Hello and thanks for reading.
These short stories are meant to feel raw. These are women who feel desperate, overwhelmed, and resentful. It's from their circumstances in life and from the failings of the men they love. We catch these heroines at moments of big, fateful decisions that will have repercussions which reverberate far into the future for the galaxy at large. But these moments are also highly personal decisions the women make for themselves.
Slave Shmi Skywalker is the only truly powerless one of the four. Mother Talzin is Dathomir's massively Force powered leader. Leia Organa is the rebellion hero, the secret Skywalker daughter, and a preeminent politician of her day. Even the cosseted wife and mother Fulvia, Lady Collapse, whose power is derivative of her clan, is formidable in her own right. But still, all of them are brought to crisis by their roles are mothers. They are new mothers to infants (Shmi and Fulvia) and mothers to adolescents (Mother Talzin and Leia Organa). Some have long experience with motherhood, others do not. But that role is the crux of their drama. Nothing brings a woman to her knees like risk/harm/threat to her child and nothing makes her more vulnerable than the state of being mommy. Friends, coworkers and bosses come and go, husbands and lovers come and go, even siblings can become lost or estranged, but for the most part the mother-child relationship is lifelong. You can't quit and it doesn't end until one of you dies.
Why am I writing about this? Because the pandemic has put mothers in a bind. I feel like mothers are the unsung heroes of Covid-19. Very few of the mothers in my world work outside the home. But during the summer, I ran into one school mom who works part time as an accountant. I asked her how she and the twins were doing and she burst into tears. There she was crying her eyes out in a grocery store parking lot. Another mom friend in financial services recently quit her job. She couldn't handle three kids and a pandemic. Now these moms are atypical. They each work for their own goals, not to put food on the table. One has a CEO husband, for example. They have housekeepers and nannies and disposable income to spare. And yet they couldn't do it. I can only imagine how hard it is for mothers with regular lives. Especially single mothers with less support and fewer resources.
But women's lives vary and their experiences vary as well. So while the single childless women I know are feeling isolated and terribly lonely, the mothers I know are ready to disappear. Craving space and time alone. Because feeding everyone 3 meals a day, plus home schooling, plus someone always in the house (usually making a mess or needing attention) has gotten old. I've run out of ideas for family fun to keep everyone entertained. I'm done baking and organizing closets. There is nothing left to say to my husband. I am so over breaking up sibling fights. I cannot bear the load of everyone else's emotional drama 24-7. By now, I have run the dishwasher more times in the last six months than I ever thought possible. I just want it all to end and life to be normal. Except that doesn't appear to be where we are headed in the short term.
Thankfully, things have improved a lot since the spring/summer. We are back in town. The kids are now in school in-person full time, even if the school day is 2 hours shorter (fourth grade is now shorter than pre-k usually is). Most days, my husband goes to the office now. So, I have some personal space at long last. But all that time in close quarters has left its mark. Some days, I just want them all to go away and no one to need me. I feel myself pulling back. Last week, someone commented how my boys are growing up and asked if I missed them small. Me: Hell, no. Can they go to college already? When summer was at its slowest in July, I had persistent fantasies of leaving them all. Frankly, it got a little scary. But hopefully, things will reach a new status quo and there will be some diversions to keep it all in perspective. But until then, I will wait for better days and keep writing stories on my phone.
Lilith, Mother Talzin
I have an entire story in my head for Mother Talzin, the witch Force goddess of Dathomir. She rules a matrilineal coven where women dominate. The witches are a cooperative bunch who worship life and live at a respectful 'separate and not quite equal' distance from their men. The earthy, unintimidated, and uninhibited witches are sex positive in a way that will shock and seduce Sheev Palpatine when he arrives on a mission from his Master Darth Plagueis. The witches are also very pro-family and pro-procreation in a twist on the normal feminist mindset. In essence, two worlds will collide: the patriarchal Sith and the matriarchal witches. They will have different views on power, the Force, politics, gender roles, and sex. Sheev will get completely worked over by Lilith Talzin before he slinks away with her firstborn son Maul. The Sith kidnapping of young Maul is motivated by the concern that Maul is the Chosen One. It will set up a longstanding feud between Mother Talzin and Darth Sidious that will get resolved by genocide during the Clone Wars. That conflict is the context of the pathos of Darth Maul in my story Rule of Two. For I have come around to the idea that Darth Maul—not Darth Vader—is the true tragic figure of Star Wars.
