ok so Leia was heading to Obi-wan before the Battle of Scarif, and before she ever knew she or anyone would have the plans. It wasn’t just a last resort, “vader’s bout to get us we gotta go somewhere” decision. the fact that she was going to Obi-wan is probably the reason she was with the rebels and not on Alderaan.
so think in the context that a) Bail was knowingly sending his daughter, who has the genes of one of the most powerful force users ever, to go get a Jedi, b) Bail knew that he was sending the biological child of Anakin to Anakin’s former master and friend, c) Obi-wan definitely would knows who Leia is, d) Bail knows that Obi-wan is keeping an eye on Luke.
I’m not saying Bail Organa knowingly sent his force sensitive daughter to the only fully trained Jedi he knew how to get in touch with and also her force sensitive brother, but Bail Organa knowingly sent his force sensitive daughter to the only fully trained Jedi he knew how to get in touch with and also her force sensitive brother. Because he and Mon Mothma decided things had gotten to this point.
Someone in the tags said “Bail didn’t send the plans to Obi-wan. Bail sent Leia.”
YES. The Death Star plans were a last minute bonus. Bail’s actual plans for dealing with the Empire and the Death Star was LEIA
Could you imagine being Bail and making that decision, though?
There he is, sitting on basically the last hope of the galaxy. Or rather, she’s sitting on him, because she’s two-and-a-half years old and her adopted father’s shoulders are the very best place in the world. They’re listening from Alderaan as Palpatine announces that the senate will be stripped of even more power, that the never-ending series of emergencies across the galaxy will continue.
Time feels broken, somehow. The planet rotates, the sun rises and sets, but the galaxy is frozen in a slow slide into oblivion.
Not yet, is all he can think. He’s working with the young Senator from Chandrila, spinning the wheels, trying to buy more time. Years and years more time.
~
There he is, introducing his family to a man with a black uniform and absolute control of the sector. Leia is six, and looks up at him suddenly serious, a far cry from her normal mischievous self.
“And my daughter, Leia,” he says, while his thoughts race between please don’t question her adoption and please get off my planet and the Jedi were insane to start training so young, she isn’t ready.
Bail has trouble sleeping. He’s waiting for a signal from Obi-Wan, that the time has come for him to give up his daughter. It doesn’t appear.
~
There he is, watching as his dark-eyed daughter hurls a datapad across the room in a sudden fit of rage. He’s tried to teach her peace and calm, she’s learned the watchful patience and silent stalk of a hunter.
She’s nine. He hasn’t beaten her at Dejarik in a year.
He takes her for walks, out into the parts of Alderaan where the downtrodden live and the refugees gather. He shows her what suffering is, what the Empire means. He tries to avoid thinking about her father. He tries to give her the education he thinks Jedi needed more of.
~
There he is, lying to Tarkin’s face as they walk through the halls of the palace. Leia, thirteen, is following them. Bail knows it. Tarkin does not.
See who he really is, Bail is wishing, even as he says words that toe the line of compliance with Tarkin’s demands.
The Rebellion is starting to rise. He keeps telling Mon Mothma he needs more time, that they’re moving too fast. He doesn’t tell her why.
~
There he is, welcoming his daughter back from Coruscant. She’s a rising star, already accumulating power as a junior legislator. She’s fifteen – one more year before she can run for Senate, and he knows she’s already planning it.
She has staff now, and her pretty smiles and polite manners almost perfectly hide the casuality with which she issues orders.
He’s not sure if she reminds him more of her mother or father.
Obi-Wan remains silent. Bail’s agents tell him that Tatooine is quiet, a backwater, no Imperial activity. He doesn’t find it reassuring. He waits.
~
There he is, talking to Mon Mothma. She’s laughing, charmed by his daughter, the Senator, the rebel. It’s a rare moment of levity – the Senate’s days are numbered, even as the token body it has become. The Empire’s stranglehold on the galaxy is unquestionable now.
And his daughter is nineteen. Her father had been a Jedi by now, roaming the galaxy and falling, falling towards the darkness.
The galaxy is full of darkness now, and Bail makes up his mind. Maybe it’s too late. Maybe it’s too early. He’s not Jedi, he doesn’t know, but it feels right.
“Go to Tatooine,” he tells his daughter. “Find Obi-Wan Kenobi. He can save us all.”
He thinks, but does not say, you can save us all.
Tag: fic
can we have… a self indulgent put yourself in the story month?
where everyone puts a self insert character into their favourite media via fanfic and fanart?
and not “oh this person looks like me” LITERALLY YOU
actual non-canon-compliant, over the top, embarrassingly sincere pictures and writings about you, the fan, being dropped into your favourite shows and films and books (and not dying instantly)
because it used to be both a cringey sincere fanfic trope and a tongue in cheek comedic fanart trope and I kind of… miss that fun?
it’s fun.
let’s do it. I’m calling it now
JANUARY 2017 IS PUT YOURSELF IN THE STORY MONTH
*looks at available stories*
UHHMMMMM I AM NOT SURE THIS IS A GOOD IDEA
DO IT
Seriously this is such a good idea. It seems like fanfiction has so utterly curled up and died recently, I don’t know what’s up. Everyone is so embarrassed of looking bad because of the systematic shaming of anything resembling fun that nobody makes anything fun anymore. Don’t be scared of just inserting yourself into literally any universe and just tearing it up there. When you are having fun, so are the readers.
