Mistrust and Misgivings
Maketh Tua and the Grand Inquisitor
I like AUs where the Star Wars Rebels imperials survive their untimely ends and maybe learn life lessons on how to be less awful to each other. I don’t see them as achieving any positive connection until a lot of time passes!
“You saw only my work near you. You didn’t see any of the housing initiatives I built and fought for, you didn’t see the homeless people I got off the streets and into safe and fulfilling situations. You didn’t see any of what I accomplished you only saw the things which benefited you.”
The Inquisitor tipped his head at her anger.
“You didn’t see the people I protected. Maybe I didn’t do enough to protect the nonhumans of my planet but I kriffing well did my best for my electorate,” she snarled. “I’ve believed in the stability this Empire stood for from the day it was announced. But by the land I stand on, I will not be a party to its corruption any longer. I will help you tear down this excuse for a government, system by system, column by column.” Maketh clenched her fist, and the Inquisitor could feel the fury roiling off her, palpable enough to make the air almost taste of blood. “But I cannot do this alone. And you, for all your power, you cannot do this alone either.”
The Inquisitor, still uncertain of his own name and place in the galaxy stood and watched her for a moment, then nodded slowly, feeling if not his name but at least his place solidify around the woman before him.
“Agreed.”
Tag: star wars rebels
Rebels or Clone Wars?
Clone Wars, only because I got further before I noped out, and noped out because of boredom not uneasiness and frustration.
(Remind me to pick your brain about SWR sometime. TCW too. May be weird, but I love knowing why people stop liking things.)
First, disclaimer:
Everything that follows under the cut is my opinion, it might not fit with anyone else’s take away from TCW (primarily) or Rebels. Don’t try to convince me to give either show another chance, I don’t have the energy to deal with the frustration and rage on the off-chance there might be good stuff in there.
Also, anyone who decides to yell at me that my Opinions Are Wrong will be blocked, and not engaged with. Polite attempts to enlighten me about something I might have missed due to noping out will not be responded to tonight, as I am a cranky bear and want to go back to my rewatch and yelling at DS9 episodes.
Grumpy. Sith. Murder Kitten.
Not evil wanna-be Obi-Wan with an inferiority complex and no fucking reason to be alive. I mean, he lost half his spine, his digestive system, and quite possibly his diaphragm at the end of That Fucking Scene. If he got immediate medical attention for the trauma, maybe he could have lived for a little while. But that level of trauma, with no medical attention? Nope. I do not believe it.
I love Maul, grumpy Sith murder-kitten of TPM. I think he’s adorable, and fills his role admirably. I like writing AUs where he survives Naboo, for one reason or another. I’m also content to make him very dead, if the narrative calls for it. Because he had a Good Death – one that made sense for his character arc (what little there was of it), that was cathartic and emotionally satisfying, and was useful and good for the narrative.
Filoni decided that Maul didn’t deserve a Good Death, and he took that away from him. He didn’t even have the decency to do it in a way that might have made sense, either. He decided that Maul clearly survived a trauma he should not have been able to, in conditions that were a ripe breeding ground for infection and disease and further trauma, while neglecting to show how he could have done so while missing vital organs and part of his central nervous system.
Of course there are fan theories to explain the gaping plot hole that Filoni blithely created where there had not been one, but that doesn’t excuse Filoni’s mess.
I still love Rex and Cody and Ahsoka and Wolffe, and the various other clones that we get from TCW. I like that we get to see minor characters explored more.
I will gladly keep Hera and her crew from Rebels, and play with them when I’m working with that era. I’m glad to know that Numa shows up there.
But Filoni can take his fanfic and take a long walk out an airlock. I do not fucking care that it’s canon. It’s boring. War is boring. The reasons behind it can be fascinating, but there’s so damned little of the intricacies behind things and so much focus on what battle is happening now. And look at all the awesome men who are fighting this war, the ideal soldiers.
It has it’s good points, it does. And I like prying the shiny awesome out of the rest. But it bores me, and Maul’s being cheated of his death and just not allowed to die pisses me off. (Which, granted, I didn’t actually find out about until after I noped out because bored now.)
