The Republic has fallen.
In the final days of the Clone Wars, Chancellor Palpatine died under mysterious circumstances. With the Senate struggling to retain a sense of unity, it was the perfect time for the Separatists to strike. And strike they did...
So, I'm back. I've been incommunicado for a long time for a variety of factors: school, mental health, other obligations, other interests, I won't bore you with the whole list. But yeah, Shan is back!
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So, why am I back when I've stayed away this long? I'm an inherently nostalgic person and a confessed procrastinator, but also a confessed perfectionist. With COVID-19 quarantine and a bunch of other things I said I wouldn't bore you guys with, I'm kinda reexamining what it means to be happy. Because of the wonderful Star Wars community I found on Wattpad, this little website is the source of some of my happiest moments in my earlier teens (I'm 19 now and I was 13 when I joined, hell I got old). I miss the laughs, the tears, the fangirling, the theories.
Now for the perfectionist bit. I've many times considered taking a chainsaw to UAAT and making something new from the pieces, but Book Ten is 119 chapters ALONE. That's way too massive an undertaking to go at more than once, even if I loved every second.
I was able to let UAAT lie because I finished it. I didn't finish SOTE and Shadows Rising and Vode An and all that other good stuff. And that eats at me, because it's not the best it could've been. I don't even know what the bare MINIMUM could have been.
So I'm changing that. First with SOTE, then, maybe, with the others.
I was a bit of a train wreck this semester and didn't do well in a critical class largely because of rampant procrastination, so I made a promise to someone important to me to be better. But I've also gotta make things fun (how would I ever get anything done otherwise??) so I decided to apply that promise to my writing as well, because even with some added discipline writing is still its own reward.
The writing may not be perfect, but I revamped the direction like crazy and cut a bunch of stuff, and I think this is some of the best story-crafting I've ever done. And I wanted to share it with you guys.
I'm gonna to do my best to be diligent about posting. Procrastinating is done, and so are year-long delays. I've been planning this comeback for over a year now, and during the summer I worked my ass off prewriting extra chapters so I could post regularly without fear of falling behind. I don't want to make the same mistakes I did when I was younger, impulse-posting everything I had ready just for the dopamine rush then having to scramble to match the pace I set through busy stints and writer's block.
The plan is to use a model of consistency over quantity – updates every week or week and a half, probably – and see how that pans out. I'm a few years older and potentially wiser, so I hope I can pull it off!
So I've blabbed damn long enough and I know even I'd be getting antsy at this point (no shade if some of yall skipped straight to the prologue, can't say I blame you) but I wanted to say this: I think it was inevitable I came back to you. I had my hero's journey off in realspace, but now I'm back to share everything I've learned, if you guys will have me.
I guess we'll let the work I put into this speak for that. Without further ado, enjoy the new and improved Slaves of the Empire!
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PS: Okay, maybe a little more ado. I made some major changes in terms of a storyline (aside from the main one with Lux and Ahsoka) with two major prequel trilogy characters that made up a lot of chapters in the original story. The timing works better if I plunk it into the second book in the series, so that's where it's gonna show up again if things develop as I have foreseen...
*maniacal Palpatine laugh*
Old friends, you'll know what I mean when you read. New friends, you might not want to go on too many deep dives into the comments section, cause while I did my best to match new chapters to thematically similar older ones, it could still mean spoilers for the next book. And honestly, not much will make sense between the content that's up now and the old comments...
