jessicas-pi

[jessicas-pi]

one time my sisters voted me "most likely to die of consumption in a Bronte novel"

[jessicas-pi]

Fic Snippet Time: in which tristan stalks sabine's secret space tumblr art account

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Tristan was scrolling aimlessly on a totally illegal blogging holosite to kill time and subtly rebel against Gar-Butthead-Saxon when he saw something that made him wonder if he was hallucinating.

It was a series of a couple images, in a blog post—comic book pages. They had a fantasy-ish look to them. There was a guy who wore a tunic and haphazard bits of armor, and a girl who had full armor and ridiculously elaborate braids in her pure-white hair.

But that wasn’t what threw him for such a loop. No, the thing that made him wonder if he was going crazy was that he was almost certain he recognized the handwriting from the speech bubbles.

He blinked a few times and shook his head, then tapped on the image to make it larger, looking the page over. 

Not only did the handwriting match his sister’s, the girl looked just like Sabine.

Now, here’s the thing. Tristan had always been Sabine’s biggest fan, up until she ruined everything. But even if he was furious with her now, he still worried about her, a little. And if he had somehow come across a comic drawn by Sabine, and therefore had come across Sabine’s HoloNet blog, well, then—maybe he could follow this lead and find out… something, about her.

So Tristan read the page.

It looked like he was picking up right in the middle of a plot arc, not at the beginning. In the first panel, the girl and guy were face to face. In fact, she was gripping the sides of his face, holding him still, and staring fiercely at him. He looked nervous. In the second panel, she was still staring at him just as intensely, but this one gave her a speech bubble: “You’re beautiful.” and the guy turned bright red. 

(Woah. Was Sabine giving herself a love interest?! Mmm… nah, this was probably just a comic relief crush thing. If it was a love interest, he wouldn’t look like that.) 

In the third panel along the top, the guy had leaned back and was reaching up behind his neck bashfully, looking away and stammering: “Y–you really think so? Th–thanks! I mean—I—I think you’re beautiful too—um—” (Definitely a comic relief crush.)

The fourth panel—the beginning of a new row in the middle of the page—had a man with a goatee leaning in over the guy’s shoulder and informing him, “She’s delirious, kid.” and the guy looking embarrassed and saying, “Oh. Right.”

The panel next to that had Goatee Guy talking with a grinning woman, who had pale greenish skin and horns that swept backwards from her head. “I hope that dreamblossom wears off soon.” “I dunno, I kinda like this side of Saren.” “Yeah, well, as entertaining as it is, we won’t be finishing the mission with her like this.” and in the background, Little Miss Delirium was glomping the blushy guy, with a woozy, wobbly kind of speech bubble saying “Surpriiiiise huuuuug!”

Tristan snickered, reading on. It seemed that Goatee Guy (Jarran Kan’es) and Horn Lady (Dula Synara) were renegade bandits fighting a corrupt Empire and also so in love. Saren Binne (Real subtle, Sabine. Reeeal subtle.) was a young bounty hunter (wait, is that what she’s been doing with herself all this time?!) with a mysterious past. Also, there was a dragon named Chomper, a burly purple warrior named Orilos Gareb, and the blushy crush guy—Ridge Zera—who was apparently Jarran’s apprentice. (Apprentice of what? Crimes against the government? Cool, Tristan could get on board with that.) 

At the bottom of the post, after the two comic pages, there were links to the previous pages, the next pages, and a masterpost that had all the comics so far. 

There was also a counter proclaiming that this post had almost 4,000,000 notes.

Okay then.

Apparently, Sabine didn’t just have a secret art holoblog.

She had a massively popular secret art holoblog.

Because even banished from her family, she just HAD to be the successful Wren kid, DIDN’T SHE?!

[jessicas-pi]

shoutout to my sister, who decided to inform me that she bought a vintage typewriter at a garage sale by marching into my room with it and reciting G. Selden's sales pitch

[jessicas-pi]

I was gonna write a vent post about a song I really hate that keeps getting played at my work but then I remembered I'm trying to stay positive so here's a funny mid-action screencap from Ahsoka (2023) instead

[jessicas-pi]

......I just had a thought.

