Word count on the rest of The Form of Her Heart is somewhere around 17k words with none of the individual chapters complete. Maybe one day it'll even get finished. Why am like this
George Lucas is many things but he's utterly iconic for treating an audience of millions of people like a workshop group. Like yes release your movies in theatres and then edit the fuck out of them based on the feedback after. He is my new role model in this area specifically
(Swapped the order of a section in one chapter of biting his own tale lol)
Posting Chapter 1 of The Form of her Heart--part 9 of my Biting His Own Tale series--for @barrissday!
(Chapter 1 is canon compliant and standalone from the rest of the series)
Before clones, time travelers, and especially before Geonosis, Barriss is a Padawan exploring Soreso, the endurance form.
Amavikka!Beru is a woman in STEM (Surgeries To Emancipate Multitudes)
In other news, chapter 2 of In the House of the Sun is up!
Amatakka: A Learning Guide!
For anyone interested in learning Amatakka (or just about the language & culture) but finds the various spreadsheets either intimidating or incomprehensible, Learning Amatakka: Berim Takkarie is a written guide designed for learners! It includes recordings of spoken Amatakka, notes on Amavikka culture, neat charts, and more.
From the Preface:
"Learning Amatakka is a guide designed for a learner of Amatakka to be exposed to the depth and breadth of Amatakka vocabulary and grammar, and with a little luck, become somewhat conversational."
"Berim Takkarie means Song Dialect [referring to the dialect endemic to much of Tatooine], for the language of hearth and home, which recalls the musical stories of the very eldest grandmothers, and an endless search for water."
Chapter 1 is currently posted, and it focuses on learning to introduce oneself, and a whole bunch of notes on gender. Many more chapters are in the works, and the guide is open to comments and questions!
- A guide to @looseleafteeaves dialect of Amatakka is linked within this one.
Many thanks to @emotionalsupportjedi, who accidentally inspired this entire project by asking 'teeaves if they could recommend a place to start learning Amatakka! Please enjoy this ongoing textbook. And even moreso thanks to 'teeaves and @whywouldiknow-that for their contributions so far.
Amavikka Poem for Singers
The poem which Beru chants while performing surgery in In the House of the Sun, translated into Amatakka,
Note:
- This version of the post is formatted for desktop, it is probably useless for screen readers and looks like shit on mobile, for which I am sorry, but I really don't feel like making extra copies of it today. If I get around to it, I will link them.
- The lyrical English is not always an exact translation of the Amatakka. Translation notes have been provided below the cut.
Amatakka Lyrical English Translation Line Leimasil Berun Paash Poem for Singers Beru rekva Singer cache zi puu And speak zi mekva And slash Beru jilanva ute-le-lana. Singer stalk your metal prey. (4) Erkshal naal, Red sun go, Dershal seva, White sun stay, Leia erud, zi Leia stand, and Ekkreth karinva. Ekkreth sway. (8) Beru naalva Singer stay zi erud and stand zi karinva and sway Beru su-dian mas shelva. Singer you've a sharpened eye. (12) Depur vavalutue, Depur rage, Amu marapaashva, Amu cry, Leia tund, zi Leia grow, and Ekkreth reeva. Ekkreth fly. (16) Beru vavalutu Singer rage zi marapaashva and cry zi shum and know Beru te masu du rimilutva. Singer you'll get no reprieve. (20) Baara bun, Baara wait, Ay-lel jadva, Ay-lel leave, Tena tun, zi Tena live, and Maru keepva. Maru theive. (24) Beru tun Singer live zi bun and wait zi vev and see Beru masuk dis ekev. Singer you will set us free. (28)
Translation notes:
Chapter 1 of In the House of the Sun is up today! It is currently part 5 of the Biting His Own Tale series.
adragonsfriend reblogged
When did the Jedi lose their way?
A notion put forward by Tales of the Jedi and The Acolyte is the idea that the Jedi were losing their way, as an Order, by letting themselves become more institutionalized and mired in bureaucracy.
Is that the intended narrative? Nope!
Because here's the thing, Lucas acknowledges the fact that the Jedi start to be corrupted, at some point. But if you ask him, that happens as a consequences of being used as generals during the Clone Wars.
(note the keywords "used" and "forced"... aka they didn't willingly join the war, they were drafted by the Senate to fight in it, see here for more research & quotes)
But during The Phantom Menace? The Jedi are in their heyday.
"You see the heyday of the Jedi, when they are the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy, sort of like the old marshals out West. And there's thousands of them." - Vanity Fair, 1999
Their only fault is that:
- the Senate is their boss and the Senate is corrupted af which limits their mandate greatly (so not really the Jedi's fault, but it does make their hands tied)
- they're oblivious to the Sith's scheme.
This notion that "they were so institutionalized/detached from the regular Joes of the galaxy that they became dispassionate and lost their way, forgot about the little guy" is absolute headcanon from fans and current authors. Lucas never brings it up once.
On the contrary, during development, he and concept artists took measures to make them look less institutionalized and heartless.
The Jedi temple isn't meant to signify an ivory tower, it represents a place of warmth/worship that contrasts with the coldness dispassion of the Senate building.
The Jedi used to wear uniforms, it was softened to a humble tunic.
Because the intended narrative is that the Republic (including the Jedi) and Anakin's downfall are paralleled with Palpatine's rise to power. There is a direct correlation, both in-universe and thematically.
- As Palpatine becomes Emperor, the Republic dies under thunderous applause while the Jedi get slaughtered, and Anakin becomes Darth Vader.
- As Palpatine gets emergency powers, the Republic weakens because of the war, the Jedi's values are foregone and Anakin is put in situations where he fails to uphold the Jedi teachings, over and over.
