on. Because Filoni didn’t want to do ‘Sabine Wren: Queen of Mandalore’, she passes the Darksabre onto Bo-Katan, declaring that she’s the right person to unite their people. The evidence for that is patchy, but hey, she was in Clone Wars, she smacked Ahsoka’s arse, flamethrower an innocent village and got her sister killed. Anyway, the point is Sabine passes on the sabre, declares Bo-Katan worthy of it, and everybody claps.
What’s notable, is that Bo-Katan doesn’t apologise to Ursa and beat the shit out of Sabine first. Nor does anyone in the audience start grumbling about how you can’t just hand it over. By implication, the rule that ‘you must defeat the previous wielder to claim the Darksabre’ does not exist. Bo-Katan can claim it because everyone knows that she can handle a sword, and is thus automatically qualified as a competent wielder of the blade and deserves the symbol.
Which is all fine, and matches with the warrior culture ethos. If you can wield the deadly super sword, then you are by proxy a good ruler and that’s all anyone cares about.
But then the Mandalorian comes along. And things get weird…
The Mandalorian
After the stunning success of The Mandalorian season one following the head first dive off a cliff that was The Rise of Skywalker, Disney decided that live-action TV Star Wars was the way to go. Season two of The Mandalorian thus expanded from the father and son adventures format to give us a series of ‘sorry Din, your Jedi is on another planet’ adventures that was a poorly disguised way of introducing us to the cast of characters that were going to fill out its expanded universe TV roster. And its here the new bit of Darksabre lore drops.
This is now that in order to claim the Darksabre you need to successfully defeat the previous wielder. Because Dave Filoni and Jon Faverue have read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, so Elder Wand rules are what we’re going with. Its subsequently added that failure to comply with this rule will lead to disaster. Which brings in a plot hole because there’s no way a nerd like Bo-Katan would not know this.
Now, narratively it’s never made clear whether this is an actual Mandate of Heaven thing – that the sword will do some magical twist of fate to bring disaster – or is just a ideological Mandate of Heaven thing – that people priorities the cases where it fits and ignore the ones where it doesn’t.
[Side note: a deleted scene in And if we Fell Together had the Armourer and another Mando argue about whether this was true in the case of Satine, to Bo-Katan’s consternation. Still kind of regret dropping that one].
Within the narrative, the Armourer seems to believe it to be true. And so does Bo-Katan, but it’s not clear whether that’s because she really really believes it, or it’s because her PTSD after the Night of a Thousand Tears has made her incredibly nervous about not following the apparent rules, but the show doesn’t really explore that. Part of the trouble here, is that the show does something of a 180 on the Armourer, where in Season one and two it’s attitude is ‘look at these cultic weirdos’, whereas Season three is more ‘these lads are the true face of Mandalore; which is a helmet’.
In Book of Boba Fett we’re then get a new piece of lore, which is that if your are not worthy of the Darksabre, or believe yourself to not be, then it will feel heavy in your hands. And we physically see that this is the case, with Din having trouble wielding it. Again, it’s not clear whether this is an actual heaviness, or psychological (i.e. Din is having the perfectly normal trouble of not being confident wielding the deadliest health hazard in the galaxy without sufficient training or Force sensitivity).
The final confusion in this comes in Mando season 3, where because we’re not doing Din Djarin vs Bo-Katan for the throne of Mandalore and we need to clear the table for the upcoming movie, we get a chain of events that makes Bo-Katan the true wield. Which is: Din is defeated by some creature, despite having the Darksabre; Bo-Katan wields the Darksabre to defeat the creature; which means by proxy that Bo-Katan is the true possessor of the blade. Crucially, we get a semi-repeat of the handing over the sword from Rebels where Din explains this to Bo-Katan’s former gang as he names her the true wielder of it, and everyone claps.