What made me uneasy and frustrated with Rebels wasn’t so much what I watched as the spoilers for the second half of season two. I didn’t have words at the time to go “this is what makes me not want to watch it”, but everything I heard and saw of it (and not everyone on my dashboard disliked it, some of them genuinely do enjoy it) just. Made me twitchy. And then there was the stuff about Maul, and twitchy became cranky bitching in the privacy of my head. Honestly, I’m not even sure I have the words now to say why it made me twitchy even before I heard about Maul coming back.
*sighs*
And this is with my usual attitude toward canon being “someone gave me shiny toys to play with!”
Rebels or Clone Wars?
Clone Wars, only because I got further before I noped out, and noped out because of boredom not uneasiness and frustration.
Star Wars Rebels fic: On the Edge of the Devil’s Backbone (Chapter 21: First Last Chance)
Ten years after she vanished during an Imperial raid on a Twi’lek colony, Cham Syndulla sees his daughter Hera for the first time in a hologram – now wearing the uniform of an Imperial agent and apparently working closely with a human Inquisitor. All Cham wants to do is to bring his long-missing child home to what remains of her family, but he soon finds that Hera Syndulla is only interested in two things: her duty to the Empire and her loyalty to her crew, a mismatched collection of outcasts brought together by Hera and her pet Inquisitor.
With Cham and the Rebel agent known as Fulcrum in pursuit, a new mission takes Hera and the crew of the Ghost to the planet Lothal, where a chance meeting with a Force-sensitive teenager awakens something long buried in the Inquisitor once known as Kanan Jarrus…and has dire consequences for Hera, their crew, the Empire, and the fledgling Rebel Alliance.
Chapter 21: First Last Chance
245K, AU, WIPChapter preview:
In Hera’s dream, it was cold, the way it had been cold that morning on Serenno when all the cadets had been ushered outside to witness the execution of three stormtroopers and a naval officer for treason. Eight years later Hera couldn’t remember what exactly it had been that they had done, but she could remember the freezing cold of that winter morning, her breath raising small puffs of white steam every time she exhaled. The commandant had ordered everyone in the Imperial Complex outside, and the ranks of white- and gray- clad troopers, officers, and cadets had lined the yard. It had been snowing the night before, so that everything was covered in a heavy layer of white, adding to the surreal aspect of the scene; Hera could still remember the sound it had made as her boots crunched on it on her way outside. Not her first winter, but every time since that first time on Stygeon Prime it had come as a shock to her, that something like this could exist in the galaxy outside of a holovid.
Eight years ago, Hera had stood with the ranks of the other cadets and watched as the condemned men and women were led out. In her dream –
In her dream, she was the one in binders being marched out onto that field.
Snow crunched under her boots, the icy chill of the air biting at her exposed face and lekku and cutting through the heavy wool of her uniform. Hera stumbled a little as her foot caught some unseen obstacle under the snow, and the stormtroopers grasping her arms hauled her upright, pressing her inexorably forward. Hera found herself looking around frantically from side to side, her gaze skating across the lines of silent watchers, and thought, Where’s Kanan? Where are Sabine and Zeb and Ezra? Did they get away?
Star Wars Rebels fic: On the Edge of the Devil’s Backbone (Chapter 21: First Last Chance)
In this clip from the Star Wars Rebels Season Three premiere, “Steps Into Shadow,” Ezra uses the Force in a deadly new way. (x)
I feel like my recaps from the upcoming season of Rebels are going to include a lot of “SWEET MERCIFUL CRAP, EZRA, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.”
Word. JFC EZRA!
*watches the gifs* *grins* Things go BOOM!
Eeheheheheheheeeeh. Well done, Ezra. Very nice.
Some more concept writing for the double Imperial AU – these ones really showing the downside of concept work rather than narrative, since there’s probably around three months between the first set and these. Plus these are pretty scattered.
About 2.9K below the break. Also, sexytimes, though nothing particularly explicit.
It was well into the night when Hera woke. She blinked in the dim dark of the room – a
little light from the street lamps below came in through the curtains, which
didn’t quite hang straight, and there was a thin line of brightness beneath the
door. She could still hear tinny music
and raucous voices from the cantinas on either side of the street, despite the
lateness of the hour. Hera found herself
holding her breath and wasn’t certain why until she realized that she was
waiting for the sound of the guard shift changing, which she could always hear
from her dormitory.But she wasn’t in the Imperial Complex now.
