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bedlamsbard · 3 years

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Writing tag game -- tagged by @lessattitudemorealtitude

how many works do you have on Ao3?

Discounting podfic on which I’m listed as a co-author, 24. My concept writing doesn’t go to AO3 and the vast majority of my Narnia fic was never cross-posted there. (Or reposted there, actually, I think most of it pre-dates the AO3.)

what’s your total Ao3 word count?

1,050,810. oh, huh, I didn’t actually realize I’d passed the one million word mark (probably with Crown).

what are your top 5 fics by kudos?

all of these ended up being Star Wars, which is not a huge surprise. Morning will probably reach Dirt in the next couple of updates, I’d guess.

Immutable, or, Five Times Obi-Wan Kenobi Compromised His Jedi Ethics for Anakin Skywalker -- this is not the oldest Star Wars fic on there, but I think it’s the second oldest. people just really like 5 times fic.

Wake the Storm - did you know that when I started Wake I assumed it was a very niche trope in what was, at the time, a pretty dead fandom? the kudos count on Wake actually outnumbers Gambit by more than 1600 kudos, so the number of people who go from Wake to Gambit is a lot lower than you might think.

Queen's Gambit - a significantly lower kudos count than Wake or Immutable. Gambit’s such a weirdo of a story, tbh, I can’t be surprised by anything about Gambit anymore.

On the Edge of the Devil's Backbone - about 600 kudos less than Gambit, so less difference between Gambit and Backbone than between Wake and Gambit.

Dirt in the Machine - another older fic. I’d rewrite this one if I cared enough to do so, because it’s not at my current standards (Immutable isn’t either, for that matter) and I kind of wince every time I get comments on it. this is the first one of the top five to have below 1K kudos.

do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I’ll usually respond to direct questions, but I very, very seldom respond to comments in general. This is an old standing policy of mine that’s now more than a decade old -- it used to be I’d wait twenty-four hours before responding, then I’d respond right before the next chapter went up, and for a while I’d only respond to comments on the first few chapters of a story. Now I just mostly do not. The reasons for this are: (1) many, many years ago, I lost my temper pretty badly at a comment on a fic of mine (this was pre-AO3, this was back in my LJ days), and after that I moved to the “wait twenty-four hours” response so I didn’t say anything without thinking about it, (2) I do go back and reread comments but I hate rereading my own responses, (3) I prefer to know the comments numbers on my fic are all from actual comments and not from me saying “thanks for reading!”, (4) I can’t take that kind of responsibility for answering every single comment, man.

what’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

Of stuff I’ve written in the past ten years? (I can’t really remember before that.) Maybe Backbone, because it ends on that pretty upbeat “yay team we’re going to be rebels now!” note. or Devil’s in the Details (other side part 1), though I don’t really want to consider it a finished fic even though it’s technically finished; it has another “yay team we’re back together (minus Ezra)” ending. I tend to end on complicated and reasonably open endings, not like...happy endings.

what’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

probably Gambit for the “everything is super fucked up” factor and also the fact that I never wrote the sequel. plus it ended with the entire Wake trio split up in a whole new universe, plus back in the Gambitverse Amidala not able to go back to Naboo, Ahsoka shunned, Palpatine’s new empire, Rex trapped in the Gambitverse, etc.

do you write crossovers?

I did in my Narnia days. I don’t anymore. Working in widespread fandoms like Star Wars or the MCU is basically like writing crossover fic within the same universe, anyway.

have you ever received hate on a fic?

*hysterical laughter*

...yes. yes I have. it’s the reason every time I get a comment notification on Gambit or Wake I freeze in absolute terror. people HATE Wake and Gambit. I hate to say never, but I will probably never write those characters or in that series again.

do you write smut? if so, what kind?

not really? I’ve done relatively non-explicit sex but it’s not something I’m super comfortable writing, especially in recent years. I’m much more likely to do a fade to black.

have you ever had a fic stolen?

I think Gambit got scraped once when it was still in progress and my response was something along the lines of “good luck, bro,” given the whole “still in progress” thing.

have you ever had a fic translated?

I’ve gotten a couple of translation requests but I can’t recall if anything’s ever been translated. (Or if I responded to them...I know a few I forgot to respond.)

have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes, back in my Narnia days. Some SW concept writing and that ended so badly that I’ll never co-write again.

what’s your all-time favourite ship?

Kanan/Hera, of course!

what’s a wip that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

gods, Dust in the Air, my Narnia Last Battle AU. Back when I started it in 2008 or so I didn’t have the self-control or discipline I do now, even if I had a lot of the worldbuilding ability and the ability to conceive of if not execute long plot arcs, and I broke off more than I could chew. If I ever went back to it I’d probably have to do a complete rewrite and it has the unique problem among my WIPs of being the last major fic I wrote in present tense -- I now write exclusively in past tense. The bones of the story are good, I’d just have to go back to the bones and not just pick up where I left off.

what are your writing strengths?

Plot, worldbuilding/environment, action. I also do genuinely think I’m very good at characterization too, but I think they’re all inter-related. (Except the action, that’s me alone. I love writing action and I generally get a lot of compliments on my action scenes.) look, I know it’s conceited, but I’m good and I know I’m good, and I’m good in a pretty well-rounded way for the genre I write.

what are your writing weaknesses?

brevity. can’t do it.

honestly, there are others, but I don’t write stories where they’d come up. I think I have a tendency to get to bogged down in dialogue in a way that I’ve never quite solved. I also let my emotions take over too much and not in the good fannish way, in the “I’m having a fucked up relationship with canon or fandom and it’s affecting my ability to work” way.

what are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

please stop having your Asgardians speak Latin for magic, man, that’s my feeling on it.

okay, my feelings on it for me -- I’ve sprinkled bits and pieces of Huttese, Twi’leki, and tee-tiny bits of other stuff here and there in fic. I’d not be comfortable doing more than that because the only other language that I really feel comfortable doing anything significant in is Latin, and even then I’d hesitate. also, like, Latin! not a language that comes up in the fandoms I write in. even then, like -- any extended dialogue should be intelligible to the audience, and I don’t expect my audience to be able read anything other than English; I’d rather just say “they switched to Twi’leki to say” or something similar.

what was the first fandom you wrote for?

like, online? Harry Potter. for things that I didn’t post online because I didn’t know what fic was yet? probably either The 10th Kingdom or The Mummy.

what’s your favourite fic you’ve written?