You know how Star Wars is a space fantasy? And so sometimes the arranged marriage thing comes up? Yeah well I was thinking about that and I had an IDEA.

What if Mandalorians have arranged adoptions?

Imagine, if you will, that as a sign of goodwill, two families will each adopt one of the other family's children and assume shared parental responsibilities.

Imagine a young Mandalorian being raised by double the number of people but with only one Mando'a word for "mom/dad/parent" coming up with little nicknames for each of their four parents.

Or imagine a child alone and confused as to why they can't see their parents, too young to understand that they've become a political hostage in a one-sided forced arranged adoption.

Imagine a blood feud ending through the raising of children together---the central tenet of the Mandalorian way of life.

That's all I got, but I think it's a neat idea and would fit nicely in with the whole Mandalorian "let's adopt everyone" mentality.

[jessicas-pi]

i hate logically knowing the reasoning behind a person's behavior and also strongly disagreeing with said behavior because it's just like. I get where you're coming from but pal you're really harshing my mellow right now

[jessicas-pi]

*snaps wide awake at 2am, sits bold upright* HOLY CATS I JUST HAD THE BEST IDEA FOR A FIC

[jessicas-pi]

So I've been thinking about maybe starting an Etsy business selling wool yarn... any suggestions/advice/tips/things I should know?

[jessicas-pi]

It seems I've been on a Sequels kick lately, so, just for funsies, here's some of my Everything In The Sequels Makes Sense Because It's Kids Playing Pretend AU!

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“A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…”

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Rey put her hands on her hips and glared down as disdainfully as she could, from her perch on top of an old stump. “Who’s tellin’ this story, me or you?”

“Don’t listen to him,” Poe said, before Ben could snark back. “We think it’s a great start to a story.”

“Good.” Rey took a deep breath, stood up straight, and gazed down at her mostly-attentive audience sitting on the fallen log. “A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away…” She threw her hands in the air dramatically. “LUKE SKYWALKER DISAPPEARED!”

Poe gasped in horror. Finn cried out in dismay. Ben rolled his eyes.

“AND THE BAD GUYS ARE BACK!” she went on, flailing her arms.

“What bad guys?” Finn asked, leaning forward in his seat, clutching his favorite stuffed toy—an old clone trooper doll—tightly in his excitement.

Rey huffed. “Uh, the Empire. Duh.”

“Empire’s gone,” Ben put in, with the irritated indifference of an almost-13-year-old who is far too old to be playing pretend.

“Yeah, but in this story they came back.”

“They can’t come back if they’re gone.”

“Well in THIS STORY—”

Poe jumped in, acting as the peacemaker as usual. “Maybe it’s different bad guys. A couple of the Imps got away, and they made a new evil empire, but it’s called something else.”

Rey considered it. “What’s it called?”

“Um…”

Poe trailed off, thinking. Behind him, Luke Skywalker walked past, consulting with the new Jedi teacher at the school. “So the first order of business is…”

Poe snapped his fingers. “It’s called the First Order!”

“Stuuuupiiiiid,” Ben grumbled, then yelped as Finn aimed a kick at his shin. They would have descended into bickering as usual, when a new voice interrupted.

“Hello? Excuse me?”

Rey turned around and saw a boy standing behind her. He was probably a little bit younger than Ben or Poe. He had red hair, a sunburned face, and a funny fancy accent. He stood up very tall and clasped his hands behind him.

“What’s your deal?” she demanded. “I’m tellin’ a story here!”

The boy pointed to the new Jedi teacher talking with Luke. “My father will be an instructor at this school. He said I ought to make some friends.”

Poe clapped his hands. “The more the merrier! Come on, sit down. Rey is telling us an adventure story.”

“That’s your father? Talking to Uncle Luke?” Ben questioned, as the kid strode over and sat down on the far end of the log. “There’s not much resemblance.”

Poe flicked Ben on the back of the head. “Ever hear of adoption, genius?” He looked over at Rey. “Start over for… uh…” Poe turned to the new guy. “What’s your name?”

