The Wookieepedia Page On PROXY Doesn't Say What His Specific Origin Is, But It Does Say He's A Prototype

Noticing something funny about my fanart

So, a few weeks ago, I did a drawing for one of the chapters in Fortune's Rule—a little digital sketch of Padmé and Luke. And then I'm looking at this drawing, and wondering why the heck does something about this picture look familiar, and then I realise:

It's Star Wars meets Mary Cassatt.

My sketch:

A couple of Mary Cassatt paintings:

Young Mother Sewing

Mère et enfant (Reine Lefebre and Margot before a Window)

And then, last week, I did another drawing, to use as a sort of banner-thing for the story. And I'm looking at it. And looking. And getting this creeping, yucky feeling that a certain painting style always inspires in me. And asking myself why I've just created Star Wars meets Hudson River School, because something about the lighting and the semi-desolation of the landscape is very reminiscent of that style.

My drawing:

Hudson River School paintings:

A View of the Two Lakes and Mountain House, Catskill Mountains, Morning, by Thomas Cole

Mount Washington from the Valley of Conway, by John Frederick Kensett

Seriously, why does this keep happening? Have these things have just been lurking in the brain since middle school, waiting for an excuse to escape? And what the heck is going to be next?

More art: Rebel graffiti!

It's also a sneak peek for Fortune's Rule p-III, ch-II! (Or possibly ch-III, depending on how stuff works out.)

So, I love it when SW fanart/comics include aurebesh. I really enjoy decoding the secret messages and seeing if there's anything interesting hidden in them! Naturally, then, I needed an excuse to write a bunch of aurebesh in my own art, and what better reason than anti-Imperial graffiti? Plus, it makes such a cool little snapshot of the political situation on... ahem, whatever world this is. (You'll probably know which world it is if you read the graffiti/translations.)

It was a lot of fun to do all the aurebesh lettering! At first, I was really intimidated by the idea of doing aurebesh in different font styles, like how the heck do you do that, where do you even start? But, unsurprisingly, turns out that it's not a whole lot different from writing Latin letters in different fonts.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with how the whole thing turned out, especially given that the graffiti was added in a somewhat haphazard manner.

Aurebesh translations included at the bottom of the post!

This piece took two evenings, hand drawing in pencil and then going over that in Pigma Micron pen, and finally erasing the pencil. First night's progress:

I dunno what was up with that shoulder at first. Suffice it to say, things went much better after I remembered that reference photos do exist and are a really good idea.

And second night's progress:

Goodness gracious, that Anakin poster gave me grief. The CW reference pic I used had really dramatic lighting that must have tricked my brain somehow, because even though it showed him straight-on, I ended up drawing his face angled a bit toward the side, the first time? And then after that, he kind of looked a bit anime-style, which was interesting as I've never drawn in that style before in my life and didn't know it was a thing you could stumble into, but also inconvenient.

Final note—whoever was in charge of Imperial PR quite frankly sucked at their job. Because. The Imperial crest. It's insanely difficult to draw freehand. The Republic crest? Pretty easy. But the Imperial one, sheesh. Nobody's gonna be drawing that on their faces to show their support at sporting games.

Click below for aurebesh translations!

Aurebesh translations! Proceeding in order from top left of the drawing, based on location of the first letter of each sentence.

[NA]BOO WEEPS (partially cut off)

FOR THE GLORY OF THE EMPIRE---ENLIST! (stormtrooper poster)

FOR APAILANA

FIGHT BACK QUEEN K!

KARKIN' TARKIN

LON[G] LIVE [THE] REPUBLIC (partially cut off)

TO THE DEATH, SHEEV

THE HERO WILL RETURN---HAVE NO FEA[R] (partially cut off)

INACHU MOCO, POODOO LORDA (Huttese: eat maggots, sh*t boss)

KRIFF THE IMPS

FOR [THE REPUB]LIC (mostly cut off, Clone Wars poster)

[MAY THE] F[ORCE] BE WI[TH] US A[LL] (mostly cut off)

VICTORY AND JUSTICE

HER SPIRIT LIVES ON

TRAITOR

QUASH! QUARSH!

DOWN WITH PALPATINE!

DOWN WITH VADER!

Behind the scenes...

The Paint Incident in Fortune's Rule II-XV was inspired by two separate incidents from my childhood.

Kids painting all over themselves comes from one time when I was two or three and drawing with markers. Was happily drawing with markers on paper, as intended. Mom turned her back for a couple minutes. When she turned back, I had somehow managed to cover most of my epidermis in purple and black scribbles. Fortunately, that was just washable marker. Of course, the Chaos Twins needed to take things up a couple notches, so for the Paint Incident, the paint became much more permanent. (Note: For years after the marker incident, I thought she was really mad about the incident, but then at some point in my teens, I found out that she actually found it funny.)

