I can already feel the flames.

OK. Here it is:

I think Maul should have stayed dead and I hate (hatehateHATE) that they brought him back for The Clone Wars (and apparently he is still alive in Rebels?)

Grr.  So I was farely spoiled, and the thing that kept me from watching TCW for so long was the knowledge that Maul returned.  Because why can Maul survive being cut in half while Padme dies of a broken heart?

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I loved Maul in The Phantom Menace.  He was a great villain for that movie - agressive, threatening, dangerous and something new.  But he was great for that movie.

So I have a few problems with him being brought back:

1. As I mentioned above, why does Maul get to come back and not a female character, of which SW already has too few.

2. It dilutes Maul’s effectiveness.  TBH it is hard to find him threatening once you have seen him as the weird gollum-spider thing in his debut TCW episode.

3. It completely f*cks with Obi-Wan’s arc.  OK, being fair I am a complete Obi fan girl so am biased.  But Obi-Wan is The Sithkiller.  He is knighted for killing Maul, and for not giving into the darkside to do it.  (I could watch the scene where he makes that decision and vaults out of the pit over and over and over. The music alone.)

And then… Maul didn’t actually die? So sorry Obi, the biggest achievement of you life to date… wasn’t?

I am also annoyed by Maul v Obi-Wan in 4x22.  This is an Obi-Wan who beat Maul when he was a Padawan - not easily, but he did it.  This is an Obi-Wan who then had 10 years of training Anakin Skywalker and getting better - not to mention however many years of becoming a battle hardened General and so even more lethal.

Meanwhile, Maul has been hanging out as a weird spider-gollum thing, and not getting much lightsabre practice in, and yet Obi-Wan gets curbstomped the first time they meet? Even with Savage there (who should not have had enough training to be as good as he is portrayed) that stank.

4. I mentioned I was spoiled right? So even though I am only at the end of Season 4, I know Maul was used to fridge Satine and also killed Adi Gallia which… ARGH I know she isn’t on the Council in RotS but why did Maul have to be the one to kill her (to cause Obi-Wan pain).

There are probably two ways that Maul could have been brought back that would not have bugged me so much: @deadcatwithaflamethrower‘s method where he is a Maul-clone with essence transfer created by Sidious for his own reasons; or two, Talzin creating a Maul-zombie thing for her own reasons.

And I would still have to see him killed again at the end of whatever arc to be happy with it.

So yeah, Maul. Not a fan.

I am so sorry for the delay, but it took me some time to figure out how to write this one, and even then, it’s a little off from what you asked for.  Also, the angst bug bit and demanded I write the bits in parenthesis. I hope you like it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

CT-7567was a glitch.  For whatever reason, hehad a genetic mistake that gave him pale blond hair, quite unlike his brothers’dark hair.  And he knew that any glitchhad to prove that they didn’t have any other problems.  He never participated in the various gamesother clones came up with.  He neverwandered into restricted areas.  Heexcelled in his studies and the war games. He couldn’t afford to do anything else.

 CC-2224was a complete success.  He had never hadany suspicion focused on him.  He was anormal clone, with no unexpected glitches. He delighted in fairly innocent mischief.  A clever prank wasn’t really a problem- infact, sometimes, it was considered good training.

 CT-7567was an excellent trooper.  Captain of hiscompany, perfectly by the book, never without any faults.  His men were good men, and he was justwaiting to be assigned to a Jedi.  Andthen they lost ten men in a firefight. For days afterwards, CT-7867 tried tofigure out what went wrong.  Nothinghad.  They’d done everything by thebook.  If… if Ct-7567 had just triedsomething different, if he’d put some of his brothers up on the hills the wayCT-8747 had suggested, he and nine others would still be alive.

 CC-2224was an excellent leader.  He worked wellwith Commander Skywalker and General Kenobi. They were a wonderful team.  Andthen the General and the Commander are captured and CC-2224 and his men have toget them back.  They do… but a lot ofbrothers die.  For days afterward,CC-2224 tries to figure out what went wrong. And he finds plenty.  If only he’ddone things by the book, so many of his brothers would still be alive.

 CaptainRex loves working with General Skywalker. He’s learned so many tactics that are absolutely not by the book, and somany of his brothers have stayed alive because of it.  (In secret, he removes that damnable chip.)

Wonderful, thank you!!! (and really, absolutely no worries about timing!)

It’s been three days, and while food stuffs are running high, moral is running low.

Rex paces past Obi-Wan for the fifth time in as many minutes, and like the last four times, a wave of scent accompanies him.  Normally Obi-Wan wouldn’t comment on it, as there usually isn’t anywhere for Rex to take care of the issue. This time though.

“Go take a shower captain.” He snaps it, voice harder than he means it to be. Rex stops and turns to look at him.

“Yes sir. Time limit on the shower?“  It’s not a thought that’s ever crossed Obi-Wan’s mind before, that the clones have never experienced the little joy of standing under an endless spray of water that’s just just a notch below scalding.

“No time limit, captain.” He offers Rex a smile and then looks over at the sudden clatter of Cody all but tearing off his armour.

“Dibs.”

“Get. Fucked. Vod.” Rex snarls, stripping down to his blacks in record time.

There’s a moment of silent tension and then the two clones charge for the door of the ‘fresher.

“Get out of my way, I get first shower.” Rex snarls it, shoving his entire hand over Cody’s face.

“I outrank you.” Cody snarls back and bites Rex’s thumb, jamming an elbow into Rex’s solar plexus.