He shifted a little uncomfortably. “Um… you can just call me Tidge, I guess? Everyone else does.”

“Great! Rey, start over for Tidge.”

Rey huffed over the request, but she did start her story from the beginning again.

“A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… LUKE SKYWAKER DISAPPEARED AND THE BAD GUYS ARE BACK! They’re called the First Order. It started when some Empire guys escaped and started making a new Empire. AND THEY’RE AFTER LUKE!”

“That sounds so dumb,” Ben muttered.

Tidge cleared his throat. “If I may…?”

“May what?”

He stood up, walked over to stand beside the stump, and cleared his throat again.

And then he threw himself into storytelling with slightly-fancier-but-equally-dramatic gusto.

“Luke Skywalker has vanished! In his absence, the sinister First Order has risen from the ashes of the Empire, and will not rest until Skywalker, the last Jedi, has been destroyed!”

“Hey, you’re pretty good at this,” Rey said approvingly. “Okay, do this part for me.”

She bent over and whispered to him. He listened, then nodded.

“With the support of the Republic, General Leia Organa leads a brave Resistance. She is desperate to find her brother Luke and gain his help in restoring peace and justice to the galaxy!”

Ben rolled his eyes again (maybe his eyeballs were loose or something?) and Poe nodded. “Not bad.”

Rey whispered a bit more, and Tidge finished: “Leia has sent her most daring pilot on a secret mission to Jakku, where an old ally has discovered a clue to Luke’s whereabouts…”

Rey beamed at him. “Okay, that’s all.”

After Tidge was sitting down again, she went on, pointing at Poe. “You’re the most daring pilot.”

He pumped a fist in the air. “YES!”

“I’m better,” Ben grumbled. Poe blew a raspberry.

“If you’re so much better, how come I’m the most daring pilot and you’re not, huh?”

Rey waved her hands, trying to get their attention. “Hey! Don’t fight. Poe’s the daring pilot and Ben’s a Jedi.”

“I thought Luke was the last Jedi,” Ben pointed out.

“Well—I guess, but—” Rey faltered.

“I think Ben should be a Sith,” Poe contributed.

“Yeah! He frowns a lot and he’s grumpy and doesn’t like us,” Finn seconded.

Rey was horrified at the idea. “But it’s Ben! He can’t be a bad guy!”

Ben, on the other hand, seemed taken by the idea. He actually perked up. “Hey, if I kill off all the main characters, can I leave?”

[jessicas-pi]

time heals incorrect quote

Mythosaur, putting Sabine through The Horrors in the World Between Worlds for the 34th time: I’ve forged a stronger tool through which to accomplish my final mission! Wolf, hijacking the vision: You've ruined a perfectly good Jedi, is what you did. Look at her, you’ve given her anxiety.

[jessicas-pi]

ROTS AU where Padme is the one with nightmares and comes to the correct conclusion that it's because she's pregnant with a Force-sensitive baby. Now, having heard Anakin's Weird Parentage Backstory at one point or another, she comes up with a plan. she goes to the Jedi temple healers and announces that she's fairly certain she's pregnant with a Force-sensitive baby and needs a medical checkup. And when the inevitable questions about the identity of the baby daddy come up, she calmly tells them, "Well, that's the strangest part. There was no father."

(Cut to Master Windu and Yoda frantically paging through ancient tomes full of prophecies trying to figure out if technically there could be two Chosen Ones at the same time)

[jessicas-pi]

@jessicas-pi I do have thoughts about the Sequels! Thank you for asking!

I love how your brain went BIGGER to include all of the ideas the sequels put forth. That's very generous, and I think it's genius to suggest how much better the product that we were given would've worked well in an animated or weekly serial format. I'd never thought of that before, but it's fantastic.

To me, your assessment that the worst parts of the sequels are that they essentially suffered from an identity crisis is the best description I've heard. I 100% agree with you that I could've maybe lived with everything else except that ruining the Happily Ever After of the Originals was the dealbreaker.

My thoughts on the movies, my brain, on the other hand, went smaller. My nitpicks are more on a character level.