On the Edge of the Devil’s Backbone. I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever written, I think it’s the most tightly plotted, I think it’s got the best worldbuilding, I think it’s remarkably consistent thematically, and it was, at the time, a fic that I was very devoted to finishing or dying trying, because I was going through it at the time and some of it was connected to the fic.

I don’t tag people, but please go for if you want!

#meme response

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spacemomcreations · 3 years

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Fan Fic Writer Review

I was tagged by @findswoman , so here goes:

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

Just 13 right now. I’m still in the process of uploading my work from the Jedi Council Forum’s fan fiction boards.

2. What’s your total AO3 wordcount?

102, 123 words

3. How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Just one: Star Wars

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Wolf Brother

Shadow of a Doubt

Date Night

The Beginning of Honor

“All the Joy, but Not the Care”

Wolf Brother is an AU in which Ezra was raised by Loth-wolves, Shadow of a Doubt and Date Night are Kanera stories, Beginning of Honor is a Zeb backstory, and All the Joy is Kanan angst set during “Jedi Night”.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I do my best to. RL has been hectic lately (as in the last year and a half :P) so I don’t always get to it right away, but I do try.

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Definitely All the Joy, but not the Care, which ends with Kanan going knowingly and willingly to his own death after Palpatine tempts him with a vision of a happy future with Hera and Jacen.

7. Do you write crossovers? If so what’s the craziest one you’ve written?

A long time ago, when my daughter was into My Little Pony, I started writing a SW/Equestria Girls crossover called Friendship Is Galactic. I did some crossover fanart for it as well.

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

No, thankfully.

9. Do you write smut? If so what kind?

I don’t. It took me a long time to write my first kiss and I’m still working my way up to my first “fade-to-black” scene.

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

No.

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, I haven’t.

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Back in the day when I first started writing fic, I did a lot of collaboration and round robins. Sadly, most of them are lost to truncation on the JCF boards.

13. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

Kanera, without a doubt!

14. What’s a wip that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

A story that I have on JCF, called All Our Yesterdays about what happens to Ezra after the Rebels finale. (spoiler: he escapes the Chimaera and crashes in the Unknown Regions, but loses his memory in the process). It kind of got away from me with multiple “cool ideas” that didn’t necessarily add to the story and there was just so much time to fill between events (somewhere between 5 and 10 years😜). Every now and then I get a wild hare to work on it, which usually ends in utter frustration at my inability to make it workable.

15. What are your writing strengths?

I think my strengths are in writing family/friendship dynamics, characterization, and dialogue. I think I do pretty well with humor, too.

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

Action scenes are tough for me to write, and while I feel I do well with light romance, I’m still getting the hang of “heavier” romance scenes.

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I’m not fluent enough in any RL languages to work them into my writing (and it really wouldn’t make sense in the GFFA), but I’ve learned quite a bit of Mando’a in the course of writing my Sabine-centric stories and I feel pretty comfortable using a word or sentence of it to add to a story.

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Star Wars

19. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

Oh, hmm….like @findswoman I feel like this is like choosing a favorite child! Of my stories on AO3, I’m going to say it’s a tie between All the Joy, but Not the Care and Beginning of Honor. I’m very proud of All the Joy, because it turned out almost exactly the way I had imagined it. It’s a bit more dramatic than most of the stories I usually write, too, and I was happy that I was able to pull off something serious. And I am proud of Beginning for the amount of worldbuilding and character creation that went into it.

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#fanfic #writing #about me #just for fun

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gffa · 5 years

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hi! i really want to get into the EU stuff, but i have absolutely no idea where to start. can you point towards a few good books, maybe? thank you, and i absolutely love your account btw!

Hi! Thank you for the kind words, I’m glad you’re enjoying the blog. ♥ Recommendations for EU stuff often depends on what you’re interested in, because there are a lot of books I really enjoyed, so I’ll organize them by era, since that’s how fans are often divided. I’ll also include comics, because often times the comics are some of the absolute best stuff!If you haven’t watched The Clone Wars and Rebels yet, those are absolutely the places to start as they’re key to the fabric of the bigger story, imo. Not that you can’t understand the movies without them or anything, but TCW is especially important for understanding just how grueling the clone wars really were. And Rebels is important for showing the fates of a lot of the TCW characters and seeing the Empire vs the Rebellion (it does a lot to flesh that out, too).PREQUELS:

Any of the Star Wars Adventures comics that contain the prequels characters are great. Well, ALL of the Adventures comics are great, but the prequels ones are adorable, funny, and yet really well-told. They’re light-hearted and largely oneshots, but the IDW comics have been incredible for still being some of the absolute best SW content out there. Especially a not-miss is #12-13 and the 2019 Annual for the Padme&Leia&Breha story.

Obi-Wan & Anakin comic by Charles Soule. A five-issue mini series that has the most stunning art of all the comics I’ve ever seen pretty much, it’s also a really good look at the time of Anakin’s apprenticeship and provides some interesting glimpses into their early days together.

Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith comic by Charles Soule. This comic was an absolute phenomenon to read month to month and one of the comic series that I’ve spent the most time analyzing and felt it’s really held up to scrutiny, which shows just how much thought went into it. It’s 25 issues of Vader fresh off Revenge of the Sith, over the span of a couple years, and really does an AMAZING job of exploring Anakin Skywalker as Darth Vader, all the choices he made and the themes of the comic are all about showing he can’t admit to the HUGE mistakes he’s made. It was incredible.

