Assorted notes for the AU trilogy Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith from the Star Wars series work in progress You Became to Me.

Standard Disclaimer:
Act 1, Scene 1:
The stage is dark. Cue spotlight to the center of the stage. Cue Palpatine of Naboo (almost lost within his voluminous black robes) to walk to the center of the stage.
“Ahem. The author would like you to note that George Lucas owns all rights to these characters.”
Cue Padmé Amidala of Naboo, dressed in a green fairy costume, giggling most provocatively as she swings by on a trapeze.
Cue Piano Drop while Palpatine of Naboo’s attention is otherwise occupied.
“AHHHHHHH!!”
Cue spotlight on Obi-Wan and Anakin, arms around each other, blinking innocently and studiously standing with their cloaks draped mostly over the knife, while Padmé (now laughing heartily) blows them kisses and soars off into the darkness, the empty trapeze trailing down above the broken piano (above the even more broken Palpatine of Naboo).

Series Title: You Became to Me (as originally suggested by LJ user avarimaethor for the WiP that became the Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith trio)

Trilogy Title: Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith

Book Titles: Book I: In the Darkness Before the Dawn; Book II: Balancing the Force; and Book III: The Promise of a New Order

Main Pairing: Obi-Wan/Anakin with mention of Padmé.

Readers should note that there are other pairings within the trilogy, but this particular couple is the major focus of the overall warned, though: this work also unobtrusively pairs two Force spirits, namely Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn and the redeemed Jedi Master Dooku. Within the physical plane, Dooku – who was Knighted at a very young age and then received his first Padawan essentially on the heels of his Knighting – was only ten years older than Qui-Gon. Within the embrace of the Force, things like age tend to matter very little indeed. And love is an extremely powerful force that can never truly be ignored. Similarly, please also take note of the fact that there are references to f/f relationships as well as to the above mentioned m/m relationships and even a few oblique references to (mostly EU-established) pairings that (technically) cross species lines. Readers put off by the notion of m/m, f/f, or cross-species pairings should mostly likely not read this trilogy (or any SW EU material, for that matter!) or the series it is set in.

Rating: The rating for this trilogy ranges anywhere from PG/PG-13 to R/NC-17 in parts. The whole of the trio has been rated MATURE, according to this site’s standards, for the sake of a handful of chapters scattered throughly the second and third books of the trio.

Disclaimer: I do not own the lovely boys from Star Wars, more’s the pity! What I do have is an extremely contrary muse that refuses to shut up and leave me alone . . .

Summary: This is the one thing that Darth Sidious never saw coming: a minor incident of collateral damage with repercussions that can potentially utterly unmake all of his schemes

Author’s Notes: 1.) Sorry, folks, but no beta yet (other than my wonderful idea beta, LJ user fancyspinner, and a few other intrepid souls who’ve spoken with me off and on about both the GFFA in general and my SW AU in particular, who’ve all helped me work out some of the various plot kinks) – just spellcheck and grammatik. And yes, I know, I know, it would be better to have a beta. Sorry, y’all, but unless somebody wants to volunteer, I’m afraid you’re going to be stuck with just me doing the proofing.

2.) Once you get into it, if there are chunks that sound so incredibly familiar to some that y’all start to wonder if you’ve read this before somewhere else, well, the short is answer is that you probably have . . . in a “slightly” modified form. I made the mistake of reading James Luceno’s Labyrinth of Evil and I came away from that obsessed with a very particular “what if . . . ?” type of scenario that would change a few events at the very end of that book and pretty much knock the events of Revenge of the Sith so far out of whack that, once the boys would get back down to Coruscant, pretty much everything would start to change. So to save myself from going insane, I basically took part of the ending of Labyrinth of Evil (plus a few other small earlier bits) and a big ol’ chunk out of the beginning of Revenge of the Sith (plus a few other choice bits from later on in the book) and I changed them . . . just a wee bit. Yeah, I could never publish this, but since I’m not crazy enough to ever want to do that and I’m borrowing other people’s pretties in the first place anyway . . . then why the heck not do it this way? Don’t like the idea? Don’t read it. It won’t hurt my feelings none, I promise. Otherwise, reviews and feedback are nice, as they let me know that others are reading and that people actually do have opinions one way or the other about such things as plot, characterization, pacing, etc.

3.) The actual quotations at the beginning of each chapter, preface, prologue, epilogue, and afterword are based on famous quotations that exist in our world. The presence of the quotations themselves, though, are quite deliberately modelled after the “historical” quotations placed at the start of every chapter, etc., in Frank Herbert’s hugely famous sci-fi series Dune (which, in this author’s rather less than humble opinion, has been so influential on the SW GFFA, both in terms of canon and EU, that it should be considered required reading for all truly dedicated SW fans).

