#etainlives

[solerey]

Sisters in Searching

@etainlives

Rey caught herself drumming her fingers nervously on the control yoke of the small shuttle and grimaced. She pulled her hands back and that sat on them for good measure, so she couldn’t start fidgeting again. She told herself that there was no reason to be nervous -- but Rey had never been all that good at lying. Not when it was to anyone other than Unkar Plutt or some scummy scavenger, anyway -- and as people had been telling her for weeks now, she was no scavenger...

Except today, apparently, when they needed someone to find things. Rey allowed herself a wry smile. She wasn’t ashamed of her origins or the skills that had given her, even if they weren’t flashy or refined. Scavenging hadn’t been a choice so much as a necessity of life in the desolate wastes where she’d grown-up, true, but her past didn’t embarrass her the way some people seemed to think it should. And now the day had come when the Rebellion needed a scavenger; who else would they turn to?

Well...Etain Naast, apparently. That was who Rey had been assigned to run this mission with, and she couldn’t deny that she was nervous. Naast wasn’t part of high command or the council, no -- but she was a highly respected member of the Rebellion, and Rey had been part of the fight just long enough to have heard the other woman’s name and some of the stories that went with it. And Rey was...well, she was so new to the whole galaxy, let alone to the fight against the Empire, that she still didn’t feel like she even belonged here. Being assigned to work alongside someone like Etain Naast...

Was it any wonder she was fidgeting? Rey was just some nobody from nowhere. Who was she to think she could make a difference in the whole galaxy -- that was something done by people like Bail Organa or Mon Mothma or Garm Bel Iblis...or Etain Naast, not little no-ones like her. But now “little miss no one” was supposed to partner with Etain Naast like they were...well, maybe not quite equals, but at least allies. It was intimidating...and a little exhilarating, too. Rey couldn’t wait to meet the woman. She just hoped that she’d be able to prove worthy when she did.

When she heard footsteps coming up the ramp of the small vessel they had been assigned, Rey popped out of her chair like the cork coming out of bad Tatooine wine and spun to face the doorway. “Ma’am,” she said, and tried to salute and offer her hand to shake simultaneously, which resulted in an odd jerky convulsion of limbs instead. Heat flooded Rey’s cheeks and she could feel herself blushing all the way down to her collarbone. If she had been half the Force Sensitive that Senator Organa said she was, she would have found a way to melt right through the floor -- but alas, she was only Rey. So she stood in place, inwardly dying of mortification. “Uh...welcome aboard,” she whispered despairingly.

[empiresbane]

Small Packages, Big Trouble

@etainlives | liked this for a starter.

The sight of shiny white armor walking the halls of the Senate Building no longer caught Leia off-guard; war, it seemed, taught one to adapt with alacrity. The sight of a Jedi almost as small and young as herself who was wearing several plates of the clones’ white armor, on the other hand, was different enough to be arresting. Leia paused, waving for her entourage to keep going without her while she ran through her mental rolodex of Jedi Knights and Masters and came up blank. She might have kept walking at that point, but the frown on the Jedi’s face seemed promising...

“Can I help you with something, Master Jedi?” she asked, extending her hand politely. “Senator Organa,” she introduced herself. “Alderaan. Good afternoon.”

[mandomirtagev]

@etainlives | continued from this.

Mirta barked a humorless laugh. “So I can,” she said. She slung her blaster carbine back over her shoulder, freeing her hands. She crouched next to Etain and eyed the wound; it was ugly and it looked like it hurt, but it didn’t look like it was going to kill her. That was good. Mirta fished in her belt pouches and pulled out a bacta patch to seal the damage away until a medic could give it proper attention. She offered the patch to Etain, then thought better of it and cracked the seal, then offered it again to Etain.

“You know,” she said mildly, rocking back onto her heels in a comfortable squat, “the armor generally does more good when it’s worn. Just a thought you might keep in mind for future battles.” There were going to be a lot of those, after all; they would all of them have plenty of time for learning those sorts of lessons, provided they lived.

[astraldestiny]

✗ @etainlives → closed starter !

    " Can I help you? ” Sure, helping someone with something like repairing a ship was nothing unusual here considering how few people they had which forced everyone to lend a hand eventually but while Luke was usually more than happy to help just for the sake of helping .. this was a bit DIFFERENT. Some people stood out in a very remarkable way and he had certainly noticed the woman’s presence whenever she was around even though he couldn’t quite tell why. Perhaps it had something to do with the force, something that he didn’t quite grasp yet but hopefully would the more he tried to look into these kind of things. Besides, it could never hurt to get FAMILIAR with more people around the place. The rebellion could need more strong bonds between people any day and he had to say he was curious to figure this out.