And the cadaver conversation, when Luke thinks it would be cool to see a body without skin in order to find out how muscles work? That was inspired by this one time when my brother and I were at Red Lobster with our mom, grandparents, uncle, aunt, and cousin. Our aunt ordered crab, and we somehow got ahold of one of the smaller claws. It still had short tendons connected to the base of it, so we were pulling on the tendons to explore how they controlled the opening and closing. It was super cool! So, I figure, the chaos twins might be fascinated and not super grossed out by the concept of a cadaver.

The crab claw exploration also totally grossed out our aunt, which was just an added plus. So, her reactions somewhat inspired Padmé's reaction when Luke wants to see a corpse.

I really do like you capturing that the galaxy is big and that Palpatine is of course wanting to pick every single fight that he can just cause blood suffering pain and death, spread it all around? kill jedi cant leave them to build roots anywhere but still. the not giving you the option to surrender to occupation, forcing a fight on you cause WANT the fight blood and death some of that being less capability to fight later and clean sweeps? but still galaxy is a huge place and Palps wants it all

Thank you! :)

He absolutely wants it all, and he's not going to think twice about a little violence (or a lot of violence, as the case may be) to get it! Plus, with the economic factors at play, that's just all the more reason to go full-on systemwide occupation instead of settling for diplomacy or surrender of the Jedi in the Sevret system.

And, after all, what's the point of having thousands of Star Destroyers at one's disposal if one doesn't intend to use them for a little bit of conquest every now and again? :P

On a more serious note, though, part of the reason that I made up a system outside of the Republic was that, apparently, a great many of the worlds in the GFFA were not part of the Republic, and I wanted to show how Palpatine is a threat, not only to the worlds that were formerly Republic and immediately became Empire, but also to any world with valuable resources or any world that harbors someone who could possibly be a threat to his power and his security.

And although the Jedi on Errece didn't pose much of a threat in and of themselves---allowing that ideology to survive, allowing them to exist anywhere in the galaxy and possibly go on to spread that ideology to future generations who could build up the Jedi? Who could perhaps continue the Jedi in secret, in the manner of the post-Bane Sith? He absolutely cannot allow that to happen.

(Also, just wanted to add that from a writing point of view, this chapter was pretty entertaining to scheme up because of how Palpatine thinks he's getting it all with the Sevret system. Destroy some Jedi? Check. Gain access to valuable raw materials for the Empire? Check. Humiliate his foolish apprentice? Check.)

One major disadvantage of entering the Jedi Order at the ripe old age of nine:

You miss the intro classes where they teach Stop, Drop, and Roll.

That knowledge would have come in handy on Mustafar, you know? To be fair, Anakin was also freshly down a bunch of limbs, but still. He had already dropped. All he had to do was roll.

Sending this your way .. about Nur and how horrific it is… tie in to your reference about Nur in Fortunes Rule and how Vader has a lot to explain and atone for when it comes to the whole torturing and entombing

Jedi esp younglings 🤯

Hey, thanks! That little bit about the entry point and the security will definitely come in handy, as I am planning to have a Nur chapter at some point down the line.

Honestly, I may have gotten myself in a bit over my head with the whole Nur thing. I didn't realise just how nasty it is when I mentioned it back in Part II, so, uh... yeah, that's going to be fun to figure out. Fortunately, it will be a while before that arc, so there's some time to figure out how to approach it.

Realising that, from a certain point of view:

Ventress is Anakin's lineage great-aunt, but he's also her lineage uncle.

Anakin is both Sidious' apprentice and his great-great-grand-apprentice. Or step-great-great-grand-apprentice?

Dooku is both Anakin's great-grandmaster and his lineage brother.

Savage is Dooku's apprentice and his lineage nephew.

Savage is both Anakin's lineage nephew and his lineage great-uncle.

Ventress is both Yoda's and Sidious' grand-apprentice.

Luke is Ahsoka's adoptive nephew, and her lineage uncle, and her lineage great-great-great uncle?

Luke is also Dooku's lineage brother.

And Ventress' lineage uncle.

Anakin is Luke's father, his lineage brother (sort of in two ways?), and his lineage great-great-nephew. Oh, and his lineage great-great uncle, in a way (Anakin = Sith lineage brother to Dooku, who's Luke's Jedi great-grandmaster, in addition to being his Jedi lineage brother).

I think all of this makes Padmé pretty much everybody's in-law???

And it might require a bit of a stretch, but I'm pretty sure there are also multiple ways for Maul to be Obi-Wan's lineage relative?

I'm back to playing through KotOR 2. This is based on a conversation between @for-the-love-of-starwars and I, where she suggested I draw Kreia with a mug saying "#1 bad space mom." I ended up shortening it to "No. 1 Worst Mom."

I see Kreia's relationship with Revan as something of an emotionally abusive parental figure who also can't understand why her successful, adult child wants nothing to do with her.

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Do you ever have a writing idea that you're pretty meh about, and you're not sure you can make it work, and you're beginning to think you should just forget about it... but then you scribble out one scene, just to mess around... and it's adorable, it just works so well, it's like magic, and then you can't bear the idea of these characters not getting this scene, so you have to include it? And because you have to have that one scene, you're now totally sold on the idea that seemed meh just minutes before?