Story Notes: Readers should please be aware of the following, while reading this trilogy:

For Book I:

1.) My description of the Obi-Wan’s living quarters in the Temple as well as my description of the Temple itself are deliberately not entirely consistent with canon or EU. This is an AU, after all, and the whole point of an AU is to show how specific points of divergence can change the face of reality . . .

2.) The hybridized kata often referred to in Book I is, like Obi-Wan and Anakin’s (in)famous sparring session, informed mainly by my reading of other fanfic descriptions of Jedi katas, not by any specialized knowledge of Jedi fighting techniques or any specific knowledge of any kind of sword-fighting or martial arts. Given a choice between a stylized dance of sequential moves and countermoves or a more elemental kind of choreography, I chose to go the elemental route. It seemed more natural, to me. However, ifanyone out there happens to know a lot about real-world fighting techniques or Jedi fighting and thinks that that what I have the boys doing sounds incredibly off, please let know (in detail!) so I can fix it!

3.) Lengthy sections in italics can denote one of six things: Memories being shared between two Force-sensitives; thoughts being shared or projected (whether inadvertently or not) between two Force-sensitives or else between two Force spirits; words being spoken by Force spirits who have not taken on a physical bodily form; words being relayed across a comm channel; memories as they are being recalled by a specific person (whether Force-sensitive or not); and/or information being passed on pretty much directly through the Force, whether according to its will or by the use of psychometric memory-impressions. It should be clear, from the context of the italicized passages, which of the six possibilities happens to hold true for any given section. Some memories will, necessarily, be a bit repetitive, so please bear with me!

For Book II:

4.) My description of the Council Chamber is deliberately not entirely consistent with canon or EU. I’m aware of the fact that there isn’t really a round table up there: I have seen the films (numerous times). In this instance, I have willfully altered a canonical detail because the structure of that room, as portrayed in film, frankly feels just a wee bit off kilter, to me. So please keep in mind that this is an AU, after all . . .

5.) When the boys finally do get some alone time, there is a rather sizeable chunk of text that some might consider to be more of an interlude than an advancement of the plot; however, I urge readers not to merely skim the text, as what those two do in (or on the way to) the bedroom carries great weight in terms of their overall relationship, their process of healing, and the path that they (and so, thus, also the Jedi Bendu Order) will take, in the future, regarding both their duty to the Force, their responsibility to the known galaxy (as Jedi Bendu), and their responsibility and duty to one another and to themselves, to seek balance and growth in their personal lives. This holds true not only for such seeming interludes in Book II but other such instances in which the boys find themselves alone, together, in Book III!

6.) Readers should keep in mind that words that appear Gaelic in nature or else modelled on Gaelic terms are meant as place-holders for non-Basic words that are uniquely characteristic of humans springing from one specific shared cultural background and that the particulars of the traditions in the various planetary systems colonized by humans from that original specific cultural group are as much dictated by my muse as by the scant information available about such peoples/worlds/traditions in the SW universe, okay? If my nonstandard Gaelic is confusing to some, just please keep in mind that these Gaelic-seeming words are meant to represent related languages that are spoken (alongside Basic, mind, and really only by certain parts of some of the different populations) on planets scattered across the galaxy from the Core out to the Mid Rim. These languages have had thousands of years and lots of parsecs to evolve in different directions. I’m no linguist, but it seems natural to me that the spelling and pronunciations would be a wee bit different from world to world. It’s really only logical . . .

7.) Please keep in mind that this is a work of AU fanfic. Padmé’s many names and the traditions of her people are as much dictated by my own particular muse as by the rather scant information available about her and her people in the actual SW universe. In fact, one might also do well to keep this in mind when reading about the people (and world) of Alderaan, of Chandrila, and of Grizmallt, too!

For Book III:

8.) Some of the more colorful language sprinkled throughout the trio is genuine SW vernacular, not modified Gaelic of one sort or another. The curious should feel free to visit .com /wiki/Slang and have a good laugh over some of the so-called expletives of the actual canon/EU ’verse!

9.) What happens in Book III with Padmé and Sola is loosely based on what happens with Callista (Callie Masana) and Cray Mingla in Barbara Hambly’s SW EU novel Children of the Jedi, with the re-embodiment of Callista (as Callista Ming) in Cray Mingla’s cast-off body, for those who’re interested.

