#fleurdufeu

7. what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them?

This is an immediate and unhesitating Star Wars answer: Ahsoka.

so these days a lot of my annoyance is about the canon, but go back in time to 2015 when the Rebels S1 finale came out. at this point Ahsoka had not appeared in (real time) Star Wars canon since the first TCW series finale (this show has had three for various reasons), which aired in March 2013, which is actually not that long. (She showed up briefly in Yoda's vision when Lost Missions aired in 2014, the second TCW series finale.) From a 2023 perspective, two years is not that long, but it was 2015, okay. TFA had not yet come out. Rebels S1 had just aired. The decanonization of Legends wasn't even a year old yet; the amount of new (Disney) canon Star Wars was in the single digits. This was years before Disney+ or TCW S7 (the third TCW series finale) and live action Star Wars television was an oft-shotdown rumor (Star Wars Underworld, we remember you kindly).

Back in 2014 when they first announced Rebels, there was a lot of bitterness about it -- did they cancel TCW for this, why aren't any of these characters Ahsoka, could Sabine maybe be Ahsoka? (They first introduced her helmeted.) You can probably find some of this on my Tumblr if you go back far enough because I was also very wary at the time. All through when Rebels S1 was airing there was a lot of conversation about when or if Ahsoka was going to show up in a way you really wouldn't get today, because these days we're used to cameos and crossovers. When Fulcrum made their debut with the masked voice in Out of Darkness, people reverse-engineered that voice and did digital...stuff...to try and figure out if it was Ashley Eckstein voicing the character, because back then people immediately did assume that Fulcrum was Ahsoka. And then Fire Across the Galaxy came out, and Ahsoka actually did appear, and then the animated side of Star Wars fandom lost its fucking mind.

so you have to understand that a lot of TCW fans did not go over to Rebels when it first aired. many did, I was one of them, but a lot didn't because they were very angry about TCW being cancelled, about Ahsoka not being a main character, about Rebels' art style -- gods, that one had (and still has!) people furious. and then Ahsoka appeared in Rebels with her new design and people just LOST IT.

(not my edit)

people were FURIOUS she didn't like her TCW vision version -- like, you think the reaction to her live action appearance was bad? please, we were all dead inside by that point and inured to Star Wars' nonsense. I have seen some shit in the Star Wars fandom and the reaction to Ahsoka's Rebels redesign is way up at the top of the list. The shape of her lekku and montrals. The tiger striping on her lekku. The shape of her face. The way her facial markings changed. Her skin color. The one that always sticks in my head are the people who argued that because she was wearing a different headband Filoni and Co. had stripped her of her cultural identity as a Togruta. The list goes on. I swear to gods however bad you think it was from what I'm saying it was worse. No, worse than that.

That's just the aesthetic elements. What also happened as soon as she had appeared was people going "well, Ahsoka's here, so Kanan is obviously going to die," and this went on for ALL of the hiatus summer between S1 and S2, and ALL of S2. As many SW fen who follow me know, Kanan is my favorite, so I was logging on every day to find people discussing how Kanan was extraneous and marked for death because why would you have Kanan when you could have AHSOKA. I got very bitter about it. (Not helped by canon completely fumbling Kanan every time Ahsoka was onscreen, I am still EXTREMELY angry about the hot mess that was The Future of the Force.)

Two years later canon quite literally did swap Kanan out for Ahsoka, and I've never really gotten over it, but when World Between Worlds aired that was the first thing that I thought of. It was just...extremely bad.

And then in general people get extremely weird about Ahsoka in the way that people always get about their faves (depth? flaws? we've never heard of them), in a way that's just been getting much worse over the years since Rebels S4 (which I hate) and TCW S7 (which I hate) and the live action appearance (which I hate) and the upcoming show (which I refuse to acknowledge). Even as a fic writer, it got to the point where I'd really hesitate to put Ahsoka into a story or a chapter because I knew that if I did, I'd get a large number of comments (large being relative here) that ONLY talked about Ahsoka and not about anything else going on in that chapter. And then when I didn't put her into a chapter (you can see this in the last few chapters of Crown that I posted earlier this year), I'd get people going BUT WHERE'S AHSOKA? As a cast of thousands writer it was a combination guaranteed to drive me crazy, even if I hadn't been, at that point, pretty neutral about the character. And I started as a fan, you know? I didn't come into TCW until S4 was airing, so the show had to sell me on her, but it worked, and I was a fan. It just...went wrong in every possible way.

Nile doesn't recall exactly how the subject comes up. It's an evening at their new safe house in Tallinn, Estonia, which is the cleanest, most internet-connected, and quite possibly the tallest country that she, an-only recently-immortal from a solidly ordinary upbringing in Chicago, has ever been to. (Nicky says that if she thinks the Balts are tall, she should just wait until she meets the Dutch and the Croats.) She and Andy are sitting on the couch and talking about not much in particular. Nicky's cooking dinner, and Joe is sketching absently, watching the World Cup qualifiers on television with half an eye. They've rearranged themselves around Booker's absence awkwardly, like a missing tooth, and Andy hates anyone fussing over her for the whole losing-her-immortality thing, so Nile tries not to. But the sheer fascination of being able to talk to someone who's six thousand goddamn years old cannot be denied, and she keeps asking eager questions about who Andy's met and what she's learned -- but most of the answers, it must be admitted, are a bit of a letdown. Or possibly more than that.

"Come on," Nile says. "Was Alexander the Great really that bad?"

"Horrible." Andy reaches for the vodka shot on the coffee table and knocks it back without a flinch. "Spoiled little mama's boy who just had to get his hands all over everything. Or his dick." She snorts, as if the great Macedonian warlord and conqueror of much of the ancient world only died yesterday and is still managing to disappoint her. "No, I am not speaking from personal experience here. He was much more into Hephaestion, anyway."