Concept writing for what I’ve been calling the double Imperial AU, with trainee Inquisitor Kanan and Imperial cadet Hera, because sadness, I like it. (I think I will, eventually, stop doing Imperial AUs, probably when I finish Backbone and switch to the next story up.)
I actually wrote these in reverse order, and flipped the setting from the Imperial Academy on Serenno to the ISB Academy on Naboo, so they don’t quite line up.
About 2.8K below the break.
It was raining the morning the Inquisitor and his apprentice
came to Naboo, drumming against the roofs and walls of the Imperial Complex,
huge drops rolling down the building’s plate-glass windows. Even after three years on Serenno and six
months here on Naboo Hera Syndulla still found it fascinating and a little
terrifying; the sound woke her up and she sat up in her tiny dormitory room
watching it beat down outside the small window until she had to leave for her
classes.The rain lessened as the day went on, until it was nothing
more than a drizzle by the time Hera arrived at the gym for combat drills. She was careful to time her arrival to
neither be first or last, but for once it didn’t matter; both the instructors
and the other cadets were all watching the Inquisitor and his apprentice, who
were speaking to Hera’s mentor Agent Beneke.
Or at least the Inquisitor was.
His apprentice was standing silently beside him, his gaze flickering
warily around the gym but avoiding the eyes of the cadets. He turned his head a little as Hera slipped
into the room, and she saw something that might have been surprise flash across
his face, though it was gone when she looked again.That wasn’t new. Most
other Imperials were surprised to see Hera; she was the only Twi’lek that she
knew of in the service.
That was just fifteen years ago. Tarkin was there. He got a piggyback ride from a Jedi. Dude, calm down
And THIS is how erasure works.
@leechbrain asked for a Sabine Doodle so here is season 3 Sabine. and she is judging you. All of yoooooouuuu
Star Wars Rebels fic: On the Edge of the Devil’s Backbone (Chapter 20: Haunt)
Ten years after she vanished during an Imperial raid on a Twi’lek colony, Cham Syndulla sees his daughter Hera for the first time in a hologram – now wearing the uniform of an Imperial agent and apparently working closely with a human Inquisitor. All Cham wants to do is to bring his long-missing child home to what remains of her family, but he soon finds that Hera Syndulla is only interested in two things: her duty to the Empire and her loyalty to her crew, a mismatched collection of outcasts brought together by Hera and her pet Inquisitor.
With Cham and the Rebel agent known as Fulcrum in pursuit, a new mission takes Hera and the crew of the Ghost to the planet Lothal, where a chance meeting with a Force-sensitive teenager awakens something long buried in the Inquisitor once known as Kanan Jarrus…and has dire consequences for Hera, their crew, the Empire, and the fledgling Rebel Alliance.
Chapter 20: Haunt
233K, AU, WIPChapter preview:
“Kanan!”
Hera ignored the last few rungs of the ladder and leapt down, landing heavily on the deck of the Ghost’s hold before she caught her balance and ran to Kanan and Zeb. Ezra and Sabine followed her, though they hung back as Hera dropped to her knees beside Kanan’s limp body, which Zeb had pulled awkwardly into his lap.
His face was bruised, but aside from that he didn’t look like he had been badly hurt; Hera couldn’t see any other fresh wounds. His eyes were shut, but his pulse was steady under Hera’s fingers as she put a hand to his neck. He just wasn’t conscious.
“What happened?” she demanded as Zeb shifted so that she could start fumbling Kanan’s armor off; the Inquisition either hadn’t removed it or he had gotten it back at some point. “He was fine when I saw him –”
He had been fighting the First Inquisitor when more TIEs had come roaring up and Hera had had to draw them away from the duel on the walkway, Ezra hanging grimly on to the back of the pilot’s seat despite the chaos of the dogfight. She still wasn’t entirely sure how Kanan had gotten aboard the Ghost, just that Zeb and Sabine had reported they’d gotten him and they had to get out of there, now. Hera had barely managed to dock the TIE with the Ghost before they had gotten clear of Mustafar’s gravity well and jumped to hyperspace with half the Mustafar fleet on their tail.
Star Wars Rebels fic: On the Edge of the Devil’s Backbone (Chapter 20: Haunt)
There's a Mirror on the Wall 