It’s More That Like The Six New Thrawn Novels Recontextualised Him So That A Lot Of People Who Read

when orion became optimus and immediately got that aching sadness in his eyes you can see in every other version of him i cant do this

Samakro for the @cedfcharity Pin-up Calendar! 

He was designated for September!

Musings On Thrawn

Let me begin this by stating up front; Thrawn is a villain. A brilliant, fascinating, charismatic villain, but a villain nonetheless. He is Holmes and Rommel and Moriarty all rolled into one. (Please don’t hate me for this.)

And I’ve tried to keep that front of mind as I have been writing this massive Alexsandr Kallus fic, Especially now that I am into the cat and mouse section where Kallus is spying for the rebels as Fulcrum, but having to interact with Thrawn on an almost daily basis. 

To prepare to write this I reread all the Thrawn books. I even read the first Heir to Empire, and if people thought Thrawn was vile in Rebels he was far worse in that Legends novel. I’ve also been rewatching a number of Rebel’s episodes.

In the books Tim tries very hard not to have Thrawn be as loathsome as Tarkin or Vader and succeeds, but it’s still important to remember he is not a good, kind man. Yes, he tries to limit civilian casualties… when possible, but he won’t let the death of innocents stand in the way of a victory. In the end it’s always about the cold equation.

In the Ascendency novels he makes it clear to Admiral Ba’kif that he would have destroyed the planet Sunrise and all of its inhabitants in order to destroy the Grysk threat to the Chiss. And he would have leveled Capital City if Ezra had not capitulated.

He also uses and discards his own troops in the service of tactics and strategy. In Treason he cold bloodily sends a number of Tie pilots to their deaths to verify his theory about the alien’s battle tactics. War for Thrawn is like a giant game of tactica or chess.

I do love the fact that Thrawn was the perfect Chiss to send into Lesser Space to serve in the Empire. While Thrawn, unlike many of his fellow Chiss, is able and willing to work with aliens he comes from a culture that is every bit as bigoted as the high human cult in the Empire. Which is another reason he can so easily slide into serving Palpatine.

Basically, he seems to be a man who has great difficulty forming personal relationships. (To be fair Tim has no choice, but to write books that focus on battles and strategy and political skullduggery and not much on the inner lives of the characters, and it certainly provides fanfic authors a rich playing field. Actually that is one of my complaints about the books. Nobody seems to have any personal attachments. Eli blithely waltzes off to the Ascendancy without a thought for his parents, but I digress). 

So, to lay our Blue Meanie on the coach for a moment….

All of his relationships take the form of mentor to mentee whether it’s with Thrass or Ar'alani or Samakro or Che’ri or Faro or Eli. And his emotional reactions to Thrass’ death, or sending away Eli seem very muted. The books do give us a potential reason for this reticence – the loss of the sister. The fear that he would be hurt again makes him avoid deep relationships and leaves him isolated. 

At his core, I think Thrawn is a man of the mind and not the heart. I think he fears strong emotion, passion because it might cloud his judgement, and open him up to pain again. 

All of which combines to make him a tragic figure. Which really is the best kind of villain. The ones who had the possibility to be heroes, but are brought low by their own fatal flaw.

What makes a demon happy

sex, love, and a belly full of meat

Hi!!! I loved the fifth chapter of Rakul and the third chapter of Shimsiam. I'm so happy that you are writing them, and I'm always excited when I see you upload a new chapter 🥰 I was wondering what stories inspired you to start writing about demons. Can you recommend some? 👀

Hello and thank you so much for the Ask! While I can’t think of any one story that inspired my Demon original characters, in my notes from 1/31/22 just over one year ago, I reference a few movies as story and place inspirations: Maleficent, Legend (1985), and The Last Unicorn. I’d written a little over 1k of a story, inspired by the dark and romantic lyrics of the song “The Killing Moon”, about a demon Thrawn who finds a teenage girl, Elise (female Eli) in the forest, captures and seduces her, then takes her to the Black Fortress as an offering to the evil Demon King there (demon Emperor Palpatine), but in the last minute lets Elise escape from the rest of the demons and he is imprisoned. Elise helps him escape his prison cell, but she is severely injured and near death as he flies her away from the Fortress. So there are several elements of that story that DID end up becoming part of Rakul, but that specific story is one of my few truly abandoned ideas. And it was reborn into Rakul and the sequel to Rakul, which will feature demon Thrawn and demon Thrass, as well as Elise as female Eli once again (which is at least half written, but the exact ending point is undetermined at the moment). That sequel was begun on Feb. 2, 2022, and the first chapter of Rakul was begun Feb. 23, 2022 and published on AO3 2/25/22. Anyway, most of the inspiration for all of these stories was simply some dark song lyrics and a certain mood. I actually didn’t start reading a lot of romance novels until later in 2022, and I actually haven’t read any demon stories like mine before, so there isn’t any specific novel I could recommend that inspired my demons unfortunately.

Finally, there IS a very lovely romantic fanfic about demon!Thrawn and human Eli already on AO3:

Here is a short fic very similar to this idea;

And obviously, much more can be done and it could go 1000 different ways. Got my own Thrawn clone AU already going in my head and being written out… Thrawn clones are very compelling OCs because they can be as similar or different from the original as you like…

One of the ideas for Thrawn, which I liked very much, is the one I read long ago in an interview with Timothy Zahn (so I may not remember it exactly correct) and it went something like this:

After Thrawn's death at the hands of Rukh Luke and Mara discover that Thrawn left clones of himself scattered around the galaxy, imprinted with all his knowledge, precisely in case he died. Which is so Thrawn, but I digress.

We already got to see Luke and Mara accidentally destroy one of these clones in the old Expanded Universe, but what we never got was Zahn's idea for a sequel, which was to have one of these clones actually wake up, and The Hand of Thrawn and Empire expecting him to continue off where original Thrawn left off, and this clone basically.... not wanting to.

And as much as I like Thrawn, and I understand why Zahn was asked to write about Thrawn who guarantees book sales, I think this would have been such a better route to take in the new canon.

First, the idea is intriguing. Thrawn's clone who has same mind, same skills, same knowledge, but who almost crumbles under the pressure of expectation to fill in Thrawn's boots and who is haunted by memories of atrocities that aren't his but feel like they are.

Second, we would get a character who we could genuinely get behind. Without the ifs and buts and evil deeds to overlook. Who would have all the exciting skills and tactical brilliance, but always aim them in the right direction, but still with the question of: will he turn into Thrawn over time? Will he step over the line?

Third, it would be so interesting to see him in a completely different settings, surrounded by the Rebels or the New Republic, people who are kind and compassionate and understanding. Imagine Luke's compassion, who had visions of himself in Vaders helmet for this guy who sees Grand Admiral Thrawn every time he looks in the mirror. And who knows others see that as well.

Fourth, it would be so much in line with the message in Star Wars. Luke didn't follow in his father's footsteps. Boba Fett didn't become Jango, neither did all clones follow Order 66.

And Thrawn's clone wouldn't become Thrawn. Everyone has a choice to say no and do the right thing.

While watching Thrawn spar with assasination droids for funsies, I finally gave in. I threw my hands up and said: fine, I’d fuck Thrawn.

Chapters 4 & 5 of my original dark fantasy story Rakul are UP.

The Demon King lets the girl sacrificed to him go…

but expects that she will return to him.

Content Warning: non-consent & dark themes, mind the tags.

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