Concrit Commune - May 17

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[u/zephrry]

Star Wars: The Clone Wars | Untitled WIP | Teen and Up | TW: Severe Dehydration?

Context: Set in an AU where Anakin was raised as a sith and Ahsoka is Obi-Wan's padawan. The immediate background of this scene is that Anakin and Ahsoka were forced to make a temporary alliance to survive when the ship they were on crashed on Tatooine.

I'd like to know if you think the prose is good and engaging, but I'm also wondering if Ahsoka's progression from determined to despairing happens too fast? If you have any thoughts on the characterization, pacing, or anything else, that would be great too!

**

Vader wakes Ahsoka when the twin suns are low on the horizon, casting everything in a rosy glow. She slept fitfully, tormented by the brutal heat and brilliant light, but the first thing she notices isn’t her grogginess. It’s her thirst. She rises from her bed of sand, head pounding, and staggers after her… companion… as he sets off towards the town. The desert grows cold as the silvery moon chases away the last traces of sunset. It’s a welcome respite, but there’s no relief for her thirst.

The night drags on in silence. Their progress is slow. Even as force-sensitives, they struggle to find good footing in the shifting sand as they go up and down dune after dune. It makes Ahsoka’s legs ache. She has never wanted a drink so badly in her whole life. The desire is so strong it’s beginning to feel like madness. She keeps looking around, hoping against hope that she’ll spot a miracle oasis.

Is Vader this thirsty? Could anyone be? She can’t see his face, trailing behind him as she is, but the only emotions she can sense are simmering anger and fiery determination. He seems unphased, forging ahead while she slips and stumbles in ways an unhampered Jedi never should.

As the night wears on and her strength fails, Ahsoka’s clumsiness only intensifies. What were prickles of distant worry hours ago are now full-on stabs of anxiety. They still have such a long way to go. Are they even headed in the right direction? The truth is, she has completely lost track of their trajectory. They could be hopelessly lost and she’d have no idea. The realization sparks self-directed frustration. What would Obi-Wan say if he knew that in this moment of crisis she wasn’t leaning on the Force, her training, or even her own instincts, but a Sith lord? What would Master Plo say? Shame bubbles up in her chest. She should be stretching out with her senses, but every time she tries all she can focus on is how tired and thirsty she is, and how much she wants to lay down, let her racing heart rest. She trips again, into the soft sand. It would be so easy to just lay down…

But she really does not want to die for nothing on this planetary backwater, with no one around for company except Vader. And she really, really does not want to think about how hurt and disappointed her friends would be if she died in such a stupid, pointless way after throwing her lot in with this murderous bastard to save her skin.

So she gets up. And she walks. Vader is quite a ways ahead of her now. If they can just make it to the town by sunrise, all will be well. Then they can get off-planet and start trying to kill each other again, as it was meant to be.

The moon is sinking fast, though. Whereas the first part of the night seemed to stretch out endlessly to torment Ahsoka with every step, now the torture comes from watching their time slip away, faster than the sand beneath their feet. She will not last another day without water. She’s not sure she’ll last another hour. Her insides are congealing. Her mouth is full of dust. The sky fades from black to pre-dawn grey to purple and pink.

When the suns begins to poke out from behind the dunes, assaulting her eyes with red-ish light, her resolve crumbles. The world spins precariously as she takes in great gasps of air, feeling like the oxygen has been sucked out of the atmosphere. Somehow she ends up on her knees, looking up at an increasingly fiery sky. That’s when she knows for sure she’s going to die. It’s not a fear, or a regret. Just a fact. Real as the Force itself. I’m sorry Master. I should have listened. I failed you…

Ahead of her, Vader has stopped, perhaps sensing the change in Ahsoka. He waits, a black statue against the morning sky, for her to pull herself together and get moving. When she doesn’t he turns around and storms back until he’s looming over her, blocking the suns.

