April 2017

Original Fiction

Those are original serial fiction I follow and have read one or more chapters of, this month. Genre is in brackets.

I also read Aftermath: Life Debt and Empire’s End. Hmmmph.

Fanfiction

This month, taking a bit of a break, and only keeping up with stories I follow. The ones listed below are not all I follow, but those I started before listing them in these Monthly Updates, and that I think deserve a mention.

I managed to read a few new stories after all:

And then I started earnestly into writing my fanfic, and predictably, I got to reading lots more Star Wars fics. Official pretext for this is “gotta find voices and get into the feel for writing my characters” but of course the plots and cuties are why I stay.

But seriously, encountering characters I’m writing and have been thinking about for the past few months in other fanfics is pretty cool. It really lets me figure out the edges of my characters, and think about behaviour/personality for more than just the obvious by comparing against what I’m reading. And when something really clashes, I have to think and mentally point out details that justify why I feel like the characterisation is wrong.

For example, there’s a few fics-with-Rey below that have her as a sociable lovable figure who trusts people easily, like, what??? No. She’s been a scavenger for fifteen years, she’s canonically been betrayed by people she thought were her peers fairly early on, she lived alone for ages, she was exploited by adults around her until she got strong enough to fuck off on her own, one of the only beings who halfway protected her and gave her the opportunity to earn for the past ten years called the Empire on her (this is portrayed somewhat differently in the novelisations, but while the details change a bit, the broad strokes remain the same) at the drop of a hat. She’s not going to be a bubbly extrovert now. What is wrong with you.