solo_sword | ooc: *rubs forearms with the whole damn game*

We interrupt your BDE aftermath for an info post! You might have noticed some changes for Jaina in the last few weeks, even if you've only glanced at the subject lines of her posts. As of now, Jaina's undergone a bit of a canon change, which means that I've done a little shifting to throw her right square through her next bit of canon. (Hey, sometimes you've gotta shake things up to keep it interesting.) This means while she's only been gone two weeks Fandom time, it's been five years for her, and she'll be coming back at the ripe old age of twenty-seven.

So, um, you know how I've said and nauseum that I was never going to do the bug books and they were horrible and I was going to do everything I could to avoid them? I totally did the bug books. Oops!

why the bug books are scary: a rundown of wtf happened
The Dark Nest Trilogy is three books by Troy Denning, he of the freezer book, which should tell you something right there. A guy they thought died at Myrkr didn't die, he was just absorbed into the nest of an insectoid race called the Killiks, they're starting wars, Jaina's ex Jag is on the side they're fighting, the Killik nest is a literal hivemind that brainwashes you into the Colony, yadda yadda yadda.

Which happens to Jaina, yes. Not only that, but she ends up mentally linked to her bff Zekk through the Force. They can read each other's thoughts and emotions, finish each other's sentences, and thanks to the Nest, talk in terms of "we" and "us". Which leads to Zekk saying things like "our boyfriend" and it is wroooooong. There is also forearm rubbing, throat clicking, and Natalie shuddering with ew. When the Chiss and Killiks go to war, she ends up leading ground forces of bugs (yeah) and fighting on the wrong side, but for the right reasons.

That's the quick and dirty version of three books. By the end, the war's over, the Killiks aren't exterminated, Jacen's back and kinda headed evilish, Jag's been shot down and is unaccounted for, and the EU writers finally got the clearance to start using the events of the prequels in their books. (Not that Jaina knows that right now.)

where this leaves jaina/what you need to know
After the DNT ended, Jaina's not a part of the Colony anymore, but still sort of joined at the brain with Zekk. It's part of the reason she's coming back to Fandom when she knows she can- between needing to get some distance there for her own sanity and the Jedi not really trusting her, it's time to get away for a little bit.

This means that even in Fandom, she will have someone kind of hitchhiking in her mind with her. It's nothing anyone has to worry about; it just means that someone else's thoughts might show up in Jaina's narrative, especially whenever there are strong emotions going on for her. If she gets really mad, he might try to calm her down, etc. This will be fading through Jaina's time in Fandom. No one should read anything different from her than they did before, and it's nothing that should affect anyone else.

Overall, the girl's been through the second war of her life, has been mentally controlled by someone often against her will, isn't trusted by most of the people back home right now, isn't really speaking to her brother and knows they're ticking down to LOTF, just spent a while trying to kill her ex and vice versa (and wow did she get a little twisted at the end there, like did you really have to make her go there, Troy Denning? Really?), managed to get reeeeeeeeally close to the dark side not once but twice in three books, and is trying to regain some sense of herself as an individual again. She's coming back a little messed up and she knows it. She also won't be dropping her issues on everyone, though she'll be fine sharing details with those she trusts if they want to know, and I have no intention of stepping on anyone's BDEmo. Also, thanks to all her time away, she'll actually be glad to be back, at least until she remembers the gremlins.

And for the record, she's still tiny, still hot, and looks nothing like a dude.

Any questions?