Choose Your Destiny: An Obi-Wan & Anakin Adventure by book Cavan Scott. I’m not usually a fan of Choose Your Own Adventure style stories, but this one was worth it to me to get an absolutely DELIGHTFUL book with Obi-Wan and Anakin, who are cranky with each other, but ultimately show that they can come back together and obviously care about each other. Sprinkle in some other cool stuff (Jedi details, Bant Eerin being recanonized) and it was lovely.

Dooku: Jedi Lost audiodrama by Cavan Scott. If you’re interested in Dooku, Asajj Ventress, or the Jedi at all, this drama was pretty amazing, it gave a ton of worldbuilding detail, but also did a lot to fill in the backstory of Dooku and gave us a long look inside Asajj’s head as well. Qui-Gon makes some appearances, he has an amazing dynamic with Dooku, and my heart as always skips a beat for how much I love the Jedi.

Age of the Republic comics by Jodie Houser. Holy shit, these comics were SO GOOD. They’re a series of oneshots about the various heroes and villains of the time, a glimpse into the lives of all of them, and Houser really nailed it here. My favorite is the Obi-Wan one, because the conversation he has with Anakin about Qui-Gon is a must and delves deepest into the characters’ stuff, but all of them are worth reading.

Jedi of the Republic - Mace Windu comic by Matt Owens. A five-issue mini series that, okay, the art is Like That but the storyline really worked for me because it’s a really good look at Mace’s character and his belief in the Jedi Order and how he came to master himself and how the galaxy looks at Jedi. It’s woven around a fairly typical action plot, but one of the things that always strikes me is the compassion the Jedi show one of their own, even when they’re falling into darkness, as well as this is a comic about Mace Windu’s faith and his work to master himself and it’s SO GOOD.

Kanan: The Last Padawan comics by Greg Weisman. Stunning art plus a look at some of the characters/relationships that I want so much more of (TELL ME EVERYTHING ABOUT DEPA BILLABA) and more glimpses into life at the Jedi Temple, as well as telling the story of how the character went from Caleb Dume to Kanan Jarrus, all of it heartbreaking and so, so good.

While the Revenge of the Sith novelization by Matthew Stover is no longer canon, but it does an absolutely phenomenal job of breaking your heart all over again for the characters and expanding on everything that was going on during that time and really, really gets into the headspace of Anakin’s character in a way that was line-edited by George Lucas himself, so I think of it as having a lot of emotional truths to it, rather than being part of canon (which it’s specifically said as not being).

ORIGINALS:

The ongoing Star Wars comic (by Jason Aaron, then Kieron Gillen) + the original Darth Vader comic (by Kieron Gillen) are the absolute best place to start, they’re an incredible addition to the characters’ journeys between ANH and ESB. The two comics are meant to be read concurrently, so I recommend them together, they often show the same scenes from different points of view, but you can roll with either of them if they’re going well for you. They’re my favorite for what they add to the story.

Star Wars Battlefront II’s storyline can be watched on YouTube like a movie, which is about two hours long, has some fantastic characters (Iden Versio and Del Meeko are amazing, but also the brief storylines the OT trio have in the game are fantastic) and it does a really great job of helping to bridge the gap between the OT and the ST, explaining a lot about Jakku’s significance and how the First Order popped up.

From a Certain Point of View novel by various. MY FAVORITE BOOK IN THE EU, FULL STOP. A series of point of view stories from various supporting characters during A New Hope is exactly what it sounds like and, okay, not all of them worked out for me, some of them are very skippable if you’re not enjoying it, but the Obi-Wan one, the Qui-Gon one, and the Yoda one are all must-reads because they are HEARTBREAKING and fill in so much of what’s going on with those characters in the OT with regards to the PT events. Also the Motti one is the single funniest thing Star Wars has ever put out.

Lords of the Sith novel by Paul S. Kemp. While I’ve only read about a third of this one so far, I’ve enjoyed it a lot, as it’s a look at some of the worst parts of SW’s timeline, where Vader and Palpatine are at their worst, where Ryloth is suffering, but it’s done with deftness and gravitas, imo. Possibly better after you’ve seen TCW and Rebels because Cham Syndulla’s character will have more weight then.

Legends of Luke Skywalker novel by Ken Liu. This book came out around the time that The Last Jedi came out (or at least that’s when I read it, iirc) and it was a balm for my soul that needed Jedi Master Luke Skywalker. It’s an in-universe series of myths, so it’s not literal, it’s stories told about Luke Skywalker as he travels the galaxy trying to understand the Force and the Jedi. It’s lovely!

Thrawn novel by Timothy Zahn. I still think the first Thrawn book was really good (even if the shine came off the apple after that) and it does a fantastic job of setting up the character’s backstory, intro into the Empire, and creating the character of Eli Vanto, WHOM I LOVE. It’s a great read and some of the best of Zahn’s Thrawn work.

ROGUE ONE + SOLO:

The Rogue One novelization by Alexander Freed. I had trouble connecting to Jyn Erso when I first watched the movie, but the way Freed wrote her as this messy, complicated, thorny person who was trying to do the right thing was perfect for making me fall in love with her. (Freed is really, really good at writing messy, complicated, worthwhile women, imo.)

Most Wanted novel by Rae Carson. I loved this book a lot, where it’s a young adult novel set before the events of Solo and helps tell Han and Qi’ra’s backstory and is a great space adventure at the same time.

Catalyst novel by James Luceno. This does a really great job of bridging the Republic era with the Empire era, how the galaxy went from the Clone Wars to what we see in Rogue One, AND expanded a ton on Galen Erso’s character, his relationship with Orson Krennic and Lyra Erso and Jyn, so it made the R1 experience just a ton more valuable for me.

