The Big Stuff

Main blog is @phoenixyfriend. I reblog all my original Star Wars posts to this sideblog, but you don't have to deal with the Other Things here. Will also have some favorite fanarts etc. but not nearly as much as the main.

[nixy-sw]

Navigation, Explanation, Tags

Main blog is @phoenixyfriend

I will be reblogging all my original Star Wars posts to this sideblog, but you don't have to deal with the Other Things here.

(Well, maybe some favorite fanarts etc. but not nearly as much as the main.)

Basically, if you wanted to follow me for fic posts but felt that I reblog too much to sift through every day, you're the person this is aimed at.

Tags (to be added to):

#main blog backlog: feel free to blacklist this tag. I plan to use this for posts made on my main before today (12/1/2021) that are NOT new content. This'll be queued to about fifteen posts a day.

#from main: new content from the main blog

#has AO3 version: the concept has made it onto AO3 in fic format in some way

#Phoenix Files: announcement posts for me uploading a chapter or fic to AO3

#Phoenix Babbles: posts about the writing process or about fics I am in the process of writing

#it starts right here: posts that are original to this blog

#other works: posts that are not mine, basically. Fanart, fic, analysis, etc.

#stone soup: not originally mine, but I did contribute .

#just some feelings: not analysis or AUs, just Vibes

#character analysis, #screen analysis: self-explanatory

#fic tropes: not just tropes, but recurring elements and themes

#discourse, #mandalore discourse: self explanatory

#the shitpost collective: shitposts

#original characters: I don't have many of these (excepting the Skysisters AU), but I have a few

.

#mini plot: a very short plot idea

#simple headcanons: short headcanons that don’t really need or have much elaboration

#how to au: medium-length AUs

#understudy to au: a follow-up to an existing AU that would be a mini plot if not for how it's connected to a larger concept

#strap in: plots that underwent enough development to need multiple readmores and/or additional posts .

#ficlet time: actual prose, has been or will be transferred to AO3

#analysis: posts analyzing or discoursing canon with varying degrees of seriousness

#why did you do this on tumblr: I have a handful of 10k+ fics that I wrote entirely in tumblr drafts instead of MS Word. They’ll be on AO3 eventually, but for now...

[phoenixyfriend]

In Which Anakin's Soulmate is a Lot Like Him, But More, and Worse

(Read on AO3)

My first entry for Anakin Rarepair Week 2022!

------

Anakin has a soulmark. Not everyone does, but enough do that it’s a known thing. A little over half of people have one.

His mom doesn’t have a soulmark, and that’s normal, too.

It manifests when he’s five, which is a good thing. Gardulla always burned the soulmarks off her slaves, but Watto doesn’t care enough to bother. It is on the inside of Anakin’s forearm, and he always wraps it in cloth to hide it from everyone except Mom. Soulmarks are complicated, but they aren’t impossible to replicate, and they’re important.

Anakin likes his soulmark. He likes what he imagines it could mean, whenever he thinks about it for a bit.

There is a sword, with a blue-edged, white blade. There is a stylized helmet, with eye holes that come down into an aurebesh Vev, and a paint pattern he can’t even start to try to understand. There’s more to the shape, but Anakin can’t understand the rest. The images are completely unfamiliar to him, some kind of flower on top of some ragged tear, three long up and three short down. The entire thing is in a red and yellow circle, which is simpler, but just as confusing.

Still. He’s pretty sure the sword is a lightsaber, and the helmet is Mandalorian, and if one of them is for him and the other is for his soulmate, then it means something good.

It means he’s getting off Tatooine.

--

When he’s nine, Anakin shows his soulmark to Master Qui-Gon Jinn, who gets a very funny look on his face and makes a call a little later. Mom says she’ll talk to him about it, because it might be grown-up stuff like politics, the kind that Anakin doesn’t really understand unless Mom is the one explaining it. Anakin goes to hang out with Padmé instead.

She’s got a soulmark, too. It’s very different from Anakin’s. There are two sabers on hers, one red with a curved hilt, and one yellow with a straight hilt, and the entire set of symbols is overlaid by a set of purple markings that Padmé says she thinks might be tattoos. The rest of the symbols are of Nabooan, or pertaining to Padmé herself.

She’s been told to never show her soulmark, either. Red sabers are symbols of darksiders, and the one time her family had asked a Jedi about it, right after it had formed, they’d been told to stay wary.