10.) All issues of metaphysics aside, it is canon that the Force is an energy field that binds together all things. It should be noted that energy is defined as any potential for causing change. In physics, this is generally defined as the ability to do work; however, as Einstein proved, energy and mass are equivalent under certain conditions. Light is defined as electromagnetic radiation of any wavelength (though we humans tend to focus only on what’s visible to the unaided eye). Because of the wave-particle duality of matter, though, light simultaneously exhibits properties of both waves and particles. In other words, light is a very special and specific form of energy, and its speed is crucial to the fundamental equivalence between energy and mass. Now, I don’t know about anyone else, but to me, the implications of entities that exist after the death of their physical bodies through some power of the Force seems pretty clearly tied up to the phenomenon of light itself as well as to the equivalency of energy and mass. What I’ve arrived at, though, has been through my own extrapolations, though it all seems pretty consistent with canon, to me.

11.) Obviously, I am neither a molecular biologist nor a genetic engineer. For those who are curious about such things as genetics, gene splicing, DNA, and chromosomes, I suggest a visit to . org /wiki/MainPage (the Wikipedia) and a search of such terms. If anyone knows more about such things and finds any glaring errors in my descriptions of them, please give me a detailed accounting of how I’ve screwed up so that I can fix my mistakes! Otherwise, for those interested in what midi-chlorians are supposed to be and how they’re (probably) supposed to work, articles at www. theforce. net /midichlorians/ and . com /wiki/Midi-chlorian should be helpful.

12.) When readers get to where this request will make sense, please don’t protest about what happens if all you want to do is complain that this is supposed to be a slash fanfic. For one thing, it’s really not. (And it’s the author’s opinion that it would be ridiculous in the extreme to try to restrict characters in a ’verse as vast and diverse as SW to such a limiting/artificial strictly either/or vision of sexuality.) And for another, yes, this does actually have bearing on what I’ve got planned for the overall plot of the AU series, as the effects of this will be far-reaching and quite important in the trilogy’s sequel(s). In other words, I’m asking you to please trust that this isn’t just a minor instance of insanity on the author’s part, as it honestly isn’t. Okay?

13.) Teräs Käsi or “steel hand,” is a weaponless martial art form in the SW canon/EU based on a real-life fighting style called Silat. Please see . com /wiki/TeräsKäsi for more details.

14.) Joustavia Käsi and Joustavia Keho (and no, I don’t speak Finnish. If these names don’t essentially translate to “flexible hand” and “flexible body,” then please let me know how to fix what I’ve gotten wrong) are my notions of GFFA versions of yoga . org /wiki/Yoga and Tai Chi Chuan . org /wiki/ThaiChi for those who’re interested. Specifically, these are schools of martial arts created and perfected by the people of Grizmallt.

15.) Alderaanian blade-dancing is my own idea, though it’s based on sword dance . org /wiki/Sworddance

16.) For those who don’t know, in the GFFA, a minder is a kind of healer similar to a therapist or a psychiatrist. Minders are often empathic (if not actually telepathic). Also, understanding Lorrdian kinetic communication is often considered akin to being an empath/telepath in the GFFA.

17.) I am not a physicist. The idea of being able to destroy a Force spirit (which is essentially a kind of energy) or an entity of the Force (which is another kind of energy, the Force being a kind of energy and energy being convertible to mass or to specific work functions) by disrupting to the point of destroying and/or dispersing to the point of cancelling out the waveform pattern inherent to that entity or that spirit’s energy is based on what I remember about the principle of destruction interference, which is what happens when two out of phase waves collide. Contrawise, I’m assuming that waves that are in phase or close enough to being in phase with one another would undergo constructive interference, which would result in, well, something like what we get when Anakin and Obi-Wan join forces, or when Jedi form a Force meld or battle meld (which is a sort of refinement of battle meditation that involves a synergistic joining together and sharing of different minds and abilities among the whole of such a joined group).

18.) I am, obviously, not a doctor. I had basic health/anatomy classes in school, and the internet has all kinds of helpful anatomical info, but if anything strikes anyone as being extremely off, in the description of the different parts of the arm and how they all work together, please let me know, so I can fix it!

19.) Because I am sighted and I first came to the SW ’verse as a five-year-old given a VHS of what would come to be known as A New Hope to watch, my AU tends to play out in my head more like a combination movie (complete with soundtrack!) and theatrical play with beaucoup soliloquies than just a written work. I therefore tend to visually (and sometimes also aurally, but not necessarily, if it’s someone whose voice I’ve never heard in real life) model both my original characters and characters from the EU who’ve never appeared onscreen in the films on specific actors/actresses/singers/models/famous individuals or on specific characters as played by certain actors/actresses in another movie or tv series that I’ve enjoyed. If readers think that they should recognize such individuals as Darred Janren, the kid in Anakin’s rather disturbing dream, the youth in Bail’s dream, or the boy in Obi-Wan’s dream/vision, that’s because odds are that these readers have seen and enjoyed the same tv shows and films that I have.