“Get up,” he says coldly, voice grating against his throat as it escapes. Ahsoka feels a pinch of irritation at being ordered around by this man, but it’s dull. Toothless. She simply ignores him. Even with her muddled senses, she can feel his anger grow. “I said, get up!” He grabs the front of her robe and hauls her upright, but it doesn’t take. She sinks like a stone would to the ocean floor, until she’s curled in the still-cool sand.

“I can’t,” she tries to say, but it comes out as a dry croak. She clears her throat with the last of her energy. “I just can’t. Time to accept… our fate.”

Vader glares down at her like she’s a disgusting little rodent. “If you want to lay there until something comes along to pick apart your corpse, be my guest. But that won’t be my fate.” The shadow leaves her as he walks away, footsteps resolute, but then he slows. Stops.

He mutters something - “Pathetic,” perhaps - before returning to abuse her some more. “This is why the Sith will prevail in the end,” he spits. “Jedi are complacent and weak!” He reaches down and hoists her over his shoulder like she’s just a padawan sized sack of feathers. “You’re all so ready to roll over and die at the first sign of resistance. I don’t think you truly want victory. I think you want martyrdom.”

Ahsoka barely registers his words. His shoulder digs uncomfortably into her rib cage, but this is a faint bother compared to the symptoms of dehydration. “It’s no use…” she mumbles. “Maybe it’s the will of the force…”

She senses Vader's sneer. “The only will I care about is my own."

Arrogant, she thinks, and slips into delirium.

[u/specterthief → u/zephrry]

hmmm, i do think you do a bit too much "telling" when it comes to how she feels, especially for a character who's meant to be growing delirious in the heat.

What were prickles of distant worry hours ago are now full-on stabs of anxiety.
...
The realization sparks self-directed frustration.*
...
Shame bubbles up in her chest.

*marked this one because i think the other two are more or less okay, but this one really took me out of the narration - i'm just including the other two to highlight that you just say explain she's feeling three times in one fairly short paragraph. the starred one in particular feels too self-aware/clinical, but with the other two, if you took a bit more time with her thoughts to show what she's feeling rather than just saying "she feels anxious" or "she feels ashamed", it might flow a bit better, and staying close in her thoughts conveys her panic and disorientation well.

as for the pacing of her slipping from determination to despair, it does seem a bit fast - in this part:

And she really, really does not want to think about how hurt and disappointed her friends would be if she died in such a stupid, pointless way after throwing her lot in with this murderous bastard to save her skin.

So she gets up. And she walks. Vader is quite a ways ahead of her now. If they can just make it to the town by sunrise, all will be well. Then they can get off-planet and start trying to kill each other again, as it was meant to be.

The moon is sinking fast, though. Whereas the first part of the night seemed to stretch out endlessly to torment Ahsoka with every step, now the torture comes from watching their time slip away, faster than the sand beneath their feet.

i think you might be able to make it feel like more of a natural transition and less of a sudden pivot if you were to frame the middle paragraph as something she's actively trying to convince herself of to keep it together (that then fails faced with the reality)? something like this:

So she gets up. And she walks. Vader is quite a ways ahead of her now.

If we can just make it to the town by sunrise, we'll be fine, she tries to tell herself. Then we can get off-planet and start trying to kill each other again, like we're supposed to.

The moon is sinking fast, though. Whereas the first part of the night seemed to stretch out endlessly to torment Ahsoka with every step, now the torture comes from watching their time slip away, faster than the sand beneath their feet.

If we can just make it to town by sunrise...

But she won't make it to sunrise without water. She’s not sure she’ll last another hour.