SEQUELS:

Bloodline novel by Claudia Gray. This book still does the absolute most to bridge the gap between the OT and the ST, to explain the events of what happened in that time period. Gray’s writing is best when she’s writing Leia as a character and this book works as a novel for her and as a story about the rise of the First Order and some of the problems of the New Republic.

Spark of the Resistance is a young adult novel (so about 200 pages) by Justina Ireland. I only recently read this one and I just thoroughly enjoyed it, it was Rey and Rose and Poe off on their own adventure, which was typical cute Star Wars stuff, but the chemistry and adorable banter between these three was so good I could have read an entire series for them! (I also liked her Lando’s Luck YA novel, if you’re interested in his character.)

Poe Dameron comics by Charles Soule. Soule’s writing is some of the best stuff in SW so far and he does an absolutely phenomenal job of capturing the charisma of Poe’s character, while also giving him an actual character arc to work through. The comics just fly by, they’re so good and so smoothly easy to read and so damn charming.

Cobalt Squadron novel by Elizabeth Wein. If you get the audiobook of this, it’s narrated by Kelly Marie Tran, who does a love job of reading it, and was a book that helped me just utterly FALL IN LOVE with Rose Tico. It’s a book that does a lot to explain her back story and who she is and it’s just absolutely wonderful.

The Last Jedi novelization by Jason Fry. If you really, really hated TLJ, this might not be the book for you, but I found it to be a book that helped fill in some smaller details that made the movie work better for me and got inside the characters’ heads just enough to help grease the wheels to put me in a better place with the movie, so I always really like it.

#fic recs #(not really but that's my tag)#novels #Anonymous

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c-bulletaftermidnight · 6 years

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Ok I said I wouldn’t ask but your TFA answer was so awesome I’m curious - things you liked/disliked about TLJ?

Oh boy, oh boy

Liked:

_ Uuuh. Kylo becoming Supreme Leader and cementing himself as the true villain I guess since it’s interesting to work on it’s gonna the political & military landscape of the FO??

_ Kylo being shown off again as a good tactician when fucking up the Raddus.

_I’m glad Phasma’s gone.

-Finn & Rey hugging at the end of the movie that’s it.

That’s it.

Dislikes:

_ The worldbuilding has been fucked up just to respond to Rian’s whims when he have barely any explications about the context.

_ Fucking bad designs everywhere.

_Boring cinematography except a few times.

_ The fucking zooms-in and Kylo looking like he’s stuck in a washing machines when he barrels rolls around the TIE Silencer.

_ The FO is suddendly overpowered with money and personnal. The loss of SKB has like no impact on the organization. This episode should have explored to their backstory but Rian simply didn’t care.

_ Everybody in this movie shut off their brains.

_ Hux went from “officer didn’t had not much battle experience” to a total joke. His traumas due to his upbringing are ignored and his sufferings are reduced into supposed moments of comedy .And it’s not like Rian didn’t knows his past, he even gave him a first name. Hell he didn’ even bother explain Hux’s past to Domhnall and he discovered that his character had a first name when an interviewer asked him about it (Domnhall seemed pretty angry about it since he invest himself a lot in reserches and stuff for the characters he plays.) Knowing how Domhnall had to improvise the blaster scene, i’m sure he would have objected even more of Rian’s decisions. His purpose half of the movie is to do Huxposition on the bridge, being totally incompetent and thrown around. It’s gonna be hard for JJ to repair this and have the audience take him seriously as a villain.

_ Poe, well, I never cared much about his character. I even tried to read the comics but I felt barely nothing about him. But I was hoping TLJ would help but instead they managed to makes me hate his character. The Poe/Holdo arc was badly written. There was many ways to make an arc like that make sense but also more emotionnal for these two characters. I hate how one second they makes him this macho man who keeps understimating lady officers but a second after, the female characters are “haha, I like him ;)” Yeah sure.

_Finn’s arc who is reduced as total coward and a joke and where war has to be explained to him (a fucking child-soldier) by a woman that constantly think about hurting him when he mentions Rey, the person he is close to the most and then is forced as a potential love-interest to him for some reasons. The DJ explanations are just bad (of course, the Resistance has to buy weapons. We knows that Rian, thx) The suicide run was also pretty stupid. Also the fact that him and Rey didn’t reuniting on the Supremacy screams so much Rian wanting them to interact as less as possible in the movie. Finn deserves better.

_ Rey’s arc. Can we even talk about an arc? Her character regressed. As if she didn’t dealt with years of abuse and survival on Jakku and as if Kylo never tortured her and hurt her closed ones. Hell she even get tortured twice in the space of two days because of Kylo. The Force-skype stuff feels so forced. Adam & Daisy only have good chemistry when their characters are set against each other. Rey talks about how she is scared of the Force within her but we see her then has no problem to deal with it and master everything in one second (rendering the existence of jedi school pretty useless like you just have to download the Force-powers of a master jedi and that’s it. The Force.exe is installed. ) The small training scene where she cut the rock looks pretty stupid, her sword fighting position is pretty bad during it. Going to the dark side has no consequences on her. She has no agency. Replace the word “Force” by the plot and you’ll see what I mean.