The second saber is a sign of hope, but the first is a danger. Padmé’s always trained her ability to keep her mind safe for that reason, even though there is not a drop of the Force in her.

“Then why tell me?” Anakin asks.

“Well, I’m supposed to be able to trust Jedi, and you’re going to be one,” Padmé tells him. She sounds very matter-of-fact about it, like she really, truly believes he can do this. He giggles. She grins, and continues. “And I think that, if I ask you to never, ever tell anyone, you’ll keep your promise.”

“I promise,” Anakin says.

(He keeps that promise for ten years. Then he meets Padmé’s soulmate, sees the red saber and tattoos, promptly freaks out, and yells out that he knows the soulmate of the person trying quite desperately to murder him.)

(This is not at all helpful, to anyone, for years.)

(It works out in the end, though not before Padmé has been kidnapped thirty-two times by a Sith apprentice trying to figure out if she’s meant to care in the first place.)

Read on AO3

[phoenixyfriend]

Fett vs. Kamino Fertility Clinic and Sperm Bank

AKA the AU where Fives does stand-up comedy about the massive lawsuit that relates to him having over five hundred first cousins.

Read on AO3

Alright, hello, I'm Fives, in case you came here with a friend, or got a free ticket and didn’t know what you were getting into. I am five-foot eight, like long walks on the beach, and down to clown with genders galore. If you could just swipe right, you'll see--nah, I'm just joking. Can't show that on television…

Partly because I almost definitely have family in the audience! I don't know how many of you know this, but I come from big family. I mean, absolutely massive. You may have guessed that, since you came to a show titled "Family Matters," but let me walk you through this. I'm a quintuplet. Let that sink in and remember it is only on the tip of the iceberg. I am also a conjoined twin! Still got the scar and everything. Twin's called Echo, and the other three are Hevy, Droidbait, and Cutup. If you think those sound like fake names someone made up to maintain privacy for a Netflix special, then I'm sorry to say that we all demand these names be used in real life.

Birth names? Sensible adult nicknames? Fudge no, you're not calling Donald Bernard Domino something like 'Don' or 'Bernie' or DB. Nah, he's Droidbait!

[phoenixyfriend]

The options for clones in modern fic:

1. The past five generations of this family all just look weirdly similar, you've got third cousins getting mistaken for twins and everyone's just kind of used to it

2. Jango, and possibly Jaster before him, were prone to wild oats by way of poor condom etiquette

3. Fett vs. Kamino Fertility Clinic and Sperm Bank was a whole Thing and there are currently five hundred half-siblings that share a dad in a single city because SOMEONE prioritized profits over keeping things labeled, and the whole "a maximum of 25-30 family units can use a donor's material" thing was violated like whoa, and considering it was in the contract...

[spockandawe]

Okay, let's have some little books!!! This was a lot of fun, because there are so many pieces of fic out there that are just LOVELY, and it's not always easy to group them in ways that make a sensical anthology so this was a very fun exercise in binding them solo. And the little books are so CUTE!!!! I've been really enjoying phoenixyfriend's star wars work, and as I made my way back through the archives, I picked out a few stories that seemed like they'd be fun to set to paper. I was right! Books like these are tough, in a way, because justified text has much less wiggle room to space itself, and all your dimensions are so tiny, but i mean... come on, the end results are adorable

[phoenixyfriend]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[phoenixyfriend]

Rarest Pair: Anikan/Therapy

First joke that comes to mind is that since Anakin seems like the type to refuse to go to therapy unless he has no other choice, this ship is noncon.

[phoenixyfriend]

Am I the only one confused when people say that True Mando's are diverse but say that New Mando's aren't bc of their portrayal in tcw?

True Mandos are less front-and-center visual since they're comics-only instead of the more widely-consumed animated series, so it's a lot easier for fanon to spread, since fewer people have seen it. They're also Legends canon, so they're not actual canon, which means even more room for headcanon.

For those who don't feel like looking up screenshots, here's the painful uniformity broken down for the casual observer with helpful emojis:

True Mandos:

⛔ All white (including a whitewashed Jango)

⛔ All human

✅ Some brunettes

⛔ All male

New Mandos:

⛔ All white (later retconned)

⛔ All human

⛔ All blonde (later retconned)

✅ Some women

IMO if you're going to talk about the creator racism for one as if it's a fact of the setting, you better be just as ready to apply that brush to the other.