20.) Readers should note that my Ahsoka Tano has a somewhat . . . different (and, hopefully, more coherent) backstory than that presented by the EU and the animated film and tv series The Clone Wars. Though I have tried to keep the background details of my AU as consistent with the canon and EU as possible (or to at least clearly show where points of divergence have caused changes in those details), especially in matters touching on the actual characters and their backstories, the fact of the matter is that the new animated film and tv series The Clone Wars and its accompanying book series are, thus far, not terribly consistent with the earlier timeline established by either the previous animated Clone Wars series or the previously published written/illustrated EU materials covering the Clone Wars. In addition to the fact that the basic portrayal of the relationship between Obi-Wan and Anakin is wildly out of character for them, in the recent published materials including Ahsoka, Ahsoka herself, as a brash, backtalking fourteen-year-old youngling randomly handed off to Anakin in the middle of a major battle (which occurs far too early in the war for him to have even been Knighted yet) as a potentil Padawan learner, is hugely inconsistent with both the already established (in the EU) rules surrounding the choosing of a Padawan apprentice and the basic environment (and thorough grounding in obedience) that members of the Jedi Order are brought up in, according to both the canon and the EU. It is my hope that presenting Ahsoka as a Padawan whose Master spends much of the war too injured to go on active missions with her and who is therefore often assigned to Anakin and Obi-Wan for the furtherance of her own education and training, in the Force, will make more sense, taken in conjunction with the canon and the whole of the EU, than just randomly dumping her on Anakin sometime during the first year of the war.

21.) I am specifically a huge fan of Star Wars (canon and EU, though I admittedly love some of more than other parts of it) and of Dune (primarily, Frank Herbert’s Dune series, though I’ll admit the prequels and sequels to the series co-written by his son, Brian Herbert, and Kevin J. Anderson are sometimes . . . interesting, on a number of levels; secondarily, the film and two mini-series based on the first three books in the saga, though I personally believe Children of Dune much better made, much more true to the books, and frankly much more watchable than the mini-series for Dune). I believe that the Dune series is one of the most massively obvious and pervasive sci-fi influences on the GFFA (both for the canon saga and the EU, though perhaps slightly more obviously in some of the EU) in existence and that there are several areas of major overlap and/or striking similarity in various cultures/societies, worlds, peoples, belief systems, etc. I also believe that, if the Dune ’verse is taken as a whole and is viewed next to the SW ’verse as a whole, the two ’verses form an example of one of the nearest feats of natural near extension of one another into a single fitted whole (whether actualy intended that way by their various authors or not) that it is possible to find in the entire published body of sci-fi literature and film. Thus, my concept of the GFFA and SW in general tends to be influenced (sometimes quite heavily) by my knowledge of the Dune ’verse. Therefore, readers who are familiar with Dune can expect to find certain points of similarity between certain individuals, societies/cultures, belief systems, peoples, worlds, etc., in my SW AU series to those populating the greater Dune series – even more points of similarity than are already present in the SW canon and EU. This does not mean that I am writing a crossover, folks, any more than it means that my AU series is suddenly a crossover because I’ve decided to model an original character or an EU character physically on an actor/character from another show/fandom. This AU series is not a true crossover series. It is merely, like the canon and EU, highly influenced by the cultural version of a primordial soup that helped to form it. Since SW itself is intertextual and references/alludes to/borrows from myriad different popular mediums and/or specific cultural works, my AU is intertextual and references/alludes to/borrows from several various popular mediums and/or specific cultural works, especially those relating to the Dune ’verse. It just so happens that I might be being a wee bit more obvious (or at least more forthcoming) about my influences and various little homages to other works I love than Lucas and/or the various EU writers have been/are being. Okay?

22.) Speaking of which, in case anyone thinks Zai’ac Malthias Konran sounds like he’s a younger version of a certain character in another sci-fi ’verse (tv series & movie & comics & books), well, all I will say is, you may be on to something, there, friend . . . Shiny!! Heh!

