I'm Still Alive, An Update:

Hello Everyone, PyroCrab here (goddamit i need a better username), unfortunately this isn't a new chapter, but I felt bad keeping everybody in the dark, so I decided to do a bit of an update. This will probably be deleted once the new chapter comes out, sorry if you thought this was the new chapter, but I didn't know how else to tell you. I'll start off by talking about the next chapter, and the delays, and then address a few concerns about the long term future of Ascendancy and the elephant in the room that is Thrawn Treason:

Ok, so, the good news, this story is not dead and the next chapter is on its way. Its just been taking a while for me to write it. You will be meeting the Narivan, and there is more of Ezra, Thrawn and all the rest to come, frankly part of the reason I'm writing this is because I don't trust Lucasfilm to treat any of these characters well going forward.

Now, I owe y'all an explanation for why this chapter has taken so long, and frankly it's a few reasons. A lot of it has been to do with my own mental state. I was practically running on fumes when I uploaded the last chapter, so I took a bit of a break, just for a few weeks. I took a few weeks off just to clear my head and then I jumped back into it.

Then I read through everything I had written for the next chapter, and I hated all of it, scrapped it, and started over.

And then I hated all of that and started over.

And again.

And again.

And you get the picture.

I'm currently on the fourth or fifth version of the next chapter. For some inexplicable reason chapter 13 (heh, unlucky number) has been a pain in the ass to write. For some reason it's just been absurdly difficult to get right. I think I've got a rough version I like now, but it'll still take some time to refine. Rest assured, it will come, I will get it out sooner or later.

The other reason is my own perfectionism. My mental state has had two negative effects on my writing, the first is my motivation to write which tends to wax and wane (it waned quite heavily around the time of the last chapter, hence the break), but the other effect is that I'm a perfectionist to a fault, everything I write just looks wrong to me, no matter how good or bad it is. The early chapters of Ascendancy in particular I have some issues with and have considered re-doing (there are some serious issues there, the worst of which is the rapid POV swapping, which I really don't like in hindsight). I actually tried to just read through Ascendancy again from the start and I couldn't bring myself to do it, I had to just toss my tablet aside and read something else. I'm dealing with both of these issues but it's become a bit of a hindrance.

The final reason is just the sheer size of Ascendancy. This story has grown far beyond my original plan for it. What started as a fairly straightforward continuation of Rebels has instead grown into an in-depth exploration of the Unknown Regions, a Chiss Ascendancy focused storyline (something neither canon has ever done) with political intrigue and so-on, a love letter to legends canon and a deconstruction of Ezra Bridger, Rebels, and Disney Star Wars in general.

The main focus of the story is the conflict between the Voidlord and the Chiss but there is more. I have written pages upon pages of lore and notes and other stuff. I have lore written about the Voidlord, about more UR species that will show up, both legends and original. I've written down ideas about the Grysk, the Voidlord's splinter faction, as well as the politics and inner-workings of the Chiss Ascendancy (which is going to be very important), what Thrawn's going to be doing, and overall just planning out a lot of the long term storyline. This fanfic has spiraled into a frankly absurd project, I have so much, so much I want to do and the sheer weight of this thing is causing it to take time for me to get it right.

Also I want to talk about Ezra for a minute. Ezra Bridger himself is a weird one because if I'm being honest he's actually my least favourite Rebels character. I'm serious, I'm still of the opinion Rebels would've been far better with just Kanan and Hera, but I think the reason I disliked him was because of the wasted potential. Ezra's character arc was botched horribly, especially after season 2 (I'm still mad they tossed the sith holocron aside so easily). He's really here by accident if I'm being honest, I wanted to write about the Chiss and Thrawn and so-on and Ezra just happened to be aboard for the ride. I struggled for a while as to how to handle Ezra, and that was one of the major issues in the early days of Ascendancy.

Ironically, he has now become my favourite character to write by a long shot.