[phoenixyfriend]

Unpopular opinion: the clones were influenced more by Jedi culture than Mandalorian

send me controversial or unpopular opinions and I’ll tell you if I agree or disagree 🐸 ☕️

(This ask meme is from a month and a half ago, please don't send more.)

Disagree! They were trained by Mandalorians, or by other clones who were trained by Mandalorians, or by training simulations and courses designed by Mandalorians, for ten years. They were in the company of Jedi (and only some clones were, because the ratio of active Jedi:Clones was like 1:1,000 by the end of the war, so most weren't exactly in consistent contact) for three years. So... nah.

[phoenixyfriend]

A silly thought for you: Anakin states that he's hungry and his arm had a few bugs. He opens his arm and pulls out a dead bug and eats it. Present company is either horrified, disgusted, or laughing at this.

Ahsoka: Oh, sweet, can I have some?

[phoenixyfriend]

Just want to say, I think it would be very funny if Maul showed up in the OT inexplicably alive just in time to shout Kenobi and attempt to fight him when the twins and Han are escaping the death star and Obi-wan has just accepted that he'll die by Vader's hand only to turn around because this bitch is back again and he will NOT miss that fight even if Anakin was two seconds from killing him

Vader can't decide which to kill first and is just standing around as an award bystander

Maul vs. Ben is uncomfortably homoerotic in a way that Vader is just. Very “okay but that’s my dad please stop hitting on my dad let me kill my dad why are you two like this” but he’s Vader so none of it is out loud

[phoenixyfriend]

#obi-wan and maul actually dueling#not the not dueling obi wan and vader were doing#luke leia han chewie threepio artoo and vader are just standing there awkwardly#while these two guys in their 50s who have literally been trying to kill each other for over 30 years duke it out (@emenerd)

Vader is now in the uncomfortable position of having to explain to all these people (except Artoo, who was there for half of it) just how long these two have been trying to kill each other, and that Maul has had a grudge against Kenobi longer than Vader himself has.

Every time Vader tries to lie, Artoo starts beeping angrily about it and he has to correct himself.

[phoenixyfriend]

Guess which bitch finally watched A New Hope!

Due to the extensive pain of formatting from Discord to tumblr, this will be screenshots without image description.

[ten image limit, see reblog]

[phoenixyfriend]

Alright, part two!

[image limit reached]

[phoenixyfriend]

Aaaaaaand part three!

[phoenixyfriend]

Having some vague thoughts about ‘characters Obi-Wan is given Chemistry with’ and how the girls are white blonds and the men are people of color.

IDK what to do with this other than something about intentional chemistry being deliberately set up with a Traditional Love Interest and the unintentional being with Just Some Guy so the racism isn’t forced in. There’s not a direction to take this in, even for analysis, because the sample size is so small and it’s just an accidental pattern at least partially based in 'the only girls in the prequels with any lines at all in more than one movie, or development on screen at all, are Shmi and Padme.’

TCW and Legends have more girls with more character development, but those are love interests added after the fact, and since the characters are very deliberately written/animated with chemistry in mind or not, instead of being reliant on actor chemistry or having an element of 'the character’s race was undefined until we cast someone’… I don’t know. It makes the decision for Obi-Wan’s love interests being white blondes a lot more deliberate, while two of the three male characters I’m thinking of were live-action and I still have no idea where to take this.

The love interests I have on my mind in discussing this: Satine and Siri vs. Quinlan, Bail, arguably Jango

I’m excluding Anakin and Qui-Gon, because that’s YMMV as hell because [gestures at the arguments over whether it’s chemistry or family bickering], and Ventress, who is blonde, but she isn’t even human/near-human so race-related analyses don’t really apply.

[phoenixyfriend]

AU where Obi-Wan hides under the empire's nose by shaving his beard and getting minor reconstructive surgery to make himself unrecognizable (plus Force binders to make him impossible to detect by Vader or Sidious) to pose as the Organas' concubine.

It's more of a throuple situation than concubine, but... Officially, concubine. While Obi-Wan is closer to Bail, it's safer for him to stay on Alderaan with Breha. Royal bedwarmer. Paid to be pretty.

Sometimes The Concubine Takes The Princess And His Own Son On Field Trips That Are Definitely Not An Excuse To See Fulcrum.