23.) While I’m on the topic of crossovers (which this AU series really and truly technically is not), let me just make it clear that it is not truly a crossover if the ’verses involved all agree that there’s some genuinely unique created object or person that ties them together by existing in all of the different ’verses in question. The 03-K64 Firefly-class mid-bulk transport with standard radion accelerator core is found in three distinctly different ’verses – Firefly/Serenity, the reimagined Battlestar Galactica, and Star Wars, as noted/referenced/documented in the following places: . org/wiki/Serenity (Fireflyvessel) and starwars. /wiki/ Firefly-classmid-bulktransport and . org/wiki/References intheRe-imaginedSeries and .o rg/wiki/Miniseries ,Analysis and . org/wiki/ Fleet(RDM) and, for the ship herself in Joss Whedon’s creations, on . org/Firefly/HomePage and, more specifically, on . org/Firefly/Serenity – which technically means that all three ’verses are meant, in some way, to read as if they exist within the larger framework of the same universe. Though I did not know about the existence of the Firefly-class in all three ’verses when I first began writing my AU series, I have, since, discovered that fact (obviously) and decided to both make use of this fact in my (eventual) explanation for the existence of humans and near-humans in the GFFA and to expand the breadth of the GFFA by allowing it to encompass the rather odd spread of space occupied by both the terraformed central/core worlds of the Union of Allied Planets (i.e., the Alliance) and its conquered but still largely indepedently-minded border/frontier planets and moons. Readers should therefore not be surprised to eventually see works in the AU series that essentially incorporate the Firefly/Serenity ’verse (or that hint at the existence of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica ’verse) within them.

24.) Readers should note that, for the purposes of my SW AU series, I’ve been given permission by LJ user cariel both to refer to some of the details of her and cariel and bloodraven77’s AU SW Dormékin works and to use the names that they came up with for children that Anakin and Dormé and that Obi-Wan and Sabé have together in her various AU SW Dormékin and Sobiwan works. Readers familiar with these AU works will notice that the names and details are all somewhat skewed and generally also much darker (regarding the backgrounds of certain characters) than how she’s written things. Consider it the result of viewing what could have been, according to some of the various possible branchings of time’s probable courses, through the lense of a far different reality than the alternate realities she writes within. (The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics and quantum indeterminacy would, I think, tend to require that the butterfly effect compound itself in such a case.) I have an actual itemized version of the differences in the lives of Dormé and Sabé based on what I know about how they grew up in my AU and how I generally recall them growing up in cariel’s and cariel and bloodraven77’s AUs, if anybody’s interested, but please keep in mind that I’m not an expert, as I can’t claim to have read all of these many works, though it was through them specifically that I pretty much first became aware of the existence of both the fandom ships and rationals supporting the ships of Obi-Wan/Sabé (Sobiwan or SabéWan) and Anakin/Dormé and/or Vader/Dormé (Dormékin).

25.) Readers should also please note that my grasp of the character of Padmé Amidala underwent an enormous evolution during the process of writing the Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith trio, and that at least part of the final stages of this evolution was inpsired/influenced by my discovery of one of the first truly sympathetic portrayals of Padmé as a consistently strong and yet immensely human character I’d ever really come across in the SW fandom: the Padmé Amidala Naberrie Kenobi of so-out-of-ideas and aruna7’s wonderful ongoing AU series One Path (which is essentially an AU rewrite of the timeframe covered by the six-film saga), a combination of fanfic, vids, and icons/manips that can be found, for interested parties, at the LJ community shipperasylum. It wasn’t until after I began to read and watch this superb AU ’verse that I truly felt as if I had a complete grasp on both Padmé’s full potential as a character and the true depth of her tragedy (as opposed to Anakin’s tragedy and the galaxy’s tragedy), in both the films and my own AU work, and it was at this point that I went from being a writer who’d started out frankly feeling so let by down her character as to wholly despise her within the context of the canon and yet who’d nonetheless gradually come (in the process of writing first her death and then her unflinchingly courageous and selfless reaction to her death) to feel as if her character had perhaps been badly used by both the Sith and certain circumstances and events and so was at least somewhat worthy of sympathy, to being a writer who not only felt sorry for but truly liked and so mourned the passing of Padmé’s character within the context of the story. This would never have happened without the insights into Padmé’s potential as a character, as provided by so-out-of-ideas and aruna7, and I can assure you, dear readers, that the plans I have in mind for the character I will, for now, simply refer to as the aftermath of Padmé-in-Sola, would also never have come about, if not for the discussions I’ve had with so-out-of-ideas and aruna7 about the truly wondrous AU they’ve created and their ideas about how some things in the GFFA work. Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith: Book III: The Promise of a New Order would be far different than it is and far less than it is, if not for the insight and ideas and new direction afford by my contact with One Path and my many friendly discussions on various SW-related topics with so-out-of-ideas and aruna7, folks!