Not Just Pens Though

It finally occurred to me to share my latest work here. 😆 This is not a new fic to me, but I've been sitting on it for a couple years and finally got around to posting. It's set during Star Wars, TCW era, and features my OC Jedi baddie, Kalinda Halcyon, and the gooey marshmallow trapped by plastoid armor, OC clone Captain Stonewall. Plus, approximately a million other OCs with the occasional canon character sprinkled in for flavor. I also had a fun Republic Commando detour about half way into the fic, so eventually you'll see some of those characters stumble through. 😘 Here's a snippet:

The bacta bay was silent now. Stonewall entered the vast room, lit by the rows of bubbling tanks, each with a figure suspended within the pale-blue liquid. The clone captain’s leg ached a little, but the painkillers were doing their job, though his steps were slower than he liked. 

Which seemed to be the theme of the day. He tried to ignore that thought, at least right now. He could brood anytime, but right now he had to find his men — and his general. She hadn’t said she’d be here, but Stonewall knew her habits. 

Only a few medics were at work in the bacta bay now; most of the others were in the medbay proper, tending to the troopers who hadn’t warranted a tanking. The sickly-sweet scent of bacta hung in the air, sticking to the inside of Stonewall’s nose, and he almost replaced his bucket. Instead, he swept his gaze over each tank, noting the clone trooper held within. None of them were who he searched for. He continued down the rows.

As he went, he tried to focus on his Jedi general. Kali?

The silent call wavered in the void. Stonewall was obviously no Jedi and could not feel her presence the way she could his, but they were able to speak in this silent way. Apparently, Kali had spoken to others she…cared about, deeply, with this mind-speech, which made Stonewall feel a lot of different ways. It’d started months ago, during a mission to Florrum. By now, Stonewall had almost gotten used to the sensation of hearing his Jedi’s voice in his mind.

But she wasn’t answering now. The thought made his pace quicken and he tried again. Kali? Are you here?

You’re getting warmer, she replied, and he exhaled in relief, though it was short-lived. Though she spoke like the wry woman he knew, there was a frayed edge to the words, like she was barely holding herself together.

He paused to peer down the nearest row, then moved forward. 

Colder, she sent. Turn left, then look right.

He did, and spotted her at once: a slight, dark-haired Human woman standing between two bacta tanks on the end of this row. Stonewall’s pace quickened as he met her, and he grimaced over the imbalance in his gait. Along with the myriad of cuts, scrapes, and burns he’d sustained on Gandowyne, he’d taken a blaster-bolt to his upper thigh. Bacta had worked wonders, but he’d have a limp for the next few days, at least.

Well, there were worse things.

Read more here:

> disables a new AI feature that was turned on by default

> opens my email

> disables a new AI feature that was turned on by default

> launches a software

Knowing all this has always made this bit of Beren’s song instantly reduce me to tears:

Though all to ruin fell the world

and were dissolved and backward hurled

unmade into the old abyss,

yet were its making good, for this—

the dawn, the dusk, the earth, the sea—

that Lúthien on a time should be!

Tolkien straight up wrote a poem that said “the world could end, but it wouldn’t have all been pointless, because she was in this world, however briefly, and that justified all the rest.” Kills me.

well, maybe not—there's certainly the chance that they all didn't grow up in mount bedford. but considering the fact that they all have children samantha's age (sure, clarisse isn't confirmed to be mrs. van sicklen's daughter, but it is very likely), it goes to reckon that, if they have spent their entire lives in the town, they should be very close in age to lydia.

this is interesting in and of itself to me, but i also think it's also interesting to think about this in relation to grandmary. i've already gone on at length about grandmary and grief, so let's keep this post a little lighter: how absurd must it be for her to have to now socialize with women that she once knew as her daughter's schoolmates or friends?

We all miss her very much.

What if there was a ghost in the opera house that was killing people?

Requires you to accept the existence of ghosts, but otherwise is a straightforward story.

What if the chief contractor who built the opera house was a deformed circus freak who used his experience building palaces and torture chambers for sultans to keep building secret passageways and torture chambers in the basement when construction halted during the Franco-Prussian War, and then kept living down there working on an opera and killing and blackmailing people who crossed him and also training a pretty opera singer that he wants to marry?

My father sent me a guardian angel from Heaven to guide and comfort me in his absence: "Okay, not something that happens every day, but that is what guardian angels are supposed to do and Dad did indicate something like this would happen."

that the tension and grief and anger of anakin’s padawan years would settle (anakin had grown into a jedi obi-wan was incredibly, terribly proud of, after all) and when they no longer had to be generals, they would go on missions together, normal missions where they would negotiate treaties and investigate minor problems off-world and weren’t locked into endless, bloody battle.

that his grand-padawan would be knighted, the padawan he and anakin had trained together, that she would maybe take a padawan on her own someday and his lineage would continue, healing over the broken branches of dooku and qui-gon.

and this, growing old with anakin, leading a normal jedi life with him by obi-wan’s side, living at the temple and eating in the refectory and teaching the initiates, would be obi-wan’s reward for all his grief, all his pain, all he had sacrificed for the order. a humble reward, he would never ask for more, just a simple life with the only family he had ever imagined himself having, the life anakin and ahsoka deserved but hadn’t seen since the start of the war.

CALL YOUR SENATORS!!!

It is super easy: if you do not want to talk to anyone you can call after 4 pm and leave a message. They have to write down your comment you can stumble, stutter and re record as many times as you want.

It takes less than three minutes including the wait time for the voicemail message to play.