“I don’t fucking care if Yoda called dibs.” Rex grunts and jams his knee into the back of Cody’s to make him on down.

“The shower is big enough for two people.” Anakin tells them from where he’s sprawled on the enormous couch, eyes closed.  Obi-Wan is watching the two of them, amused.

“It is.” He confirms it. “Just shower together.“  Cody wheezes, clawing at Rex’s arm and Rex pauses in the middle of choking his brother out.

"Good to know.” He says, changing his grip and dragging Cody into the fresher, letting the door slide shut behind them.

Anakin cracks open an eye and shares a smirk with Obi-Wan.

“They’re idiots to be sure.” Obi-Wan says, voice filled with amusement. “But they’re our idiots.”

“I remember my first shower.” Anakin says, rolling on his back to stare up at the ceiling. “I’d never seen so much water before in my entire life. It was like one of the stories my mother used to tell me, water falling from the sky.”

Obi-Wan leans back in his chair, watching his former padawan fondly. “That sounds like a good memory.”

3x06- Motel California

American wix participate in general elections and watch tv and their kids go to muggle school during the day and learn magic at home or in after-school programs and play quidditch and football and only your great grandma has owls while everyone else just has a phone and generally don’t obliviate muggles who see magic shit bc lol who’s gonna believe them anyway.

And European wix haaaate dealing with them bc they won’t do things the Proper Magical Way they just do whatever the fuck they want bc AMERICA FUCK YEAH.

Do an outline, whatever way works best. Get yourself out of the word soup and know where the story is headed.

Conflicts and obstacles. Hurt the protagonist, put things in their way, this keeps the story interesting. An easy journey makes the story boring and boring is hard to write.

Change the POV. Sometimes all it takes to untangle a knotted story is to look at it through different eyes, be it through the sidekick, the antagonist, a minor character, whatever.

Know the characters. You can’t write a story if the characters are strangers to you. Know their likes, dislikes, fears, and most importantly, their motivation. This makes the path clearer.

Fill in holes. Writing doesn’t have to be linear; you can always go back and fill in plotholes, and add content and context.

Have flashbacks, hallucinations, dream sequences or foreshadowing events. These stir the story up, deviations from the expected course add a feeling of urgency and uncertainty to the narrative.

Introduce a new mystery. If there’s something that just doesn’t add up, a big question mark, the story becomes more compelling. Beware: this can also cause you to sink further into the mire.

Take something from your protagonist. A weapon, asset, ally or loved one. Force him to operate without it, it can reinvigorate a stale story.

Twists and betrayal. Maybe someone isn’t who they say they are or the protagonist is betrayed by someone he thought he could trust. This can shake the story up and get it rolling again.

Secrets. If someone has a deep, dark secret that they’re forced to lie about, it’s a good way to stir up some fresh conflict. New lies to cover up the old ones, the secret being revealed, and all the resulting chaos.

Kill someone. Make a character death that is productive to the plot, but not “just because”. If done well, it affects all the characters, stirs up the story and gets it moving.

Ill-advised character actions. Tension is created when a character we love does something we hate. Identify the thing the readers don’t want to happen, then engineer it so it happens worse than they imagined.

Create cliff-hangers. Keep the readers’ attention by putting the characters into new problems and make them wait for you to write your way out of it. This challenge can really bring out your creativity.

Raise the stakes. Make the consequences of failure worse, make the journey harder. Suddenly the protagonist’s goal is more than he expected, or he has to make an important choice.

Make the hero active. You can’t always wait for external influences on the characters, sometimes you have to make the hero take actions himself. Not necessarily to be successful, but active and complicit in the narrative.

Different threat levels. Make the conflicts on a physical level (“I’m about to be killed by a demon”), an emotional level (“But that demon was my true love”) and a philosophical level (“If I’m forced to kill my true love before they kill me, how can love ever succeed in the face of evil?”).

Figure out an ending. If you know where the story is going to end, it helps get the ball rolling towards that end, even if it’s not the same ending that you actually end up writing.

What if? What if the hero kills the antagonist now, gets captured, or goes insane? When your write down different questions like these, the answer to how to continue the story will present itself.

i thing i’ve noticed lately, when posting fic, is that there seems to be a lot less people who reblog, but a lot of likes. which is cool too because getting likes is nice, but when it’s the only thing you get it feels like a you tried star.

it’s not something that just happens in my case because i’ve seen quite a few people on my dash talking about it, so it’s not just me whining for more attention. tho i do love it.

the reason why i’m making this post is because i was told by a friend that they didn’t want to seem like a creepy stalker for liking and reblogging everything. but that’s totally not the case!

i’m pretty confident when i say this, but i think that a great percentage of writers won’t mind at all if you go on a wild spree and like and reblog all their fics. they’ll be ridiculously pleased by it in fact because reblogs translate to more people seeing the fic, to more support, to - possibly - more feedback.

we might often just write for ourselves, but for me writing isn’t as joyous and experience if there’s no feedback at all.

so:

likes are cool and appreciated, it’s totally okay if you don’t want to share the thing on your dash

reblogs are awesome because we get seen

reblogs with tags, especially those not just meant to categorize the post on a person’s blog are super rad

msg/comments/replies are super amazing, delightful and make our day, but we get that not everyone feels up to leaving those, it’s hard to find something to say at times.

i don’t want to come off wrong here. i appreciate every like i get, we all do. this is just a post to let you know that a good number of writers would not mind people getting “stalkerish” about their fics. so if you feel up to it, give it a try?