Fulvia, Lady Collapse
Fulvia's tale was an idea I thought about for the resolution of Taking the Veil. I wanted Tosca, Lady Struct to flee to the Republic with the Emperor's secret baby son. In that story, Emperor Vitiate is terrified of potential rivals and will not tolerate any exceptionally Force strong male infants to live, especially his own son. Moreover, Vitiate is afraid of the Republic, even as he is fascinated by it and the Jedi. So the idea of having his lover flee there with his kid would push all of his buttons. But in the end, I rejected that resolution for Taking the Veil. The idea stuck with me and it finds its expression here.
Who is this baby Revan? He's the Jedi who goes to the Dark Side to save the ungrateful Republic. After a long and bitter relationship with the Jedi (who kick him out) and the Senate (who are his sometime ally), Revan sets out to kill the Sith Emperor Vitiate (who Revan has discovered is behind the Mandalorian attack on the Republic.). Revan ends up Vitiate's frenemy prisoner for something like three centuries. Disgraced Jedi, sometime Sith, and preeminent figure of the SWTOR era, Revan is THE protagonist for everyone that matters. My story Recalled to Life is a tepid attempt at writing him.
Shmi Skywalker
Slave Shmi is a complete victim in official canon. She lives a terrible life and dies a terrible death. She's basically the archetype for the long-suffering mother. Poor Shmi is the unwitting vessel for the Chosen One, space Jesus. So naturally, I thought Shmi needed Virgin Mary vibes. One day, I'm going to write bible fan fiction, but this is the closest I expect to get in the Star Wars universe.
The idea of an exceptionally Force strong child in the womb giving its mother temporary Force strength is an idea that first appears in Taking the Veil. Pregnant Tosca has visions of her unborn son's future which she mistakes as visions of her lover's past.
Many of my Reylo fics, but also my Imperial era stories Twilight of the Gods and Rule of Two, feature wily Darth Plagueis the Wise. He is the Dark Sith who becomes so powerful that the Force strikes back at him. What is his offense? He wants to be a Dark god. He wants to create life. And . . . he does. He is Anakin Skywalker's father in the Force, which makes for an awkward 'I am your father' moment in Twilight of the Gods. Now, in many of my stories, Plagueis is a lady's man. He's often witty, always debonair, and nearly always gallant. Some of that flavor is here.
Leia Organa
Carrie Fisher's untimely death really limited how her story could be resolved in Episode 9. I acknowledge that fact. But having said that, nothing excuses the truly awful writing of Episode 9. From start to end, the movie is terrible. Leia's 'I'll just lay down and kill myself in the Force attempting to reach my wayward son' death has so many problems that I can't begin to list them. After all, Leia just ran away from Kylo at the end of Episode 8 rather than stay to face him. She even tells Luke's Force projection that her son is gone, which pretty much sounds like she has given up hope. But I digress.
I have written different versions of Kylo's massacre at the Jedi temple. Sometimes it is intentional. Other times, it is from an accidental use of Dark power. Usually Luke is the bad guy and Kylo is the victim, at least in Kylo's mind. But what's the setup behind all that? It's the decision to send young Ben Solo to the Jedi temple in the first place. I wanted to write that backstory. In my mind, Luke starts out trying to help. But he's initially a little blind to the Darkness in his nephew just like he is blind to the Darkness in himself. Leia can see it, but she feels powerless to prevent it. And, maybe, that's true. For in my head canon, the line of the Chosen Ones is equal parts Light and Dark. The harder you try to repress your Darkness, the more it asserts itself. In Luke's case, it will assert itself spectacularly.
Leia's in a tough spot fighting the legacy of Darth Vader in herself and in her son. She's got plenty of resources at her disposal and yet still the decisions are unclear. And isn't that a truth of life? All the money and power in the world doesn't necessarily solve your problems. But if anyone can raise a young Jedi boy right, it's got to be the Light Side heroes and stalwart defenders of democracy Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa, right? Wrong. And here's the thing—with the Skywalkers in particular, good intentions often go badly awry. They certainly will with Ben Solo. But a mother can only do her best under the circumstances.
There's a lot of implicit criticism for mothers who want things for themselves. The sacrificing/long suffering mother trope is deeply ingrained in our culture. Mothers often feel the need to explain themselves against the presumption that they're being selfish with their time or money. It's a true bind. But it's doubly hard because women often find themselves torn between their many competing priorities. Here Leia feels an obligation to the Republic, to her own ambitions, and to her son. She's frustrated and unhappy.
I hope these stories were fun, thought provoking diversions. In my writing, I like to weave personal conflicts against the backdrop of the Force and political events. Having individuals confront larger issues is what gives a story an epic feel. It gives seemingly small personal decisions a role in galactic history. It's also a way to make clear that women matter in the Star Wars universe. As I have said before in other story notes and through several characters' mouths, you don't have to swing a sword and have the Force to make history in Star Wars. Power and influence take many forms, and often they are female. Thanks for reading.