_ Luke. Has someone who has to deal with depression, I think showing Luke as irritated and stuff can makes sense. I kinda relate since my temper changed a lot. I had a lot of patience & kindness but now, everything irritate me (from a member of my family intruding in my space to hearing the ringing of the phone) I’m scared to see my friends, I feel like a walking failure that I will never be satisfied about myself or will satisfy my parents, I just want to be left alone & if this lead me to die that way, then so be it. The problem is how wonky the writing leading-up to this Luke is bad. Everything is about to make us feels sad for Kylo (I don’t). Kylo’s turning against his family upon learning that he is the grandson of one of the most dangerous war criminal would makes senses. Luke blaming himself because he felt he failed to help his nephew after years of work instead of randomly popping his lightsaber would have made more sense. Luke’s grieving all his others students would make more sense. Luke attempting to reason Kylo after the massacre but still failing would make sense. Luke looking for a solution on the island and then failing to find one, thus made him feel unable to see his sister face to face would makes more sense. There’s is barely any emotionnal moments for Luke and the Final holographic showdown feels like they absolutely wanted to avoid Kylo to kill Luke directly (like c’mon, he’s been committing war crimes since the first minutes of TFA)

_ Kylo. TLJ is a bad attempt at Kylo’s pity fest.It’s interesting that his traumas are acknowledged while the other character’s are pretty ignored despite having a tragic’s past that should impact them as well. Everything is about him. Most of his actions are pretty villainous, he’s no grey character like people are trying to force us to believe because he looks sad. This is an humanized villain arc (which he didn’t need after seeing TFA), not a redemption one. At least he is now the main villain too, so there’s tha (But the “Uwu save ben solo” stuff going around spoil my liking of him as a villain. I’m not here to see whether Kylo is gonna turn LS for a third time in ep9. It would be too repetitive at this point) I just hate the “ You are truely Han solo’s son”line because it is obvious he is more like his mother. Only father figures are important to the characters in SW, it seems. Also the goddamn scar being moved on his eyes but it doesn’t impair his vision despite being cut by a freaking lightsaber. Like Rian could have gave us a legit explanation why Kylo was weakened & needed Rey to fight the preoatarians guards: Losing an eye would be an huge handicap tha het is not used to yet so he needed help to take the throne.

_ Leïa is only here to looks sad and for Kylo’s momentarily manpain (and Marry Poppying around space). Like really, you reduce Leïa fucking Organa too that?? The woman ready to move time and space just for the sake of saving freedom? the princess of Alderaan who saw her planet being destroyed but kept up on? the woman who was mainly in charge of the strategizing of Hoth’s evacuation? The woman who was willing to stay on Bespin just for the sake of massacring stormtroopers because Vader gave Han away to Boba Fett & would have stayed if Lando didn’t pulled her off to the Falcon? The woman who had to face the galactic backlash of her being Vader’s daughter but still kept on? A woman full of anger but also sense of duty?

_ Rose, rose, rose… I was excited to meet her so imagine my disappointment upon discovering she was just here to lecture & push around Finn & being forced as another love interest that doesn’t even work. It’s like she forgot that her sister died the same day and that she should still be grieving. We don’t even get to see her use her mechanic’s skills in the whole story. The message about her character makes no sense between her last line in tlj and all the destructions she is willing to provoke (not all the ppl working at Canto bight are rich, has it show in the Canto Bight book) or let happens. KMT doesn’t deserve that.

_ Yoda’s appearing bcos I hate this hypocrite of a gremlin and was expecting for Luke to dunk him in the sea.

_ Chewie, the glorified cab driver.

_ The battles are a huge clusterfuck & the most badly written space battle I have ever seen.

_The way Poe’s piloting skills feels to OP when you compare to other pilots, in particular in recently RO.

_D’qar’s battle is a fucking tactical mess. Everyone has been conviniently dumb down. Same during the slow-mo chase. What’s even the point of bringing the whole fleet of star destroyers if they are just useless.

_ Bad infiltration scene on the Supremacy on the same level as RO’s one. I’m just tired of infiltration scenes in SW. Please stop that shit.

_ The preotarian guard fight is a choregraphic mess that has no stakes for the characters. Everyone is just waiting for their cue and twirling around. It’s like it was shooted in one go. And there is a difference between Luke in ROTJ kicking a blaster out of the hand of a foe looking bad due to technical problems of the time. And a knife suddendly being edited out at the last minute because the mc would have die then

_ Crait. A good example on how not taking in account the worldbuilding that could be used in battle. So you’re gonna tell me that the Resistance decided to hide away in a base with no issue other than big metallic door in the front? Sounds like a good plan.

_ Leïa never taking command of the battle and strategizing and letting Poe deal with all that despite that she is the general that Poe is a demoted member of the Navy who caused a shit-ton of mess among the Resistance like 30 minutes ago

_ Hux is still depicted in a idiotic way & using bad tactics again. If this is supposed to be a movie about the characters learning about their mistakes,well it didn’t do its job.

_ What is even the use of the third cannon of the gorrilla walkers??

_ What was even the point to use these old speeders besides for being destroyed?

_ Rey shooting down 3 TIES in one shot seems to break a lot of SW physics. Her disappearing of the whole fight shows how much Rian didn’t care abt her character beyond having her interact with Kylo.

_ Y’know, I have Battlefront 2 and in the game there is mining tunnels on the battlefield that you can use to hide. In the movie they are not present, the whole Resistance sit dumbly in trench and just wait to be massacred. I was hoping those tunnels would re-appear in the movies & would be used to sink the walkers by bringing them down with bomb used for mining but nope. The image of walkers falling in a sinkhole, provoking a storm of red dust, coloring the outfits,armors and vehicles in red would have been pretty badass to see.

_ The ramming canon trained on like 10 kilometers instead of using the gorrilla walkers designs and adding to them the mini death-stars canons. They can’t use it all the time tho bcos it would need to cool down before shooting again. Aren’t these supposed to be artillery vehicles ffs???

_ The Resistance not even rigging their escape ships with bombs so if the FO penetrated their base, they can at least cripple them by exploding them. So much for a group that is supposed to be specialized in guerrilla warfare.

_ Talking about guerrilla warfare, i was expecting at least a pursuit and firefight in the mines. No use of the worldbuilding during battle scenarios once again.

_ Leïa should have been the one to confront Kylo, not Luke. Showing her willing to fight her own son and dies during it for the freedom of the galaxy would have been a good way to send her off and building her as this strong, resilient, legendary leader willing to fight her own family for the good cause. It would have been a good middle finger to people who slandered her upon learning she was Vader’s daughter.

_ Rey effortlessly levitating these rocks. Showing her struggle would have made the ending scene more rewarding.

