I Wrote 100K Words of Genderbent Star Wars Fanfic in 5 Years
Part 1 — Episodes I to III
I’ve been inventing stories with other peoples’ characters for as long as I can remember. My sister and I used to tell each other stories when we were kids. We called it “imaginary plays” and we would each control specific characters and we had shared agency in where the plot went.
While this has strong similarities to role playing games, we usually used characters like Batman and Superman in our stories, which technically made them fanfiction. I didn’t hear the word “fanfiction” until I was in university, though.
I have always been a very concise writer. I am a poet at heart, and I naturally use the least amount of words possible to get my meaning across. After all, the best poetry packs the most meaning into the least number of words.
“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.” — Rita Dove
I am therefore still astonished that I was able to write a fanfic that clocked in at nearly 100,000 words.
Rule 63
For those unaware, Internet Rule 63 states that “For every given male character, there is a female version of that character, and vice versa.” Rule 63 fanfics are also called “gender swapped” or “genderbent” fanfiction.
While some genderbending stories have the character/s change gender over the course of the story, some simply take an established character and create a new story with the character as another gender from the beginning. The TV series Elementary is an example of this with Lucy Liu in the role of female!Watson.
I don’t remember where I got the idea for a female!Darth Vader. I began writing of Anneke Skywalker and Padraig Andelko in October 2013. I was annoyed at the way a loud portion of the Star Wars fandom hated Episode I: The Phantom Menace and young Anakin. I suppose I may have wondered if the reaction would have been different had it been a girl asking a boy, “Are you an angel?”
A Shadow in the Glass Episode I: I’m a Person (and My Name is Anneke!)
I finished writing Episode I in December 2013. It clocks in at 8102 words broken up into 11 chapters. This is isn’t very long, but it was the longest thing I’d written and finished up to that point.
Chapter 1 opens with Anneke in the junk shop on Tatooine awestruck by the boy from offworld who walks in with a Jedi: “His hair was trimmed with skill, and he carried himself with confidence, though he was clearly not used to the heat. She had never in her life seen anyone so beautiful.”
I named Anneke first, the name coming easily to me. Padraig was harder. I spent hours searching BehindTheName.com for masculine names that sounded kind of like Padmé Amidala and didn’t mean something stupid. I settled on Padraig Andelko. Padraig is the anglicized spelling of the Irish and Scottish Gaelic forms of Patrick, and means “nobleman.” Anđelko is the Croatian and Serbian form of Angel.
I followed the official SW script pretty closely but I allowed the characters to develop their own personalities, and I found that both Anneke and Padraig were somehow softer than their antecedents. I also changed their ages. While Anakin is only 9 at the beginning of Episode I, I made Anneke 14. Padmé is 5 years older than Anakin in canon, while Padraig is only 2 years older than Anneke in my fic, making him 16 when the story starts.
I only genderbent the two of them, leaving everyone else as their original canon genders. I can’t remember why. I think it was something to do with them being the main characters, though Obi Wan is really a main character as well, and he becomes more and more important as my story continues.
Anneke stood at a funeral pyre, her vision blurred with tears. Qui Gon had been the first person, other than her mother, who had believed in her. He had seen past the dirt on her face, past her status as a slave, and he had told her she had potential for greatness. Now he was gone. She was alone.
A Shadow in the Glass Episode II: The Fading Light
Episode II opens with Jedi Master Obi Wan Kenobi and Padawan Anneke Skywalker bantering on the way to meet up with Senator Padraig Andelko of Naboo. Then Anneke admits, “I may have had a crush on him,” and Obi Wan gently replies, “You have grown much since then, Anneke. The Force will help you. Remember what you have learned.” In canon, there are 10 years between Episodes I and II, but I shortened that span to 5 years making Anneke 19 and Padraig 21 at this time.
While I love the brotherly relationship between Obi Wan and Anakin in the movies, I found my Obi Wan and Anneke fitting into a deeper almost father and daughter mold. My Obi Wan is gentle and kind, maybe more so than in canon, often reaching out to touch Anneke on the shoulder in comfort and reassurance.