And it all starts when Palpatine becomes Chancellor after pushing out Finis Valorum, marking the end of an age of value.
(Get it? Finis Valorum? "Finis", latin for "end", "Valorem", latin for "value" puns are fun!)
A scree-bat launches itself from a branch, opening flimsi-thin wings to flutter over to a berry bush. It lands on a bobbing branch and chitters with happiness. Its sharp teeth puncture the skin of a purple fruit, round with juice, and sugar spills over its tongue.
The Room of a Thousand Fountains is an oasis in the Force, and from Coruscant’s durasteel structure. These days, the arching canopy of its trees and the trickle of water over the land provide the only true shelter in the Temple. Always, there were pockets of distress or anxiety here. The daily fluctuations no one is immune to. But beneath those was always the foundation of goodness wrought by a thousand years of difficult, personal work done by a collective of individuals seeking rich soil.
Under the soil—there are layers of earth here, deep enough to turn a patch of space on a city planet into real water system—an eight-legged chanit marches, holding a grain of sand in its first set of legs. It follows a string of its fellows, thousands long. Each carries a brick for the base of their colony.
The foundation is still there, those individuals working as hard as they ever have, harder even, to be the best of themselves.
Dozens of species of moss, clover, and grass cover the ground. They spring up easily from the right soil, and with enough water. Their roots are tended by fungi gardeners in a relationship half as old as the Force itself.
But after two years of war, even the Jedi Order can begin to buckle, hairline cracks appearing in the structure. Others in the Order are aware of how war clouds the Force. Each of them are aware of their own struggles.
A single betnek tree grows taller than anything else in the garden. Its bark is smooth, its leaves wide. It holds a taf-hawk's nest in its branches and shelters a Jedi in its shade. After it traveled from Ryloth through deep space as a seedling nearly eight hundred years ago, its tap roots reached through the soil of the gardens until they broke through the stone base of the Temple.
It is Yoda alone whom the Force allows to reach out and touch the cracks, trace the way they’ll develop, see the way the whole will shatter if left unattended.
In a time when most Jedi favor the saber, Yoda meditates. He fills the cracks with vines, moss, and mortar made of gentle joy. He lifts columns and braces roofs with woody sprouts until they heal on their own. To pockets of fatigue, he offers the high trickle of streams over layers of silt and loam and sand and home, so that war weary jedi find healing. His work is never ending. Often, he loses ground. Still, he centers himself in the Force and stands, as mighty as betnek tree and as subtle as moss, a bulwark against the evil prowling outside his home.
This is what it means to be the grandmaster of the Jedi Order
—the canon compliant part of This Story can Kill You
massive props to fic authors who successfully portray just how immature, unsightly, cruel, childish, harmful, irritating, frankly downright embarrassing Anakin’s personality can be. I cannot do it myself because I cannot handle characters who constantly embarrass themselves—especially by yelling all their feelings like put that back inside your chest where it belongs please—I used to skip large sections of books as a kid simply so I didn’t have to read that shit
(this is what goes through my head when ppl compliment my post Vader Anakin as not feeling like clone wars era anakin btw. like yeah that is what I’m going for but it’s also like that cuz clone wars era anakin is above my fanfictional pay grade)
adragonsfriend reblogged
Conventional short story writing wisdom says don't name (at least in the story itself) characters that aren't going to be at least somewhat important, but you see then I write both clones and Amavikka tatooine slave culture and suddenly i gotta have not only names but meaningful names for literally everybody
If anyone was wondering how writing is going this evening, this is my latest note about additions to the current section,
[ID: screenshot from word document. It reads, add fucking footnotes??? barriss why are you like this (im in love). End ID]
Conventional short story writing wisdom says don't name (at least in the story itself) characters that aren't going to be at least somewhat important, but you see then I write both clones and Amavikka tatooine slave culture and suddenly i gotta have not only names but meaningful names for literally everybody
The proofreading almost killed me, but chapter 2 of The Children of the Mother is up!
Scrapped "Ekkreth" (anakin) having a purple lightsaber in Biting His Own Tale--it was mostly born of purple being my favorite color recently anyway, rather than any color symbolism
His lightsaber is now a warm blue cobalt of sorts, as opposed to his normal cyan
Kinda like this:
[ID: a row of different coloured lightsabers in rainbow order. An arrow is drawn on, pointing from the cyan lightsaber to a darker blue one. End ID]
Biting His Own Tale update (finally)!
Chapter 1 of The Children of the Mother, now part 1 of the series, is up now
Just for the record, whenever I say things like “screw mandalorian clone things, they do blank instead,” I dont particularly mean it. Manalorian clones and all the world building done around that idea is really cool and I enjoy it a lot—I just also think it’s neat to get outside an idea that’s become so common in the fandom, and also I just realized characters knowing less about “their” culture—or a culture they have some kind of right to but not knowledge/experience of—than another character they encounter is deeply interesting to me. Call it having parents who immigrated but also kinda assimilated/got used to the US before I was forming memories and are weird people in general vs. little me with social anxiety trying to figure out which things that I was embarrassed about them doing were (a) even weird in the first place, (b) happening because they weren’t American, (c) happening because they were just weird, (d) weird of me to be embarrassed about at all.
It’s just a weird in-between place to exist. But anyway
Mando clones are cool. My clones (not my clones like clones of me that would be a terrible idea) tell ghost stories about sea creatures instead of therapy, and they dont give a fuck about armour except of course for when they do
Some Biting His Own Tale lineage trees
I love nothing more than writing out fucked up family trees. At least in the Dooku version everything goes in one direction
Will probably add different versions of this as they become relevant
The final chapter of The Supreme Chancellor's Diary is up!