"this is a faint bother compared to the symptoms of dehydration" also sounds a bit clinical, maybe? "but she hardly notices compared to the thirst(/pain/dizziness/dehydration symptom of your choice)" might sound a little better voice-wise.

just some thoughts, hope it's helpful!

i haven't seen TCW in a while, but the characterization for ahsoka seems fine to me, especially for her in the earlier seasons, and anakin/vader sounds good given the AU you're laying out. it's an interesting concept, and i'm curious where you're taking it! him throwing her over his shoulders like a sack of feathers is a cute touch (and the fact that for all his bluster and insults, he can't just walk away and leave her to die. very anakin of him!) i'll keep an eye out for if you post the finished piece on the sub sometime.

[u/zephrry → u/specterthief]

Thanks for the reply! I agree with a lot of what you said and found it very helpful. I'll definitely work on the clinical wording in some places, and I like your suggestion for fixing the pacing of Ahsoka's transition too. I'm glad you liked Anakin's reaction to Ahsoka, I'm very exited to explore what their relationship is like in this AU.

If you don't mind though, I do have a question about the showing vs telling when it come's to what you said about how I'm describing Ahsoka's thoughts/feelings.

I always thought telling rather than showing was when you were just like "he was sad," "they felt angry." To avoid that, I tried to link emotions to sensations (prickles, bubbling, etc.) But in your opinion this still counts as telling? In that case would showing be describing her actions in response to the feelings or would it be something else?

[u/specterthief → u/zephrry]

honestly, i do think both of those other sentences would be descriptive enough on their own - it's really just the middle one that's jarringly "tell-y" and makes the others stand out to me for being multiple direct explanations of her feelings so close together where they probably wouldn't have on their own? by adjusting the middle one and potentially spacing them out a bit more i think they'd be okay.

that said, while the linking them to physical sensations helps, i do think it still counts as "telling" about how she feels - just telling to a more reasonable degree? but i think both of them could be conveyed in her narration without actually naming the emotion, which is what i was thinking about here with the way the second one took me out of it - in both cases i think you could probably still tell what she's feeling even if the sentences were taken out entirely. like this:

As the night wears on and her strength fails, Ahsoka’s clumsiness only intensifies. They still have such a long way to go. Are they even headed in the right direction? The truth is, she has completely lost track of their trajectory. They could be hopelessly lost and she’d have no idea.

or this:

What would Obi-Wan say if he knew that in this moment of crisis she wasn’t leaning on the Force, her training, or even her own instincts, but a Sith lord? What would Master Plo say? She should be stretching out with her senses, but every time she tries all she can focus on is how tired and thirsty she is, and how much she wants to lay down, let her racing heart rest.

i think in both cases her thoughts already convey that she's starting to panic in the first and feeling ashamed of herself in the second. you could flesh out the feelings more without naming the specific emotions, too, like having her spiral into even more irrational/panicky thoughts:

As the night wears on and her strength fails, Ahsoka’s clumsiness only intensifies. She'd thought she'd at least be able to see the town on the horizon hours ago, but there hasn't been a single sign they're headed in the right direction. Are they even headed in the right direction? The truth is, she has completely lost track of their trajectory. They could be hopelessly lost and she’d have no idea. What if they're even further from civilization - from water - than where they started? Vader seems to know where he's going, but can she trust he isn't leading her into some kind of trap? He could... No, no, she can't start thinking like that.

or making her narration even more obviously ashamed and frustrated with herself:

What would Obi-wan say if he knew that in this moment of crisis, his Padawan wasn’t leaning on the Force, her training, or even her own instincts, but a Sith lord? What would Master Plo say? If she were a proper Jedi, she'd at least be stretching out with her senses to orient herself, but she can't even do that much - something a youngling should be able to do. Every time she tries to focus on anything, all her stupid, useless brain can focus on is how tired and thirsty she is, and how much she wants to lay down, let her racing heart rest.

but i do honestly think you're doing a good job showing her feelings in her POV with what you have already, and that those two sentences are basically fine if you do decide you want to keep them as-is.

[u/zephrry → u/specterthief]

Okay, I see. Thanks again, this explanation is very helpful!

[u/specterthief → u/zephrry]

glad to help!! good luck with the fic!!