For five years, Padraig had tried to forget the slave girl from Tattooine, telling himself that his memories of her were exaggerated. But she was even more beautiful than he remembered, and she now carried an aura of power and confidence that was nearly irresistible.
While the main pairing I was writing was male/female, there was something queer about their relationship, though I wouldn’t have used that word back then. Theirs is a forbidden love, even in canon, as the Jedi ban emotion and attachment.
This installment includes Anneke’s mother’s death, and the beginning of Anneke’s slide toward the dark side. I tried to make this inexorable but not inevitable. I wanted the reader to continue to relate to Anneke as she began to make choices that led her down the wrong path.
A Shadow in the Glass Episode III: Reflected Shadow
Episode III relates Anneke’s final fall to the dark side. Anneke is keeping a lot of secrets from Obi Wan: she and Padraig are married against the Jedi’s rules, she has been having nightmares of Padraig’s death and of fighting with Obi Wan, and she is pregnant.
She cannot keep that last from a Jedi — especially one who knows her so well — for long. When Anneke tells Obi Wan, she is certain he will go to the Jedi Council and that they will expel her from the Order. Instead, he promises her, “they won’t find out from me.”
Anneke doesn’t trust Palpatine, but he was the one who arranged for her marriage to Padraig to be legal while secret. However, she senses a malice behind his benign exterior, and she dreads each meeting with him. However, she is also learning to trust the Jedi less and less, and Palpatine uses that to manipulate her against them. Finally, he tells her that the Jedi Council will assume Obi Wan to be the father of her child, and “Master Kenobi knows nothing else but being a Jedi. When the Council expels him for a dalliance with his Padawan, it will destroy him.”
I tried to make Anneke’s choice to turn to the dark side understandable, a natural next step to what had come before. Her fear of what she sees in her nightmares of Padraig and Obi Wan combined with her growing distrust of the Jedi added to Palpatine’s machinations leaves her believing she has no good choices.
Anneke chooses Palpatine and the dark side with her eyes wide open — or so she believes. When Palpatine sends her to kill every Jedi, she coldly sweeps through the Jedi Temple until she finds a room of small children, those Jedi call “younglings.” In canon, we do not see Anakin kill the younglings, but it is strongly implied that he does. Anneke does not.
One of the children in her womb chose that moment to move, reminding her that she was a mother, and she remembered the camp of dead, and the Tusken who had shielded her child with her own body.
“Listen to me,” she hissed, waving the younglings closer. “Get out of here. Cut off your Padawan braids and run away. Don’t look back, and don’t trust anyone. Never come back, and never tell anyone who you are.” A crowd of pale wide-eyed faces stared at her, unmoving. She rose to her feet, her lightsaber in her hand, the blue blade casting a cold light about the room. She put every ounce of anger she could summon into her voice: “Go!”
They went. Like ghosts, they fled silently, disappearing into the shadows, and she turned away, her jaw set. Palpatine would not be pleased if he found out she had spared the younglings, but she didn’t care. She laid her free hand over her stomach in a protective gesture as she left the room.
I am not saying that Anneke is a better person than Anakin, only that she is a different person. She did kill the Tuskens after all.
In canon, Padmé chases after Anakin when he goes to Mustafar, and he strangles her in a fit of rage. In my fic, Padraig is killed by an assassin while Anneke is at the Temple. She learns of his death just before she leaves for Mustafar to find Nute Gunray, who she believes hired the assassin. I think this actually gives her more motivation.
Obi Wan comes to Mustafar, knowing that Padraig is dead and Anneke attacked the Jedi Temple. Still, he is gentle with her, begging her not to fight him. Angry, griefstricken, racked with agony, Anneke attacks him. But the pain overwhelms her and she passes out.
She wakes to find that her children are gone. Palpatine tells her that Obi Wan stole them, and that they will make him pay.
I meant to stop here, but this was such a bleak ending, I decided to continue. I learned that I don’t like to write unhappy endings.
Esther learned to read when she was four years old, and began writing shortly thereafter. She is a queer Christian poet, crafting with words to create art and music.
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