        “ If you need knew parts, I’m sure we could find SOMETHING to help you out. ”

[rogueintheclouds]

Social SOS

@etainlives​

Rhysati didn’t mind a fancy party, although she preferred something more casual -- was more at home in more relaxed environs. Sill, sometimes getting all dressed-up and decked-out was fun. Certainly it made for a nice change from the sweat and grease and icy vacuum of their missions. (It was fun to see how well her fellow squadronmates cleaned-up -- or didn’t -- too.) And since promotions held little appeal to Rhys -- she liked being in a snubfight cockpit; liked not having the mind-numbing pressures of paperwork that came with command -- there was little pressure on her to perform at parties like this. Rhys didn’t need to impress anyone with anything but her flying.

So after being intentionally-accidentally-rude to a pompous senator from Ralltiir by pretending to confuse him with the senator from Chandrilla in order to escape a tedious conversation, Rhys found herself happily at loose ends -- until she spotted a familiar face that looked absolutely white with terror. Etain Tur-Mukan was standing in a corner, hands white-knuckled around a delicate green glass that was likely to snap if she kept clutching at it like that, looking both cleaner and more frightened than Rhys had ever seen her before.

Someone else in Rhysati’s position might have laughed -- being a regular non-clone pilot in the Republic Fleet was often a thankless job, her six years of experience flying to defend the galaxy before the Separatist Crisis counting for so little in the eyes of the new Clone Army; and the Jedi had never been a boon to the ego of the non-Force using fighters who served as the actual backbone of the fleet but had to step aside whenever one of those dilettantes came swanning in with their lightsabers and their fancy Force tricks. Seeing one of the ordinarily-unflappable, oh-so-superior Jedi discomfitured for once...well, had it been anyone but Etain, it would have been delightful.

But Etain Tur-Mukan was different. For one thing, she was little more than a kid -- and for another, she so clearly cared for the normal people she was supposed to be fighting alongside and defending. Cared for them as people, not as abstracts.

And Jedi or not, the kid looked miserable. So Rhy pushed her way none-too-delicately between two stuffy admirals who were trying and failing to flirt with a handsome but bored-looking holodrama actor and slid herself into the empty space at Etain’s side. “Evening, general,” she said with a grin. “Having a good time, are you?”

[nickyrp]

❤️ for Rey, ♜ for Mirta, ✘ for both

❤ - what was the moment that first made you fall in love with REY?

You know, I still don’t have a proper answer for this one! Sorry. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

✘ - what do other people tend to get wrong about MIRTA GEV & REY?

For Mirta, let’s talk about Troy Denningfor a minute. Because while I think Denning is a good writer, I think he is terrible at writing in a shared universe. When he’s just doing his own thing, focusing on the characters he likes, he’s fine and dandy! As soon as he tries to play well with others…well, frankly, he doesn’t. And this became extremely apparent to me at the end of the Legacy of the Force series.

How does this relate to Mirta? Because Denning wrote a scene where Jacen Solo was interrogating Mirta, and he threatened to scar her pretty face. And she, at least as far as Jacen could tell, quavered at that idea. Because OBVIOUSLY any “pretty” girl would find that horrifying. Because OBVIOUSLY the fact that Mirta didn’t have scars all over her face, and was yet part of a warrior culture, meant that she would react to the idea of scars with horror. And not, oh I don’t know, perhaps laugh in Jacen’s face and tell him to shove it.

In Mandalorian culture, scars are considered badges of honor for a fight well fought and are not actually seen as ugly…but you know, whatever Denning, it’s not like you bothered to actually read anything that Traviss wrote about Mirta or the Mando’ade before you wrote your part of the story, is it? So how would you know or care about that?

Anyway…I’ve never seen anyone else playing Mirta in rp, and thus have no comments to make on what people may or may not get wrong about portraying her here…but the actual canon books on the other hand? Yeah. Nar’sheb, Denning.

I headcanon that Mirta was actually upset at the thought of the nanovirus, and just let Jacen think he’d scared her with the dumb scar threat, and by that point Jacen was so far lost in the Caeduspersona he couldn’t look past his own ego to notice.

For Rey…I don’t know. I’m not sure it’s so much “tend to get wrong” as just “isn’t the way I see the character,” which are not at all the same thing – but I do think some people play her a little too nice. Hapless. Bland. Kind. That tends to happen to just about every female character, though! I don’t think it’s anything specific about Rey.

