Title: Fate Denied: A Star Wars SI
Author: Saphrith
Rating: T
Genre: Adventure/Friendship
Status: In-Progress
Words: ca 580k words
Summary: Dropped into a Galaxy Far Far Away, in the waning era of the Old Republic. Viera Sarat decides that she really doesn't want to die and that she equally doesn't want the Republic to fall to Palpatine's chaos. What's the worst that could happen?
Link: Sufficient Velocity ff.net

Not really all that much to say about this, tbh. SI is reincarnated into the Star Wars world as a Miraluka jedi around the same time as Obi Wan's padawan days and her journey through the universe and the impact she has.

Honestly, this isn't anything spectacular or anything. No epic moments or great lines of dialogue but it has been consistently fun and kept my interested for nearly 600k and it was quite fun to relieve a lot of the early Star Wars stuff and see the changes that Viera brings with her.

If you're in the Star Wars mood and the notion of a jedi having fun adventures and an SI who doesn't invent the printing press sounds appealing to you, well yeah, this is a good way to spend a few days.

Also, nearly 600k into the story and we still haven't reached episode 1, btw, so, there is still a lot more to come.

Updates are constant, almost weekly and at a decent length, between 5 and 6k or so. So yeah, worth checking out.

The ff.net version is way behind though, so you should try the SV one.

4/5

 

I was following this on alternate history when it started, and I dropped it when some of the weirder legends stuff started coming in. There's apparently some sect that increases the ability of force users through some forgotten training, and the SI is the first person ever to realize that it could be tremendously useful for everyone else to use it. It might not quite be the printing press, but I'm not a fan of SIs cutting corners that make the entire universe look foolish.

I don't want to be entirely negative, there's some cool things even in the parts I read, I enjoyed the push to militarization that could pre-empt the clones and the author has a nice grasp of how the Jedi should be. It was a fun read, it just hit some of the buttons that SIs typically push that irk me.

3/5

 

To be fair, I think it was less "no one ever thought of it" and more "it had been once considered but decided to be dangerous" but yeah, that's actually a good point. Hadn't looked at it that way.

 

I've been following this on and off for a while now. Writing is a cut above the herd, arcs are interesting, action is tight. I'd give it a 4.5/5.

 

Just started reading it and it seems interesting.

One thing that's bothering me though is the annoying habit of not separating sentences with a full stop but rather continuing then after a comma. Does that keep going or does the writer stop doing this later on?

 

I hadn't noticed that myself. Also, the story has broken the million word mark and we're still not up to TPM, and it's looking increasingly unlikely it will happen in any recognisable form. I don't think we've even passed Palpatine in the halls, although Damask has been encountered, and despite doing nothing more than any other friendly character briefly encountered, still manages to metaphorically loom ominously over the MC.

 

This is an example of what I mean with the weird sentence structure:

Storywise though, it's a more fun version of Star Wars but maybe that's just because it's because so far earlier than the movies.

The interactions of the padawans do feel a bit off sometimes. They have the "Padawan Pack", which seems to be against the no attachments rule and Jang is much more excitable than you'd expect a Jedi. Even if she is just a padawan. At times the "fun" seems almost a bit forced like when the SI "can’t help but chuckle at her antics before turning down the right tunnel." The 'antics' here are that the other padawan smiles and walks away.

Even at the early point that I'm at there's a lot of potential but it's not really used as well as it could be. The scene in the crystal caves comes to mind when the lightsaber was constructed. The visions here could be really powerful and used for foreshadowing but it didn't really pull me in at all.

(I also read a couple of paragraphs of one of the later chapters to see whether the writing quality changes and it seemed a lot better. But it was just a couple of paragraphs so it might have been a fluke.)

 

I followed this for quite a while.

I really liked the way that the Legends plot started butterflying in a realistic way. Saphrith seems to have put a lot of thought into how it was going to be done. It isn't just Legends plot with an SI shoved in there repeating lines or telling everyone how stupid they are. This is a major plus in my opinion considering it's an SI.

Her update rate is phenomenal and knowledge of Legends canon is superb.

The only really cringe-worthy aspect is that damn Matuki (sp) training mentioned far too much. We get it; she's an Uber-Jedi. We don't need to be reminded three or four times a chapter. And this obvious power-up is pretty much the basis for her virtually steamrolling over the bad guys/creatures/etc. whenever they pop up. She has to actually work at it sometimes, but by the time I stopped reading she had won every encounter decisively. It just got a little boring to read knowing that her and her friends will make it out of every super-dangerous scenario. Sure they may be hurt, but a little dip in some bacta and everyone is back to normal soon enough.

Granted this was about 400k into the story and things may have changed by the 1 million K mark, but I figured if it hadn't by then I was bailing.

The other thing I disliked was the "companions". It just felt too... eh... SWTORish or KOTORish to me. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's not my cup of tea in terms of SW fics.

3/5

 

Huh, got linked to this, very interesting and flattering. (made an account just to reply to this)

Gotta say, first and foremost, thank you for comments, both good and bad. I appreciate all of them, super flattered you even considered my little fic rec worthy at all.

And...yeah, the Matukai thing. I kinda cringe looking back at it too, definitely could've handled that better. I don't think I mention it that much anymore, but it's all 100% fair the criticism. I remember thinking it was a perfect complement for Jedi martial training and went full bore in on it, perhaps a bit too much.

If I ever did a rewrite, that'd be one of the things I'd severely lessen.

That said, I'm glad that you liked the butterflies thing cause that's really hit or miss for me sometimes where I'm never confident that it's the right decision when I post.

Thank you all for your criticisms and for sticking with the story for as long as you did, for those who dropped it, and for those still reading, I hope you enjoy it.