_ The news of the Battle of Crait spreading super fast despite that the Resistance official journalist, Suralinda Javos wasn’t even present during it for documenting or something.

_ Broom boy & the way it is implied that he might join the Resistance or something because of his Force-powers. A fucking child.Involved in a war. I thought Finn being a child-soldier was bad thing?

And I’ll stop there for now, because there is so many problems with this movie, i’m never gonna be finished with it.

#tlj criticism #rian there's no point abt subverting expactations if you can't write coherent characters and plot

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cassatine · 7 years

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Hi! Can I ask what makes West End Games the "genesis point" of Star Wars old cnaon? Isn't it just the movies?

MY TIME HASCOME. Have a [tl;dr] of my notes on WEG.

Okay so - are the WEG games the genesis point of the old canon or is it the movies is the kind of question I’m not super interested in, so i’m more going to focus on what makes West End Games key, and the part they played.

Let’s dothe time warp – we’re in the mid-eighties, let’s say 86. Return of the Jedi was released in 83, the movies have been adaptedin as many forms as possible. There’s been children books, storybooks, activitybooks, nonfiction, etc. There’s been magazines and strip comics in newspapersand two trilogies of novels published by Bantam, plus Foster Splinter of theMind’s eye, there’s been Atari games and toys beyond counting. There’s been publishedscreenplays and artbooks, a Guide to the universe compiled by a fan andofficialized, some odds and ends I’m notcounting, and that list may seem long, but it’s ten yearsof content – the rate of release was nothing like today’s or the nineties’. Towrap it up, between 84 and 86, there’d been the Ewoks and Droidstv series, as well as the Ewok movies (I think a lot of kids loved them, but olderfans, not really) but the overall release rhythm was winding down: Kennerstopped producing SW figurines in 85 (they’d start again in 95); in 86 theMarvel run of comics ended (they published two spin-off series til 87, Droidsand Ewoks, tho). Star WarsInsider, still the Lucasfilm Fan Club Magazine at that point, would start its runin 87, but it featured little about SW for years - outside of themerchandising pages at least. Fandom was certainly active, but the rate of official content had dwindled next tonothing, and nothing new was on the horizon.

In myperiodization, that’s the end of the First Legends Era, and at this point SWwas basically dying, nevermind the Ewoks and Droids stuff. Again, I don’t meanthe core fandom, but without regular new content the wider audience was justlosing interest.

Somethingchanged that of course, otherwise I wouldn’t be here typing this, and somethingwas West End Games, a small company who, until then, had mostly publishedhistorical and fantasy RPGs. They could buy the license because… well, no onewas interested. Again, Star Wars had stopped being a hot property.

That didn’tlast long, and West End Games kicked off the Second Legends Era, expandingon the universe in a way none of the previous spin-off products had.

Their firstpublication was Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game in October 1987, covering thefirst movie’ events. It was followed a month later by a Sourcebook and until the license changed hands at the end of the nineties, WEG released over ahundred books, sourcebooks and miscellaneous stuff, including the Adventure Journal, which arguably kickedoff the long tradition of SW short stories that other official magazines wouldlater continue. Many of these first short stories were later reprinted, mainlyin the Tales anthologies - and a lot of people were angry when some of the Special Editions changes invalidated bits of these stories (the very first Canonpocalypse). The West EndGames material also started the tradition of in-universe works; most of theirguides and sourcebooks had in-universe passages, but some of the sourcebookswere fully written from an in-universe point of view.

There’s anumber of factors behind the success of the WEG Star Wars line; for thecore fandom, it came at a time when there was very little new content: WEG’s shortfictions were the only new fictional content (bar Ewoks/Droids stuff) from 86to 91, and with the Lucasfilm Fan Club Magazine, WEG was basically the only regularsource of content. It was also an encyclopedical exploration of the GFFA, more on that below. It was aninteractive kind of fictional content; a way to become an active participant in the galaxy-sized storyof Star Wars rather than remain a passive audience, more accessible thanthe electronic games of the times.

And it wasgood. Like, critically-acclaimed good.

The WestEnd Games publications had a hugeimpact on the franchise in their time, and their products remained being ratherinfluential in later years. They’re still being so, as that “roleplayinggame material published in the 1980s” alluded to in the 2014 Canonpocalyseannouncement – i.e., the source from which the Inquisitorium, the ISB andSiennar Fleet Systems, and a great many other elements since, were pulled andbrought to the NEU.

But to goback to your actual ask, there’sa reason for looking at the West End Games products specifically as a the base of the old Legends canon (and also a source ofelements and concepts for the NEU). The RPG outlook is a very specific one; oneof statistics and numbers and rules that users learn to navigate the setting ofthe adventures. To create a RPGfrom an already existing world,you’d define a number of categories and subcategories for worldbuildingelements, break down those elements to measurable characteristics – but alsoelaborate on context and fill in many blanks. It’s a very methodic way to doworldbuilding, one oriented towards a specific purpose.

Inpractice, that meant the West End Games books, although not planned as such,doubled as a set of incredibly detailed reference books, something without equivalent at the time. Althoughthe first publications centered around the movies and, once the ExpandedUniverse really took off in the early 90s, some of the novels, comics and games,the company had soon started to create as much as adapt, branching out to new,unexplored grounds. With the adventures came details about the galaxy’sgeography and history, its inhabitants and its technology, the inner workingsof the Empire and the Rebel Alliance. And if some of these publications tied tothe movies or other products, this was no-one way relationships: from theTarkin initiative to COMPNOR, the ISB or foundational texts such as the Declaration of Rebellion and otherelements great and small, the galaxy was laid out in West End Games’publications, comprehensively and extensively.

Thing is, if many of the books featured pre-written adventures or “adventure seeds”, the fundamental goal of sourcebooks and the overall worldbuilding of the WEG stuff was to create a universe for the players to tell stories – stories in which the narrator has no control over the characters, but stories nonetheless. In a way, the sourcebooks were reference books intended for storytellers.