The concubine has his own child 'from a previous relationship' that is close friends with the young princess. 'Ben' goes blonde to match Luke.

(There's a year or so between him splitting from Bail in RotS and coming back around to Alderaan with 'Owen and Beru didn't have the resources for a child' and a new plan, so he knows Luke is blonde, rather than the ambiguity of a newborn.)

And from @atagotiak, who absolutely egged me on:

Probably gets rid of his wrinkles and shaves so he looks a bit younger. Because while I doubt he cares much about his apparent age at this point, just got cover story’s sake, a mid to late-20’s boytoy would be more expected than an 38 yr old one. Also it makes for more distance btw Ben and Obi-Wan

The shaving is first up, specifically to emphasize The Babyface.

Obi-Wan: Well, it's a little late in life, but I've become the sugar baby Quinlan always said I'd end up one day.

[phoenixyfriend]

I want to imagine a Togruta hunting cry being something that can pierce eardrums from close enough (not a problem if everyone you’re hunting with has montrals, absolutely a problem if all your friends are human), is utterly terrifying to hear for reasons you can’t quite process, and is exactly the sort of thing that can completely block out other noises. I’m thinking something halfway between a raptor cry and ice echoes, almost-but-not-quite familiar to those of us in the real world. The noise serves multiple purposes, for communication between distant members of the party, herding prey in the right direction, and minor echolocation at lower decibles.

Anyway, Ahsoka screams in Maul’s face and it’s disorienting as hell. He’s deaf in one ear for at least three days. The incident knocked out all communications in a fifteen meter radius.

She’s very proud of herself.

[sergeant-angels-trashcan]

I can’t stop thinking about this. First of all, it’s amazing and correct, but also I’m thinking about how the younger the Togruta is the more piercing and dangerous the cry is to non-Togrutas for safety reasons and also just, you know, biology. Nobody tries to kidnap baby Togrutas because you will absolutely fail and be rendered deaf to boot

Togruta hunting cries being used in a heist. Togruta hunting cries being used in prank shows. Togruta hunting cries affecting the development of Togruta technology (how do you make it impervious to that? is it more organic?)

anyway now I’m thinking of  Leverage AU where their hacker is a Togruta who can disrupt technology by singing at specific frequencies. 

[phoenixyfriend]

Following from Post-O66 main cast dropped into HP & the Order of the Phoenix.

So! I had more thoughts. Wider cast. The whole shebang.

I keep imagining that Various Others show up in Wizarding England, mostly around Hogwarts, for reasons nobody can really figure out. They just pop into existence, unexplained, dragged from the wider galaxy to A Weird Magic Castle.

This starts off with Boba. Ahsoka and Rex immediately hustle him off--he's in a prison uniform and covered in blood, with a stolen blaster and the pissed-off look of a Fett in a fight--explain what's going on and where they are, and contact Obi-Wan because Fuck It, Let's Ask Dad.

Various discussions, they decide to let Boba stay at Hogwarts with Ahsoka and Rex. This is because Rex knows Boba, if from a distance, and knows intimately how Boba grew up on Kamino, so everyone figures he's got the best chance at understanding/predicting Boba. Ahsoka is also a lot closer in age, so that's a plus. Padme also does not want Boba around the babies, mostly because she's sure that he might pick a fight with Anakin or Obi-Wan, if only verbally, and the twins are hard enough to put down for a nap without regular shouting matches.

Some time passes. Boba and Rex do Mandalorian hand to hand forms together, practice shooting, bitch each other out about What They're Doing Incorrectly, and Ahsoka drags Boba into spars regularly to tire him out so he's less inclined to start trouble. A wizard kid tries to make fun of him and/or shoulder checks or otherwise gets in his face, and Ahsoka has to keep Boba from eviscerating a civilian teenager.

And then there's another incident! Big zap, sudden people, we still don't know how or why the heck they're here, but they are!

It's Echo and Omega.

Echo's in... Not Great Shape, because the magic is quickly impacting his electronic prostheses (maybe half an hour on the outside before they start glitching), but it's fine because Rex is rushing over and shouting his name and looking him over for Injuries, while Boba shouted "Meg!" and ran over to his... sister? Unclear. There's a dynamic there and it looks a lot like Fussing Mother Hen. Omega isn't injured or anything, but Boba's glaring off anyone who gets too close.