I truly liked TFA. I would still start with that (with the exception of the ending). I want there to be ONE story, and, for me, Finn is it. Finn is the most compelling and Star Wars-y character in TFA.

This take on the plot is my favorite: faceless, family-less, stormtrooper who is Force-sensitive vs the Force-null Skywalker legacy.

Finn exhibits that Jedi compassion right off the bat. I believe him as the Jedi character. He is outward-looking and self-sacrificing, even when he is in danger.

Rey, on the other hand, has more of a navel-gazing, search for personal identity bit to her, more so in the second and third movies. "I need someone to show me my place in all this" plays every time I boot up Lego Star Wars, and something about it just hits me funny. Luke and Ezra had plots where they felt compelled to go out and do something, and they learned who they were along the way by being tested and tried. Rey's entire journey is the search for herself, and...ick. That happens a lot to female characters, and I don't care for it.

Poe Dameron was supposed to die in TFA, and I stand by that decision. (Why they brought him back just so that he could be THE WORST in the second movie, I have no idea. He makes TERRIBLE decisions, gets people killed, mutinies, and really learns...nothing. He did nothing good in the second movie. At the end of the third, it's Lando who saves the day, not him.)

I like Rey more as a second Han or a Hera-type: a scrapper who is a whiz with ships. She's probably real savvy from growing up/surviving in a trading outpost. We did see that side to her! I just don't think she needed to be the Jedi in this story. Her story could've been about going from being a loner to being a part of a team, like Han.

If Rey has to be Force-sensitive, too, then I also like her as Han and Leia's long-lost-daughter (because I got those vibes in TFA. Anyone else?)

After reading this meta analysis, I can see how Luke's characterization was not totally ooc, but burying his backstory in unreliable narration and the double-speak of fandom's anti-Jedi rhetoric in an attempt to show that Luke feels guilt and shame was another way that these films experienced an identity crisis. Because you know who doesn't understand subtle nuances like that? Kids. (And much of the SW fandom. No shade. I didn't get it before either). This is supposed to be a story for kids.

TLJ - the second movie - was as much of a fever dream as The Mandalorian S3. It is actually still making me angry as I type this up because, for me, the worst part about it was how they treated Finn. His entire plot line could be lifted out of that movie and nothing would change. I can't find anything redeemable about this movie. I'd take a giant Red Pen to it and start over. lol

RoS - the third movie - sigh. I pity this movie? I feel like it did the best it could to mop up the disaster of TLJ and connect the plot points. But since they lost me after TFA, I just wasn't as invested in seeing this story wrap up.

Overall, I think the plot of the trilogy could’ve either focused on Finn vs Kylo Ren OR Rey and Kylo Ren (as the next gen of Skywalkers), but without a clear goal in mind, the plot wandered and tried to do too much. George at least knew he wanted the parallel stories of a democracy becoming a dictatorship and a good man becoming bad. I feel like the sequels had some kind of a MESSAGE in mind instead of a MORAL, and so they couldn’t tell a satisfying story.

[jessicas-pi]

Very interested in your take on the sequels, if you want to say?

I recently watched the whole trilogy for the first time in a long time and...oof.

OOOH i would be delighted to rant and rave about this thank you for asking! (and oh boy yeah i agree with that reaction so much lol, i still don't think I've recovered enough from watching TROS in theaters to give it another go yet 😂)

And a disclaimer right to start with---everything I say is an Opinion. and there are other Opinions out there and they're valid too! so no shade to anyone who disagrees with me or anything.

ANYWAY!

so. to start off. i saw a screenshot of a post about animation vs live action a while ago and i couldn't find the screenshot post again but i found the og post and screenshotted it myself so yeah my feelings are this-

-but, like, in reverse. i watched a live action film series and there were several moments where i thought "wow i wish i could watch this same film series but yes animated and better"

that is to say, my greatest controversial opinion is that the sequels would have worked SO much better as an animated series. (and i do mean a SERIES. none of this 8-episode-long nonsense. making 8 episodes per season is for cowards and boring people. i am neither.)

