Loftwings and Demons

I have now written five future scenes for Dooku in Heart of Shadow.  It's going to be a while before I get to a place I can put any of these particular scenes in, but I do have an upcoming scene with Dooku which should happen much sooner, so that will be more fun to write with these future possibilities in mind.  He's only been briefly mentioned in the story so far, but I plan for him to be an important character in this story.

I have an enduring fascination with Palpatine redemption fics.  I've thus far read every last one of them (at least the ones in English) that I could find, even the ones that have premises I normally wouldn't give the time of day.  I haven't found that many, but they do exist.  Some of them are short, others long, some complete and some not, but I always want to see how different people approach the idea. 

I also think a lot about these works as I write my story Heart of Shadow.  The approach I'm taking is fundamentally different from the approach others have chosen less out of an intrinsic desire to be different and more because there are different questions I want to explore and different preoccupations that I have (like how I can add as many gratuitous action scenes as possible).  Though, also, if a story is already written, why do the same thing from the same angle?  The original story (not original as in owns the ip but original as in came before) is already written, and it seems to me if someone wants to see that angle explored, they can just read the original.  Though here I only refer to fics beyond a certain level of similarity, since I expect some elements to recur in different fic due to the similar focus.  So that applies to the finished fics at least.  As for the unfinished ones I've seen, they just aren't something my brain can fill in the remainder for (even if the creator of the work would be okay with that, which they very well might not be).  Perhaps someday their authors will.  Still, I think a lot about these works because they all explore this same question of redeeming a character often considered irredeemable.  So I think considering the other approaches and angles that have been taken can be valuable even when you are not exploring those approaches or taking those angles yourself.

Anyway, this is something I'm always on the lookout for, so if anyone ever just wants to point out a Palpatine redemption fic to me, either one they found or one they wrote, it would be much appreciated.  Maybe I should try to formulate a list of the ones I already know about, but as I have yet to do so, I'm fine with people telling me about ones I've already read.  Also if you want to give any commentary on any that *you've* read, I'd be interested in hearing other people's thoughts, either here or by private message.  I've discussed a couple of the Palpatine redemption fics I'm aware of in the comments of my fic Heart of Shadow with other commenters, if anyone has the same level of curiosity about these things as I do.

The Darth Bane series is giving me lots of ideas for things to incorporate into Heart of Shadow, both on a history and world details level and on a narrative level. 

One thing I enjoy about the Darth Bane series is that it has a lot of tense high stakes scenes for the characters, but also has downtime scenes where we get to see character development.  I obviously did really enjoy the Darth Plagueis novel itself, and my favorite characters are in that novel, but the Darth Bane trilogy shows what's possible to do with a period of time and characters that are not fleshed out by any canon materials.  In my case, I have an easier task regarding the characters and the time period, but I will be introducing some new characters and obviously the events of the story will cause this AU time period to diverge wildly from the one shown in the canon, which obviously presents its own challenges.

Pruned a couple of the ramble-tags on my Cut Strings fic and added a search tag for 'Fake Marriage' on my Heart of Shadow fic since it definitely has that trope going on.  I like some degree of ramble tags on a fic (both on the ones I read and the ones I write) because I feel that they can preview aspects of the fic that the summary or the more conventional tags can't as easily do, but I think they should be limited in number and should supplement rather than replace the more functional tags.  Also felt my 'Marriage of Convenience' tag didn't quite encapsulate the entire dynamic I have going on with Talzin/Palpatine in that fic, so I hoped the new tag might better communicate that.

So for anyone wondering what's going on with my fanfic writing, I thought I'd talk a bit about my progress.  Writing is operational again, which means I've been actively writing and editing both the next chapter of Heart of Shadow and the next chapter of Cut Strings.  Right now it looks like the Heart of Shadow chapter might finish up before the Cut Strings chapter, but honestly I can't say for sure.  I really expected it to be the other way around, because I had a ton of trouble deciding what I wanted to do with the scene between Sidious and Talzin, but beyond some minor editing to add more description and indulge my perfectionistic streak, I've mostly finished not only that scene, but also a Plagueis scene I plan to include in the next chapter.  The Plagueis scene took me a while to think up the core ideas for, but once I got those, that part was quite simple for me to write.

The Cut Strings chapter was pretty straightforward once I started writing it, though it has a lot of POV switches.  It needs some more scenes, though, and there's some stuff I suspect will undergo significant editing.  I've already done some editing for the chapter, though.

I don't even know what I'm going to do with all these flashbacks of Plagueis and Tenebrous, but they sure are fun to write.  I'm fairly sure I can fit some of it into Heart of Shadow, though. Maybe I can do a spin-off story if it doesn't all fit.  Won't spoil the details, but I do want to talk about the generalities a bit.  My headcanon, which I think is reasonably canon compliant, is that Plagueis waited until Tenebrous was super old to kill him, so a fair number of these scenes show Tenebrous trying to get Plagueis to kill him as he gets older and older. I thought about it, and while I'd originally thought of making Tenebrous slightly younger when he died, I think I'm going to make him live to be a little over one hundred and have the average lifespans of biths be like 90.  Plagueis was just really not in a rush, lol.  Tenebrous really wants Plagueis to kill him while he's in the prime of his life because he feels like it's the Sith Way (tm), but Plagueis just bides his time and then...bides even more time.  My headcanon is that muuns have an average lifespan of 500, so he just doesn't feel like that's a terribly long time to wait.

I mean, I definitely have some stuff in my flashbacks for this story that I think are pretty unsettling, but I do find that part somewhat amusing. 

I also have a flashback of Plagueis and Sidious from shortly after Sidious becomes a Sith that I definitely do plan to find a place for somewhere in the story.

I finally got a rough draft for this scene from the next chapter of Heart of Shadow down!  That was a tough one!  It's a bit rough around the edges, but I think it has all the major components it needs.

I'm having so much fun writing baby Maul in Heart of Shadow. It's fun to write characters at different ages. Of course, Maul is going to grow up in this story since I plan for it to go up to the Revenge of the Sith time period. One of the fun parts of starting this story where I do (besides my excitement on getting to do a Darth Plagueis AU), is that I get to give Maul a much better childhood. This was one of my major motivations for structuring the story the way I did, as opposed to starting it during the Prequels time period.