Which is why they became the base of the “old canon”, when it took off in the early 90s, with the Dark Horse comics and Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy – and make no mistake, the only reason these happened at all was because WEG had made Star Wars a viable brand again. Their success had proven there was a market.

And as we’ve seen, they’d already done the worldbuilding, extensively; Lucasfilm has always had final approval on the WEG books too, so the content was considered as “official” as could be, and continuity already mattered (if always with the caveat that Lucas could invalidate it if he came back to SW, as finally happened). It’s well known Zahn was sent WEG sourcebooks by Lucasfilm (who would later develop an internal “canon bible,” way before the holocron database, but wasn’t there yet), and over the years, writers used the sourcebooks as resource materials; I wish I could give you a list but I’m working on it. Recently Jason Fry said he still used the sourcebooks. Hidalgo talks about them here and there.

Moreover, anumber of Legends (and NEU) writers, of fiction as well as of nonfiction, first contributed to StarWars through WEG; Troy Denning, later to write novels for the franchise,authored two “gamebooks,” i.e Choose your own adventure books, and a sourcebook;Bill Smith wrote and co-wrote a number of books for WEG before writing twotitles for the first series of Essential Guides ; Daniel Wallace alsowent from WEG to the Essential Guides, though he only contributed to thefinal published issue of the AdventureJournal, and the rest of his RPG writing was done in the context of Wizardsof the Coast publications. Peter M. Schweighofer, who would also go on to writefor WOTC, wrote or co-wrote a number of WEG books; he also edited the Adventure Journal and wrote a number ofshort stories. Pablo Hidalgo went from playing the WEG games to writing forthem before joining Lucasfilm. There’s more but I’m still working onthat list.

#star wars #meta #star wars history #west end games #canon #legends #my notes are way messy so this is messy too #anon #ask

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gffa · 5 years

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what first got you into star wars (if there was anything specific)? what always makes you smile? what is your favourite non-star wars book? what is your favourite non-star wars fandom? did you know i think your blog is great?

OH NO YOU’RE TOO NICE TO ME, HOW ARE YOU SO NICE??? what first got you into star wars (if there was anything specific)? I watched the original trilogy as a kid and was a fan, inasmuch as it seemed like everyone was at least somewhat a fan, if they’d seen/liked the movies. I was totally into Princess Leia and wanted to explore more of her, but the old EU just couldn’t grab me. I kept trying The Courtship of Princess Leia since it was always recommended as a Leia-centric book and I tried Heir to the Empire a couple of times, because everyone said the Thrawn books were super good, and bounced off both of them super hard. Then I did my time as a wee thing in fandom with The Phantom Menace, I was a pretty big Q/O shipper at the time and I read the first few Jedi Apprentice books, but that only lasted about six months before I wondered off again. I had vaguely kept tabs on the fandom, but it wasn’t until The Force Awakens and that Darth Darth Binks post that made me go OH MY GOD I HAVE TO KNOW IF THIS IS TRUE!!! and got me all fizzy about SW for the first time in years, which carried me through TFA and got me invested in the world for its own merits and A GIRL AS THE CENTRAL CHARACTER??? OH MY HEART, which then led to wanting to FIX EVERYTHING, which led to “well you have to go all the way back to the prequels to fix everything!” and then I started watching The Clone Wars and THEN I FELL IN LOVE AND HERE WE ARE. what always makes you smile? As corny as this answer is (and what a great question!), it’s when someone is really, truly having an absolute blast and loving something without reservation or irony. The nerdier the better! I spent a lot of years trying to be cooler and more intellectual than I was, until I realized it wasn’t making me happy, so I tried to embrace the fun, and seeing other people do it always, always makes me smile. ALTERNATELY, THIS GIF:

NEVER NOT THE MOST HILARIOUS THING I HAVE EVER GIFFED. I LOL EVERY TIME. what is your favourite non-star wars book? I think I would have to say The Silmarillion. I fell in love with the potential of it, the sheer amount of worldbuilding and the cast of characters and what fandom did with it and all the little things that you can try to tease out of Tolkien’s words. It’s a sparse book in a lot of ways, a dense book in a lot of ways, but just the sheer amount of world in that book makes it my favorite. I loved the Lord of the Rings movies, but getting the context for that world and realizing JUST HOW MUCH SHIT ELROND HAS SEEN, realizing just what Gandalf is and why he’s here, realizing just how much shit Galadriel has been around for and why her giving up the One Ring was such an important moment, all that history of the less-than-serene Elves is just MY JAM. (Runner up: The Martian will always have a special place in my heart for how much I bonded with my mother over it.) what is your favourite non-star wars fandom? Sailor Moon, easily. It’s tempting to say the MCU fandom or Tolkien fandom, they both have incredible charms, but Sailor Moon is my HEART. I enjoyed the ‘90s anime a lot, I hung around the edges of fandom for awhile, but then the manga was scanlated and I could actually read it for the first time and, holy shit, I FELL IN LOVE, and wrote like 100k words of various posts about it, then Sailor Moon Crystal came along and I was EVEN MORE IN LOVE and the art in that fandom is OUT OF THIS WORLD, it’s one of the most incredible I’ve ever been in and it’s been going for twenty years and people are still drawing art, there’s still content being put out, and it really is an incredible canon/fandom. (I fell in love with the manga because, oh, Usagi and her journey! She starts as this fragile crybaby who can’t stand to live in the world without people to support her and she has to go through all this shit, step by step, to learn to put others before herself, to learn not to be so childishly jealous, to learn to stand up and say that she’ll be the supportive one/the one who goes to rescue them on her own, that by the time I got to the end of the manga, and then went back to the first volume to reread it, it was shocking just how far she’d come. And, as someone who has dealt with suicide ideation for as long as I can remember, having a character who wasn’t shamed for that, who had a worthwhile journey, that she was worthwhile because she struggled with it, that really made it #1 in my heart.) did you know i think your blog is great? HEY, STOP THAT, I’M GONNA HAVE FEELINGS AND MAYBE TEAR UP A LITTLE AT HOW SWEET YOU ARE. (This has nothing to do with shark week coming up, nope.) By which I mean, OH NO FEELINGS but also YOU ARE REALLY SWEET and “thank you” seems almost flippant for how much I appreciate it, so just know that it’s very genuinely meant.