Because, IMO, the greatest failing of the sequel trilogy was they they were trying to do too much. i think that every single plotline they put together---yes, even the Palpatine one---might have worked, if they gave it the time and focus it deserved. But instead, they turned what could have been a fantastic series, had it been given a total runtime equivalent to TCW, into approximately seven hours of live-action confusion.

(The episodic storytelling method would have worked really well for it, too! There could have been serious episodes/episode arcs (retrieving the map on jakku, for example) and silly in-between episodes (the bit with the rathtars in TFA and the Canto Bight mission in TLJ could each be nicely reimagined into a friendship-building-through-chaos episode for Finn & Rey and Finn & Rose respectively. Well, maybe a two episode arc for Canto Bight? IDK.))

(sorry sorry i will stop ranting about My Own Ideas now and go back to your actual question)

So, I think the sequels had some really good ideas! and really mediocre ideas! and really bad ideas! and i think the heart of the problem lies, not in the varying quality of the ideas, but the quantity of ideas that they were trying to fit into a very short time.

And in general, I think the films are kinda fun, if I don't take them too seriously! But I must confess... there is one thing I absolutely HATE about these films.

It ruined the Happy Ever After.

Star Wars is a space fairytale. Now, I'm not saying that it should have been completely perfect no problems whatsoever, because that's just TOO unrealistic, and there wouldn't be Sequels anyway. What I'm saying is that maybe there's still metaphorical space dragons in this space fairytale, but the heroes should fight the metaphorical space dragons and come home again afterwards. And yes I KNOW there was no way in heck they were gonna be able to drag Harrison Ford back for another three films but MY POINT STANDS. (and yknow if it was an ANIMATED series they wouldn't even have had to drag him back at ALL they could have used voice actors like they did in TCW) They should have been able to live happily ever after. Their defeat of the Empire shouldn't have been in vain. Truth be told, I wouldn't mind the other issues half as much, if they hadn't undone everything the Rebellion fought for.

And I am well aware that there is some personal bias on my part. like, my 2nd most used tag on AO3 is "alternate universe - everyone lives/nobody dies". OBVIOUSLY my biggest beef is going to be with people not living and also dying. I thrive on fix-its, and the sequels were a break-it. But the fact remains that when the heroes save the day in a fairy tale, you don't write a sequel where everything they worked for gets destroyed and they all die. you write a sequel where they go on more adventures and it still ends in the same fairytale way! but that is Not how the star wars sequels went. and I just don't think that's very groovy of them.

SO!

In conclusion: it could have been great! but it was in the wrong media format, didn't have enough runtime, and---most critically---was not a Space Fairytale. so it wasn't great. it was, like... genereally tolerable. occasionally good. had awesome cinematography. but it does NOT hold up under a microscope. or a weak magnifying glass. tbh i'd have to take off my glasses and hold it ~10 feet away so it's a blurry blob before it could maybe start to hold up.

*deep sigh*

You were so close, Lucasfilm. So tragically close.

[jessicas-pi]

me: See, the problem with this is, the soulmarks AU is more or less canon compliant up until any divergences caused by the fact that characters have soulmarks. but there is just no way i can write a fic based on the full canon of the sequels. i'm sorry. i just can't. there's too much i want to change. so clearly our only viable option is to go work on---

my brain: planning out how we're going to modify canon to fit our whims in this AU? you got it boss!

me: DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT

my brain: so about that rey palpatine thing---

me: Yknow, I'm just gonna stop procrastinating on Time Heals chapter 16 and---

my brain: start writing the benrey platonic soulmates au that you've been lowkey thinking about for years?

me: ...

me: what part of "stop procrastinating" was unclear to you

[jessicas-pi]

me: Yknow, I'm just gonna stop procrastinating on Time Heals chapter 16 and---

my brain: start writing the benrey platonic soulmates au that you've been lowkey thinking about for years?

me: ...

me: what part of "stop procrastinating" was unclear to you

[jessicas-pi]

starting another wip when i already have 72 of them my beloved

starting another wip when i already have 11 of them my beloved