Starkiller - Blog Posts

Now playing: III-XV. Desperate Times and Desperate Measures, pt. 1

In which Padmé makes a difficult decision, and Vader spends some time with his apprentice.

Well, the writing muse is currently sulking in a corner and tearing out her hair, but the art muse has been feeling extremely chatty!

This is the first part of an intended 4-or-so panel series/comic strip, featuring Ahsoka and Starkiller as Rebels—and yes, they are 100% sending this pic to Vader as a postcard. Hi Master, wish you were here!

Did this one by sketching out one figure from a reference photo, then putting a pic of the sketch into Krita. Copied the outline, then used a colorize mask (ooh, fancy! literally had no idea this was even a thing a week ago, smh), added shading, extra outlining, and background.

Many thanks to the random redditor who mentioned making just one block with the rectangular select tool in Krita and then copying it multiple times to make a stone/brick wall. It makes life so much easier.

The Fulcrum + jaig eyes design in the graffiti is not entirely mine. Ages ago I saw a similar design while scrolling Pinterest, and later decided I wanted to make my own version as part of a 501 design.

If anyone has read this far and knows of any good Ahsoka & Starkiller fics, please share! I didn't find much of anything on AO3, but would love to see people's takes on how they might get along.

Lately, I've been procrastinating writing a tricky bit of Fortunate's Rule wanting to draw a scene where Ahsoka has been knighted, and Anakin has taken on Starkiller as his second padawan.

This drawing began as a pencil sketch on a light day at work. (On printer paper. With a crappy eraser. It was painful.) And then I photographed the sketch, loaded the pic in Krita, and colored over it. Then found a Varykino pic to go off of for the background, since the trio seemed to require one.

I'm fairly happy with it! Really pleased with the shading on the clothes, and with Ahsoka's lekku in general. Shading Anakin's face was incredibly trying for some reason, however, and I'm not at all sure that he looks ~10 years older than in TCW.

Oh, and Krita has this cool impasto brush that made filling in the gravel on the patio so easy! There's also a nice sponge brush that made the water similarly simple.

(See below for OG sketch and pose reference credit.)

The OG sketch:

Based off of this pose reference that I found on Pinterest, by mellon_soup.

Now playing: III-VIII. Questions, pt 1

In which Piett is overwhelmed and Starkiller isn't helping, and Numa and Ahsoka have very different interactions with a raxshir on Shili.

Now playing: III-VII. Small Mercies

In which Ahsoka's faith is shaken, the Rebels head to Shili to do Rebel-y things, and Vader returns to the Executor to train Starkiller.

Now playing: III-VI, The New Way of Things

In which Obi-Wan and Padmé contemplate, Shili seeks to join the Rebellion, Piett decides to befriend a homicidal child, and Vader faces his Master after the disaster that was Wrea.

Characters keep getting ideas and running with them.

So, uh, Piett and Starkiller... yeah, this was definitely not the plan when I first decided to include those characters in Fortune's Rule. (Heck, they weren't originally supposed to be in the fic at all, but then neither was at least half of the story that's happened thus far, so....)

They were supposed to have pretty separate parts in the story, and they were both going to be much more minor than they're turning out. Until Piett apparently decided Starkiller needs a friend. And he's definitely not wrong, so who am I to say no?

The unfortunate thing here is that now I'm going to have to figure out how the heck Vader is going to deal with the news that his admiral and his apprentice are in cahoots behind his back.

*looks sternly at characters*

Do you see how much extra work you are making for me? Now, behave!

(This seems to have become a recurring theme in the writing of this story. Ahsoka and Padmé weren't originally going to have as close a relationship as they do, but then they decided to take the reins for just one chapter, and look how that turned out.)

Now playing: III-II. Division

In which Padmé sends the twins to Tatooine, Starkiller makes progress, Piett begins to get in over his head, and a conversation is had which has been a long time coming.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a Senator survived. A Jedi did not forsake society. Two siblings were never separated. Nor were two Commanders. And a Rogue found comrades.

The Empire has risen, but the embers of the Republic yet glow in the hearts of the just. The stage is set for rebellion, and both within the Rebel Alliance and outside of it, many fates shall interweave, for the luck of the Disaster Lineage and its associates has ever flowed in a peculiar current. And if that current is stirred, from time to time, by the enterprising Pirate… well, not for nothing has it been said that Fortune rules life.

Aka, Padmé lives. The fractured Chaos Clan begins to reunite. Tarkin suffers a raging case of Hondo-induced identity theft. Vader dials the wrong number and ends up connecting to the commlink of a Rebel agent called Revenant. Add in some youngling hijinks, and all of this is slowly building to a massive headache for one Sheev Palpatine.

Now playing: III-I. Reeling

Wherein Padmé, Ahsoka, Vader, and company begin to deal with the fallout of the past few chapters.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a Senator survived. A Jedi did not forsake society. Two siblings were never separated. Nor were two Commanders. And a Rogue found comrades.

The Empire has risen, but the embers of the Republic yet glow in the hearts of the just. The stage is set for rebellion, and both within the Rebel Alliance and outside of it, many fates shall interweave, for the luck of the Disaster Lineage and its associates has ever flowed in a peculiar current. And if that current is stirred, from time to time, by the enterprising Pirate… well, not for nothing has it been said that Fortune rules life.

Aka, Padmé lives. The fractured Chaos Clan begins to reunite. Tarkin suffers a raging case of Hondo-induced identity theft. Vader dials the wrong number and ends up connecting to the commlink of a Rebel agent called Revenant. Add in some youngling hijinks, and all of this is slowly building to a massive headache for one Sheev Palpatine.

One of the fun things about writing is how, sometimes, you accidentally write things a certain way, and then, weeks later, you realise that what you wrote actually has significance to the story, and it adds a cool little detail to some aspect of the plot or characterisation.

In Fortune's Rule, I've written Starkiller bowing in the presence of his master. Just today, though, I realised that the more proper Sith thing would be to kneel. The true explanation for the bowing instead, of course, is that it was entirely unintentional and in fact carries absolutely no meaning whatsoever. I was a little sloppy and didn't think things through sufficiently.

However, in-world, it looks like some sort of choice on Vader's part. He taught his apprentice to bow (more a Jedi thing, I think?), rather than kneel (a Sith thing, and more subservient). Perhaps Vader's Anakin is showing a little bit, in not wanting to make Starkiller demonstrate the extreme subservience that a Sith master usually expects from their apprentice (i.e. that Sidious expects from him). At the same time, I think it also fits with Vader's character. He's a military leader, not a political one like Sidious, and as such probably prioritizes utility over ceremony. There's no need to bother with the whole kneeling thing, when a bow will do.

I love things like this, because they show how, for all that a lot of planning and intentional symbolism may go into writing, sometimes what the reader sees as significant is just a surprisingly functional mistake. (And it also makes me wonder how much of the stuff we analyzed in high school lit classes was intentional, and how much was coincidental.)