Echo has to go to the Jedi house, because Hogwarts is going to render three of his limbs inoperable, and he's not down with that. Omega is torn between sticking with Boba and sticking with Echo, but she decides to spend the week at the school and the weekend with Echo, and Everything Is Fine, Okay?

Someone also tries to bully/shoulder check her, like they did Boba. More people, even, because she's small. Possibly it's a sixth or seventh year. Omega asks if she's allowed to defend herself if someone gets physically rough with her, and then does some Mando judo flip to the next person to try something. She is henceforth avoided.

AND THEN IT IS TIME FOR VENTRESS AND QUINLAN

Both bleeding heavily, Ventress no longer a Sith but risking a slip with how disoriented and feral she feels, Quinlan possibly unconscious, both in urgent need of medical help.

Ahsoka's busy trying to keep Quinlan's blood on the inside, Omega and Boba are trying to help Ventress--Omega has some medical training, but Ventress keeps trying to push them away with a saber because clones are dangerous to anyone with the Force that isn't already Sidious's--and Rex has decided 'fuck this, actually' and commed Obi-Wan.

In come Obi and Anakin! They talk down Ventress. They get her and Quinlan to the hospital wing, because the actual hospital isn't an option. Quinlan wakes up to Obi-Wan by his bedside. He asks if he's dead. Things are feelsy. Something something obiquintress

At some point Maul shows up and Ahsoka has to bully him into going outside for a fight instead of doing it indoors and she keeps him busy while Rex comms Obi-Wan and tells him to come to the school, your dumbass is back.

Ahsoka and Maul's fight is almost playful but then Obi-Wan is there and it is UNHINGED SCREAMING TIME.

IDK at some point the Jedi rebellion out in the actual main part of the gffa, run by Mace, finally comes to fruition and they get Anakin's emergency beacon with The Secret Codes, and come pick their people up.

The Dursleys are horrified to find out that the Foreign Woman they were consistently kinda racist towards is actually the highest ranking person on the planet and the elected representative of hundreds of billions of sentient beings

Anyway the main interest the new republic (with Bail as chancellor because we gotta) has in Earth is the anthropological record, because they've been trying to find out humanity's home planet for a long time, and this is the only planet so far with an actual evolutionary paleontological record for how humans happened.

They don't actually want anything else from Earth, including joining the Republic, because Earth is very war-monger-y and racist and species-first etc.

But those fossils and remains of homo erectus...

[phoenixyfriend]

Was thinking about an AU (it's only tangentially relevant to the thought) and ANYWAY I now need Wrecker carrying around tween Boba under his arm like a football.

Boba was trying to fistfight Bo-Katan and got his ass kicked, on account of being fourteen at the most, and Bo-Katan being a seasoned interstellar terrorist. She was kneeling on his back after subduing him (because some of the clones are rather fond of him by this point in the plot, and she's in too delicate of a situation to piss off the GAR, so killing him is a no-go) and demanding someone take the angry teenager off her hands so she can go do something better with her time. Wrecker volunteered, and Boba now looks like nothing so much as a very wet and angry cat.

(Omega is also there. She is better behaved, and so gets to hold Tech's hand as Echo leads them around on what is functionally a field trip while other people, like Rex, handle the political nonsense that Bo-Katan rode in on in the first place.)

(IDK why exactly Boba hates Bo-Katan in this context but it probably has to do with Death Watch. Mace Windu is also there, but Boba already had to serve time for THAT grudge, and he's not going to repeat that mistake.)

(Bo-Katan actually did almost shoot Boba when he first tried to tackle her, but Mace shoved her arm down and told her to knock it off, because he's been dealing with her aggressive bullshit for months and he is tired of it.)

[phoenixyfriend]

One of those “Stewjoni are single-sexed and Obi-Wan can carry a child” AUs, but the main plot is Obi-Wan offering to have Bail’s child after Breha has a miscarriage and a “stop trying to have a child, you are possibly going to die if you try again” lecture from the doctors.

It’s not a surrogacy because [handwave at egg extraction being too invasive for Breha to risk for minimal reason] so it’s a little BailObi sexytimes to make the baby happen, and then Obi-Wan just drops in once a year or so to visit his bio kid after they’re born. Anakin is like. Fifteen maybe. He’s very invested in this whole process after he finds out.

The council waffles a bit over letting Obi-Wan do the thing, but approves it since he has no intention of keeping/raising the child; it’s just an overly complicated “egg donor AND surrogate” situation.