So what’s introduced now is a addendum to the ‘defeat previous wielder’ rule, of revealed preferences (remember, we’re on Elder Wand rules). Which is to say that if B beats A, and C beats B, then we can say that C would beat A (or in mathematical terms A < B < C = A < C). Again, it’s not entirely clear whether this is a mystical/magical thing, or just an ideological thing, but again the show kind of leans towards the Armourer.
The trouble with the magical interpretation being correct though, is it causes a backwash of cascading plot holes through the thing; starting from Sabine was not and never was the true wielder of the Darksabre. That was Darth Sidious, the first person to defeat Maul after he beat Pre Vizsla. Which means, following the A < B < C = A < C rule, Luke Skywalker is the final, undefeated wielder of the sabre.
My point there, is just to illustrate that each new bit of lore causes problems for the other parts. So it’s a bit of a mess.
Sorting through it: Or how I came to the version in A New Dawn Breaks
Following the above, I was tempted to just say fuck it and make the Darksabre a proper eldritch abomination blade, where it would essentially be a black hole in sword form that produces a ton of environmental effects and space-time warping shenanigans. But that was impossible to square with the canon the fic runs with, so it was ditched. The new version kind of works to try and marry the various bits of the lore, while finding a way to keep it roughly consistent.
The first thing is that the Darksabre is a weird blade. It creates feelings in people who use it, even non-Force sensitives[1]. This is what both explains the heaviness feeling – the weird effect is doing something to you, even if you’re not sure what – and also the mystic associations that grow around it. It seems to be doing something and manipulating something, so by process of association and selective interpretation that gets canonised as history, it starts to build a reputation.
I’ve largely dismissed the ‘you need to beat the previous wielder’ part, as that part of the canon comes after my divergence point so I don’t feel bound to it; though it can be explained as one of the ‘rules’ that’s become common cultural knowledge about the weapon. Instead, the test is on whether you can wield it successfully, which resides on being able to overcome the weird feeling.
What is the weird feeling?
Kyber crystals are living things, and there’s bits in the Star Wars lore that imply they respond to the emotions of their wielder in some ways (most dramatically in the bleeding process that turns them red). We can assume the Darksabre has a crystal in it as well, but it has to be a fairly unique one given the way the blade is and the knowledge that the blades reflect the crystal colours.
So, my thinking is, following the black hole theme, that the Darksabre draws out the deepest parts of a person’s self and brings it to their consciousness. It’s not exactly, as explained in the chapter, showing the truth about the person, but it does force them to confront and see the bits of themselves their most afraid of, unsure of, even traumas they might have repressed. Overcome that, and you can then wield it. So it’s kind of equivalent with the Sword of Shannara, which is an otherwise ordinary sword except for the fact that anyone who touches it is forced to face the truth of themselves (which turns out to be the major weakness of Brona the Warlock Lord).
Is the Darksabre stronger than a conventional lightsabre? Yes and no. The lightsabre is a better all round weapon, but the Darksabre has some tricks to it. Defensivley, against blaster bolts, the Darksabre is worse. It’s thin edge means you can only really use the flat side to deflect, which will require contorting hand positions in a way a lightsabre doesn’t. But my head cannoning for why the Darksabre has the shape it does is because Tarre Vizsla designed it with fighting Mandalorians in mind – so it’s meant to be able to cut beskar. So offensively, the Darksabre’s penetrative power is higher than a lightsabre.
And that’s a wrap on why the Darksabre ended up being the way it is! Hopefully that was an engaging ramble, and if you made it this far thanks for reading!
[1] The headcanon my series runs on is that everyone in the Star Wars universe is Force sensitive to some degree, because they all have midichlorians, but it’s only over a certain threshold that you can manipulate the world. The divide of that threshold is covered by Force sensitive and non-Force sensitive for ease of terminology, but even non-Force sensitives will have a very minor connection to it.
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Animated reimagining of the Ahsoka show that I did for my character design class! ✨ The assignment was to take a live action trio and translate/redesign them into animated designs.
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just helping her girlfriend out with the lip liner .3.
Once again, another lesson to never bet against Ahsoka.