"Okay." Nile racks her brains for any more of the (admittedly scanty) historical knowledge that an American public-school education has left her with. "What about the Greek-Persian wars? You're from Scythia, which is mostly Iran now, right? Did you meet, like, Xerxes?"

"Also a dick." Andy knocks back a second vodka shot without turning a hair. "But that's just what I heard. I don't remember what I was doing during all that bullshit, but it definitely wasn't hanging out with them."

Nile bites her tongue on asking what Andy was doing, since forgetting some of a six-millennium life must be a blessing. A human brain was never designed to process that many experiences and that much loss and pain, and Andy's been more on edge ever since the whole clusterfuck with Merrick. She's trying to think of a way to change the subject when Nicky calls from the kitchen, "Ask her about Linear A."

"Linear A?" Nile blinks. "What's that?"

"Counterpart to Linear B," Joe says, not looking up from his sketching. "And Nicolò, that is rather cruel of you, don't you think?"

"Uh." Nile looks at Andy, trying not to gulp. "What is Linear A, and why should I ask and/or not ask you about it?"

"I'm gonna kill you," Andy yells at Nicky (not at all an idle threat where a bunch of self-regenerating immortals are involved, and Nicky simply tips a cheeky shrug at her and resumes stirring his sauce). To Nile she says, "Ugh. Fine. It's one of the only remaining ancient languages that can't be translated at all. From the island of Crete, during the Minoan period. They eventually learned how to translate its counterpart, Linear B, but nobody knows how to read A."

"Okay?"

"And yes," Andy says, scowling at Nicky's back again, "I was in Crete during the time period in question."

"So.... so do you?" Nile leans forward, fascinated. "Even if you never told the archaeologists?"

"No. No, I don't know how to read the fucking stuff either." Andy sighs, glares at the vodka bottle, debates pouring a third shot, and puts her boots up on the table instead. "There were a lot of hot women and archery competitions and bull-fights to do instead. Sorry."

"That..." Nile splutters. "Come on! What? Really?! Just think what people would give to have that information! Like, not even a little?!"

"See," Nicky shouts. "Told you that everyone has that reaction."

"Get fucked, Nicky." Andy says it without rancor, even as Joe is glaring at her (mostly good-naturedly, but not entirely) for daring to insult his beloved. "Now get back to working on dinner. I'm hungry."

ahhh i think you might have missed the pic i posted of her earlier but here it is again! you can’t see her long hair very well but here she is:

while doodling this I could only think of this:

We got a bird feeder about 10 months ago and I’ve become like a little old retired lady who intently watches it and I know all the species that visit, and (I think) I can identify a number of individuals. It’s my own personal soap opera.

Happy Sleepover Saturday, dear @fleurdufeu!

Oh my goodness, this is amazing! Please do tell me more about the birdie drama 👀

I was very excited when a pair of ravens came by to visit the tree outside my window last week! I haven't seen them since, sadly, but I hope they'll return!

Do you have any issues with squirrels trying to get into the feeder and steal the food? I know that's a common problem!

“Have you ever imagined the shape your life would have taken if you’d never confessed your love to me?”

Her fingertips skim along his back and shoulders as he shifts in bed to face her. There’s a lazy sort of smile on her face but it cannot fully distract from the shrewd glint in her eye.

“Never with regret, Lady,” he murmurs, and presses a kiss to her cheek. “Only to reflect on what madness overtook me in that moment.”

“Madness, or affection?” she laughs.

This post was sponsored by Y E A R N I N G

Back then, the world as they knew it was considerably smaller. Still, most people didn’t get to live long enough to see even a fraction of it. Andromache, older than all the people she ever loved put together, had travelled through most of it. However, since the dreams started, her whole world, and her conception and perception of it had been drastically transformed. 

She started by believing the dreams were a random occurrence. They were a desperate creation of her lonesome subconscious, a friend that wouldn’t leave her. Next, she started to believe these were visions of a goddess. It made sense, the woman was of extraordinary beauty. But there were no messages, no lessons, challenges or ways to communicate with this goddess. It was partly her last hope and latest option, but mostly it was wishful thinking when Andy started believing this woman was real. 

That’s when her search began, when the world felt suddenly bigger and stranger than ever before. Regardless of all her knowledge of the world, Andy could never tell where exactly this magical being was. Whenever she reached a familiar place, the dreams showed her elsewhere.

At this point, Andy wasn’t sure which nights the dreams would be just that, or if they would turn into nightmares. Because more times than she could count she had seen the other woman die, had felt her die. Andy knew she’d never get used to waking up startled after a knife pierced through a throat that wasn’t her own but felt like it.

Sometimes though, the dreams would be peaceful, and that could be just as bad, if not worse. Because even asleep, Andy could feel herself reach out, could feel the deep want in her to just touch this woman, to connect, to be seen by her. Just as she’d start to feel the dreams drift away and her consciousness take over, she’d used whatever effort she could to just slip back in, to go back to her, to the woman of her dreams. She desperately wanted to stay with her, to sleep forever if it meant she wouldn’t be alone.

Waking up was the worst part. Waking up alone, waking up reaching for her. Waking up calling for her, for Quynh, a name she didn’t know how she learned but that now it felt as true as her own. Some days, Andy would wake up with a scream tearing through her throat, a sob breaking up her heart. She’s known loneliness, she’s been alone most of her life, but she’s never felt as alone as she did then, knowing that there was another option. She had never wanted anything as she’s wanted this woman. 

Her days were spent traveling until her body couldn’t take it anymore, and sleeping as much as possible, forever searching for the woman, for the dreams of her, her company, her deathless presence, the smile that felt bigger than this world, as if it was calling for her and only for her.