Apparently Jerry's girlfirend did some art between when the chapter first went up and now. Thus we open up with this...
And it's
the SAME. FUCKING. CHARACTER. Granted, it's probably at least in part a side effect of fucking the artist, but I swear, every time Jerry creates a character it's "da byoodifool wezbeein I wish I could be": slim-but-not-skinny, notable-but-not-obscene tits, slim waist, mid-back-length hair. BUT THIS ONE'S A WOMAN OF COLOR, SO SHUT UP YOU RACIST!
Anyway
One paragraph in, and things are already going to shit. We have a buildup to an "I don't like sand" joke, a retcon, and an assumption that the reader has seen the movie. I admit, I don't know shit about not!Tatooine, but according to Wookieepedia, exactly one Hutt ever set up shop there, and she was dead by the time of the movie, so now Jerry's just making shit up so he can run off on a "money man bad" tangent. Because, you know, "alternate universe" fanfic is about rewriting the universe to fit what you want, not starting at the point of divergence from canon. You know what, fuck it, I'm just going to rewrite this whole fucking paragraph.
Alina strode through the kilometers-long shadow cast by the twisted and burned remains of an Imperial
-class Star Destroyer, grateful for even the modest reprieve from the heat of Jakku. Once a mighty space-faring warship, the premier icon of the martial power of the Galactic Empire, the ruined hulk now lay half-buried in the desert sands, bleached by the relentless sun and picked clean by the planet's population of scavengers, a fitting tribute to the government it once served.
I mean, fucking seriously, Jerry. The first sentence and first paragraph are the most critical parts of a story. If this is your A-game, I shudder at the thought of what else lies in here.
Wow! Sand jokes!
More lorefagging? More lorefagging: lightsabers are not dangerous to those not "equipped" to handle them, they are dangerous to those not "trained" to handle them. Specifically, this is tied into the complete lack of weight in the blade, making the position of the blade impossible to determine by feel and making it incredibly easy to overswing and hit yourself. Think about how many times you accidentally bopped yourself with that cheap-ass plastic lightsaber with the folding blade you had as a kid: a "real" lightsaber is exactly as easy to fuck up with as that. A lightsaber is not something that
requires Force-sensitivity to use, but a trained Force-user's ability to channel the Force to partially control their body motions greatly reduces the risk of auto-bisection.
And here begins said "Money Man Bad" tangent, brought to you by Floyd Riots Logic: "GameStop has lots of money, so why not loot the GameStop? It won't even make a dent!" Never mind that the individual GameStop store is owned and operated by a member of the local community who has to keep the store afloat independently of the greater corporation, never mind the locals who are reliant on the owner keeping the business afloat for their own incomes, the insurance will cover it!
Wheeling off onto a personal tangent: I have a pet peeve about "thought dialog". For some reason it always feels jarring to me to jump from third-person narration to inner monologue, particularly in cases like this where they line up like setup and punchline.
Then we have this absolute masterpiece:
This is how Jerry reveals that his self-insert is a Sith. Hoo boy, where do I even fucking start? Yes, the summary makes it clear that Alina is a Dark Lady of the Sith, but THIS is how he chose to actually introduce her as such? She just knows this guy in this place who knows she's a Sith, who greets her like an everyday nuisance despite her just having come in from off-planet? Jerry later makes mention that she's been to Not!Tatooine before, but for some fucking reason I doubt that she's spent enough time to develop this kind of casual "fuck you" relationship with anyone there. Who the fuck even is this guy? He's introduced so casually that I'd expect him to be a character from the movie, but Wookiepedia doesn't have a page on anyone named Traig. There's also the matter of the Force Lightning, or more particularly, assuming that the audience knows what Force Lightning is. Fair enough, it's fanfiction, but it's bad fucking writing to just throw down a jargon term and expect the audience to just get it. Then, of course, there's the fact that she's a FUCKING SITH LORD. Rule of Two? Extinction of the Sith? The fact that the word "Sith" was only introduced with the prequel trilogy? The fact that the fucking Jedi were downright mythical at the start of TFA, let alone the Sith? FUCK IT, SHE'S A SITH BECAUSE DIDN'T YOU READ THE REDDIT POST ABOUT HOW UMM AKSHUALLY THE JEDI WERE THE BAD GUYS ALL ALONG?!
FUCK ME THIS IS FUCKING GARBAGE
Anyway, Alina goes hunting for a scavenger with a spare hyperdrive component, and you already know who is going to show up with one. Instead, let me highlight this paragraph.
So, there was no actual point to stealing the packs she used to buy water, Jerry just wanted to have a Money Man Bad moment, food is cheap, right? Never mind transportation costs or the fact that the planet is generating nearly nothing of value to sell and import food with, the only reason shitholes exist is because the Bad Money Man made them that way.
You have a lightsaber and a clear lack of fucks to give about not being an asshole, what else do you need? Also: >implying random pieces of junk from what's left of starships that got blown up, went through atmospheric entry, crashed into the surface, and got left in a desert for 30+ years is going to be of any value beyond scrap metal. Oh, and how could I forget: MONEY MAN BAD
So, Alina meets
Not!Jaina (fuck you, I refuse to use her actual name), gets the hots, offers her a bunch of food for the part and its installation, blah blah blah. They sit down and have a meal, and there is another picture.
MOTHER OF FUCK WHAT IS THAT?
Full disclaimer: I don't draw. I don't draw specifically because I know that
that is what my drawings would look like. Also note Alina biting her lip, because that's what CYOOT WEZBEENZ do, right?
It's called a "Glow rod"
Moving on, Alina has a droid that's not as cool as HK-47, Not!Jaina knows way too much about starships, apparently Jakku is just a general trash heap for old ships instead of a single mass grave from a single battle, Alina keeps lying about herself, and Jerry makes stupid title drops.
No, seriously, this is what the chapter is named.
I mean, what the actual fuck? It's a throwaway line with no bearing on the actual content of the chapter. You couldn't even change the format to something like "Mercenary, Bounty Hunter, Courier, Wetwork"? Here, have a line you should have used as your title.
Not!Jaina heads home once they finish talking, and Alina feels the opening scene of the movie happen.
Compare to how Obi-Wan took the death of billions:
Alina flies off to the scene of the massacre where she comes across Max von Sydow still alive after getting bisected in the first 2 minutes of the film.
Then again, it is consistent with the
absolute neutering of lightsabers that happened in the movie.
The dying old man tells Alina about Luke and how important it is to find the pilot guy, she agrees to help, and then this happens.
I get it, that's supposed to be a mercy blow.
Supposed to be. Instead, all she's done is made his death even more painful because his brain is still working and every single nerve connection below his neck has been severed. If my understanding of phantom pain is correct, he's feeling something along the lines of his entire body being on fire, and since the arteries were cauterized by the lightsaber, the blood won't drain out of his brain, making it take even longer for him to die. If you're trying to put someone out of his misery, you destroy the brain, not sever the head.
Jerry, you are a hack at writing and painfully ignorant of the intricacies of Star Wars. Fuck you.