Although if we want more ranting about bad canon writers...the whole “Rey Nobody” theory is dumb as hell, not because Rey needs to be “related to somebody we know” to be special or important -- but because A: the entire first movie set it up that she was an Organa-Solo did have a major family connection to discover so the “surprise twist” of negating that is just....bad writing, actually? and B: Rey already thought her parents were nobody important so it’s not “subverting” any of her expectations, actually, to make them “nobodies.” Rey didn’t want to find A Special Destiny As The Chosen One (did you not see how she reacted to the lightsaber, Rian? she literally ran away from the idea of having A Destiny) she wanted a family. A family that would come back for her, a family that cared. She wanted love...not “specialness.” And again: it’s not a “clever twist” to just break everything that the writer before you in a shared universe set-up and just leave a story in ruins without even crafting anything to replace it...it’s just bad writing.

The only thing I see people in rp do a lot with her that I just can’t wrap my head around is the reylo ship…because I can’t help but see her and Kylo Ren as analogous to Jaina and Jacen, no matter what it turns out Rey’s canonical lineage is or is not, because that was how they appeared to me immediately during the first few minutes of TFA. But that’s not something that other people do wrong, it’s just not something that fits my pov!

♜ - what is the strongest or most reliable thing about MIRTA GEV?

This is tricky because Mirta is such a strong character to begin with…but I think it’s her sense of loyalty. Her devotion. Once Mirta has embraced a cause or a culture, she’ll go to Hell and back for it – even if it ends up being a disappointing grandfather who turned out to be not as villainous (nor as paternal) as Mirta had wanted. She wasn’t raised fully Mandalorian, but once she decided that they were her people then they were her people. Full-stop. She embraced that part of her identity 110% and dragged ba’buir along with her whether he liked it or not. She’ll fight for her people, bleed for them, die for them if she has to. She’ll never give up, not on them and not on restoring their planet, and not on training the Mandalore to live up to what he’s supposed to be…again, whether Fett likes it or not. And she sure as osik won’t let him die before he’s fulfilled his duty.

[nulluse]

     @etainlives​

          There was something relaxing about being on mission. Away from his brothers, but also away from the stress. Kal was still trying to figure out when they’d all bang out, moving between the army and Mandalore, hunting for his daughter- All of the reasons, making everything tense back home. So he was glad to go out again, take the mission and leave the aliit to sort it all out.           Course, that’s when he gets word that there’s also a Jedi in this small outer rim planet, and she’s looking to destroy the Separatist droid factory. Jaing’s only here to track down the details of the cloning secrets that passed through here, but he curses the fact that whoever this Jedi is may interfere with his mission.                     A mission that wasn’t exactly above board anyways.           He sits down in the caf, palming the datachip that his contact had given him. Wondering if he should bang out before the Jedi starts poking around at all those rumours of clones in the area.

[empiresbane]

All Things Reprise

@etainlives | continued from this.

Leia rolled her eyes before she could stop herself, unprofessional though she knew such a reaction was – but really. My apologies for worrying you unnecessarily? Either Etain was a master of straight-faced irony fit to rival even Winter, or she had cold space lubricants in her veins instead of blood. Or maybe Jedi just had all their emotions surgically removed.

“Well, I suppose since you were buried under a few hundred tons of rock, we can cut you some slack for failing to comm-in on time,” Leia retorted, the waspishness of her tone offset by the hand she extended to help pull the older woman up. She realized belatedly that it probably wasn’t necessary – Jedi could leap impossible distances, couldn’t they? That’s what her father said, anyway – but Leia figured it would be more impolite to withdraw her hand after offering it than it would be to risk offending Etain with an unintentional implication that she wasn’t capable of getting herself out of that hole.

Of course, she hadn’t been able to stop it coming down on her in the first place…but then again, she hadn’t been crushed by the detonation like she should have been, so perhaps Leia should have some faith in the Force after all. It was hard; it was one thing listening to her father’s stories of the Clone Wars and her mother’s tales of the Jedi Peacekeepers before that, and quite another to believe that this skinny woman could lift rocks and leap higher than a Wookiee and outfight a platoon of stormtroopers just by thinking about it…

Leia was young and inexperienced. She knew she was young and inexperienced; that was why she made such a good cover story, no one expected the seventeen-year-old princess of Alderaan to be a threat. She could go places, break rules, take risks, that would get anyone more noticeably competent arrested or killed – but that didn’t make it easy to accept the fact that everyone in the Rebellion looked at her and saw a kid. None of Dendo’s people thought she had any use on this mission beyond being an innocent face to hide behind; how much less impressed must a Jedi General from the Clone Wars be?

So perhaps Leia was overcompensating, trying a little too hard. Was that a crime? Anyway, somebody had had to haul Etain out of that pile of rubble…even if Leia had been more expecting to find a corpse than a survivor after an explosion that large.