#i should have a personal tag around here somewhere #get to know the blogger #bpdanakins

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gffa · 6 years

Text

Scattered Star Wars/etc. thoughts: - I’m still not entirely here, I’m mostly resting and binge-watching TV (I finished The Haunting of House Hill and I really enjoyed it a lot!) and sleeping a truly ridiculous amount, because the pain makes me so exhausted. Give me a few more days to sort this out and then I’ll be in a social mood again! - Thanks to @jerioxy, they pointed me towards this thread on reddit where the erissays person definitely straight up copied parts of lot of my various meta posts word-for-word (I recognized at least three separate ones) and it’s sort of a weird feeling to have. I’m not particularly bothered (even if I think they kind of missed the point I ultimately wind my way towards: blaming the Jedi for Anakin’s inability to deal with his ~passionate feelings~ doesn’t work because Star Wars is about choice and if it’s someone else’s fault, then it’s not about the themes of choice anymore, as well as the Jedi’s teachings were therapeutic ways of dealing with those passionate feelings, this is why 99% of the Jedi we see in canon who actually apply the teachings work out just fine, even when they’re thrown into a dark-side fueled galaxy that assaults them on a psychic level they couldn’t have been prepared for, which isn’t to say that they weren’t eaten away at with fear and the dark side, but instead that their teachings were not the root of the problem, ANYWAY, MOONLIGHT HAS FEELINGS, NEWS AT ELEVEN, BUT I’M GETTING OFF TRACK)-- as I was saying, I’m not particularly bothered by this, since it wasn’t copying entire posts and passing them off as their own, as well as, hey, if someone is out there at least somewhat trying to fight the good fight about how much fanon and Imperial propaganda is out there re: the Jedi, I’m fine with using my meta to help. Generally, as long as it’s not copying entire posts or using it to be an asshole or write screaming diatribes against it or being passive aggressive and writing shitty ~vagueblogs~ about people (which I see plenty of, I’m just not going to respond to because that kind of poor behavior really isn’t ever worth it), I’m not too terribly fussed about these things. It’s the same with my gifs and edits--as long as someone’s not taking entire posts without credit, as long as they’re not using them for asshole purposes, use your best judgement! Credit is great, mostly because I want to talk to more fun people, but you don’t have to ask ahead of time if you feel shy (like I very often do), etc. - I started listening to The Silmarillion audiobook again and it strikes me all over again how it really is a book you almost have to read two or three times to really get everything. It’s a very dry book, it’s a historical retelling, rather than a story with a strong character narrative, but the sheer worldbuilding of it it always draws me and the way fandom has really run with the characters and breathed even more life into them always delights me. Also, where is my 200k+ “Glorfindel joins the Dwarves’ Quest” fic based on that one post that goes around every so often? Because JUST THE THOUGHT still delights me! - I’ve been listening to a lot of panels from SW authors and animators and it’s always really fascinating to hear the mindset of what goes into the projects, the behind the scenes stuff is interesting for itself, but also for this sense of a better understanding of how this all works. That we, as fans, are operating with a different mindset than creators are (see: The Rule Of Cool is often times pretty much the entire motivation for including something, not because it’s meant to say something on a character/worldbuilding level, or also see: Animation budgets are SUCH A THING about why some elements of a story aren’t included) and it further reminds me of that Gillen quote about how he keeps an aura of mystery about Darth Vader, that to do otherwise would ruin the epic feeling of the character, meanwhile I’m over here like NO I’M GONNA DIG INTO EVERY TINY LITTLE MICROSCOPIC CHOICE ANAKIN FUCKED UP BECAUSE THAT’S WHERE I LIVE WITH THE CHARACTER. Which is a huge difference between how fans and creators approach something. It always strikes me when George Lucas talks about Star Wars, so much of what went into the movies for him was about the technical stuff, the pushing the boundaries of what he could show in a scene. It’s not that he didn’t care about the characters and the story and the themes! He very much did! And you can find him talking about those things sometimes! But he spends just as much time (and sometimes more) talking about camera angles and set designs and stuff. It’s the same for author creators who talk at panels, that I’m sure there’s more than they’re getting into, especially because these aren’t their characters and they have to be very aware of that. They’re telling stories that are incredibly dear and important to them! But always they have to understand that, when they approach a franchise like this, owned by someone else, these aren’t their stories, they have to be willing to give them over. And that they have a ton of freedom in some ways, but listening to the technical challenges of a series like Rebels or listening to someone talk about how, yeah, they can use Ahsoka in their book, but they should run it by Dave first, just really illustrates a lot of fascinating stuff about a multi-creator franchise and how you can catch glimpses of how it works. (I don’t pretend that I know everything, because I very much do not! Just that a LOT of what I’ve tried to include in my understanding of Star Wars is the acknowledgement of those elements’ inclusion, while ALSO balancing it with my own desires as a Star Wars fan and a desire to understand the bigger narrative Points.)

#idk i just wanted to get some thoughts out #if i'm feeling better this afternoon maybe i'll read a comic or something!#but like on the other hand (re: my disagreement with the ultimate conclusion reached)#in the quoted meta #i had to be led to the shallow end of the propaganda/fanon pool before i could get out #so idk maybe the middle of the road stance is more effective there #and it ultimately doesn't matter about the bigger point re: that i'm not mad about my meta being used #and that i'm pretty laid back about this kind of thing so long as it's done in GENUINE good faith and good spirit #i just get sidetracked a lot because these are rambly posts #meta

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