I want to make one thing very clear. Ezra will be going through a very drastic character change across Ascendancy. You saw hints of this in the Mnggal-Mnggal arc and I want to push that further and further along, to its logical conclusion. I assure you however, this will not be a "Jake Skywalker" situation. The change will be gradual, and you will see every step of it, and it will be a logical cause and effect development that builds upon his established character traits. But by the end of Ascendancy Ezra will not be the same person he was when he left Lothal, not even close. I intend to commit fully to the hints I dropped in the last arc.

I mentioned earlier this was a deconstruction of Ezra's character, and it very much is because I find it's the most interesting way to write him. This was the perfect environment to deconstruct him. Ezra is now cut-off from his friends forced to work with Imperials for an extended period of time, he's also learning more about the Chiss and Thrawn, and honestly the two of them have an oddly interesting dynamic. The fight with the Royal Guards was the start (it was also to reinforce the fact Ezra's way in over his head without Kanan and Ahsoka to watch out for him), and the whole encounter with the Mnggal-Mnggal was meant to carry it further. I plan to go all in on this angle, so hopefully I've managed to prove so far that I can take this approach towards Ezra and still respect the character.

Now, the Elephant in the room: Thrawn Treason. Though I don't tend to bother with new canon books anymore (in fact, I don't tend to bother with anything other than Legends material and this story these days) I have read most of Thrawn Treason, as has my co-author.

I am happy to announce Thrawn Treason... "mostly" fits with Ascendancy. I plan to try and fit Thrawn Treason into the Ascendancy continuity, as there are some elements that I do want to make use of, and Treason in fact touches on some stuff I wanted to explore anyway. However, this will require a few 'minor' retcons, retcons I may make when I go back and redo those old chapters (nothing major, just some line changes and minor reworks, the overall story is still the same and you will be able to keep track of everything just fine without having to re-read the old chapters). In fact there's some new elements and characters introduced in Treason I want to make use of now. So don't worry, Treason hasn't ruined Ascendancy, if anything the ending ties in quite nicely to it.

There's only two major problems that remain: The Grysk and Snoke. The bulk of the story is going to be about the conflict between the Ascendancy and the Voidlord, but sooner or later I am going to have to acknowledge the Grysk, they've been a major part of the last two Thrawn books and to simply forget they exist now would be baffling. The worst part about the Grysk is how little we know about them I've thought a lot about this and I think I have a way to handle them, the Voidlord will continue to be the main antagonist, but I will definitely try to not brush aside the Grysk.

And I have no idea what to do with Snoke, he probably won't even appear. Frankly I struggle with how I'm going to address anything post ROTJ, and that includes the ST and Aftermath because I just hate all of it.

Oh, and one more thing, without any spoilers, there's a certain plotline I had planned for Ascendancy (I'm not saying what it is). This plotline is one I had planned since the very beginning, it was one of the first elements of Ascendancy I came up with almost two years ago now, it's something I really wanted to do and I was really looking forward to getting to it.

So you can imagine how annoyed I was to open up Thrawn Treason and find a very similar plotline, and realize now everybody was going to accuse me of ripping it off.

I won't say what it is as of yet, I plan to go ahead with it anyway as it's just too embedded in the DNA of the story. I'm just putting this here so that whenever people start accusing me of ripping off Treason, they'll know that I had this planned before Treason was even announced. It's a complete coincidence, but that's how it is. On another note, I imagine it's probably going to be the plotline that makes the most people angry or upset. It's not the biggest storyline, it's not particularly important or impactful, it's not even the most drastic thing I plan to do with Ascendancy but uhhh... let's just say the people who care about this sort of thing scare me, take from that what you will.

Finally, I just want to say why I'm making this update, and it's the fact people were actually asking for the next chapter. I was honestly baffled and pleasantly surprised to find this. I thought by now the long hiatus this story went through would've caused it to be forgotten, to be buried beneath a sea of bad Zeb/Kallus fics and forgotten about. Just the fact people care enough about this story to go out of their way to ask when the next chapter is has actually re-invigorated me quite a bit to keep going with this. So thank you all for the kind words, it actually does mean quite a lot that people care about my dumb fanfic.

Peace out, chapter 13 is coming,