I wasn’t scared of the idea of being embarrassed, I was more worried about my self-inserted self immediately pissing everyone off and winding up in worse shape than Obi-Wan. I have to take enough ibuprofen a day and can’t get real pain meds as it is. 😀
Everyone should do this. For REASONS (that are mostly ‘because it’s fun’ and ‘why the fuck not’).
me judging big blockbuster movies: ugh again with these tired romance cliches? come on, aren’t we above this? this is gonna suck
me reading fanfic: *opens the 700th coffee shop au with unintentional bed sharing i’ve ever read* damn this is gonna be So Good
I recently tried to watch a Hallmark movie and it hit me that the reason I can’t stand these tropes in romance movies is because they’re often presented in infuriating ways. They were doing the enemies to lovers trope by having the guy insult what the woman did for a living and call it frivolous then rudely making loud noises in the hotel room next to her and not stopping even when she complained.
In movies this trope tends to be played as the man being an absolute asshole but them still getting a happily ever after, which sends the message that women should put up with and forgive this behavior once the man is willing to love her.
In fanfic the enemies to lovers trope is portrayed as the characters being competitors or having misunderstandings. In these fics they usually don’t do anything hurtful to each other, they just bump heads. Their initial interactions aren’t toxic and they have a believable foundation for a healthy relationship.
Hollywood is stuck, it’s been portraying these tropes the same way for decades and they tend to be subtly sexist. Sometimes it’s not even that subtle. Fanfic uses the same tropes as romance movies but they do them a little differently and those differences speak to more people.
Also, fanfic tends to have them explicitly work through their issues before moving into a relationship – or else showing that not doing so causes more problems later – while movies tend to flip switch to “relationship time” and ignore everything beforehand, which is weird and creepy.
WE DO IT BETTER
Somewhere in the Leverage universe, there is a conspiracy theorist trying to prove that a certain minor league baseball player, a Canadian hockey player, and an American country music singer are all the same person. They have a file with various news printouts, and keep trying to upload them to a website, but every time they do, the site mysteriously crashes, threads go missing on discussion boards, and all electronic records of this man have simply vanished.
Three years later a man comes to Portland and settles down in this brewery, cuz somebody said it wasn’t a half-bad place to get food. And then he sees the chef.
Turns out he’s a half-decent researcher and very good at finding people who desperately need help, and he eventually gets hired as a “marketing associate” for the pub.
The order’s wrong. He gets a job offer from Leverage International, that’s why he goes to Portland in the first place.
He doesn’t understand why they picked a brewpub for the interview (and what the hell is up with the house beer? Weird name, weirder flavor, but the server just smiles and says it’s an acquired taste and he may want to start acquiring it…), until the chef is his second interview of three.
“I wasn’t even looking for a job,” Bobby said, checking to make sure his charging cords were all secure in the flap of the laptop carry-on case as they pulled up to the airport drop-off zone. “I’m still not sure it’s not a scam.”
“Lot of effort to go to for a scam,” his sister pointed out, deftly flinging the car across three lanes to try and get a good spot at the curb.
“I mean I guess even if it is a scam they paid for my flight out to Portland. I hear it’s a nice town.”
everybody has that one kink that they will never ever admit to liking and will secretly read every fic ever written about it but will vehemently deny it if you ever mention it
#keep your friends close and your secret and socially unaccepted kinks closer
#there are 4 tiers of kinks #tier 1: things u can admit to irl friends #tier 2: things u can admit to on ur public blog #tier 3: kinks u can talk about on skype in private w ur friends #tier 4: you open the fics in incognito at 2am before going to bed and nobody can ever know <– @ssealdog telling it like it is
Well, since Hanukkah starts tomorrow, would you mind writing something about Erskine and Howard Stark?
I think I said most of what I wanted to say about Judaism and Project Rebirth here, but I still managed to write 1900 words, so…
Maqqaba
Peggy’s first Christmas season in New York is
both delightful and depressing – it’s so lovely to see America’s bounty
and good cheer on such vivid display, especially after how England spent
the last few Christmases. But she misses her family and she even misses
the way misery and fear of the Jerries so close by made every bright
spot shine all the more. Her own preoccupation (self-absorption, if she
must be honest) leaves her only surprised and curious when the
candelabra appears in the one window in the main lab that’s not bricked
over from the outside. It’s high up – they’re underground, after all –
and needs a ladder to get to, although they keep a ladder handy because
this is a lab with chemicals and there are times when extra ventilation
is ideal. The candelabra is not a fine one; it’s tarnished silver of a
low quality, battered and dented, and Peggy’s embarrassed that she has
to be told that it’s a chanukia and not someone’s odd attempt at giving
the lab a touch of class for the Christmas season.Gloria, who is the one to tell her, does not know whose it is.
Most
of the scientists are Jews here, but their relationship with their
faith is complicated and Peggy generally chooses to say nothing lest she
inadvertently poke at a sore spot. And that goes for Howard, who views
his Jewishness as an annoying childhood nickname he can’t get rid of, as
much as it is for Abe or any of the other refugees who have lost
everything – up to and including their families – because of it. Yiddish
might be the unofficial second language of Project Rebirth and the lab
was unofficially closed in the fall for the Jewish New Year and Yom
Kippur, but most of the men work into the night on Fridays and the
biggest dogmatic disagreements usually end up being about food – what is
the appropriate method of preparation of a brisket, not whether Walker
should eat his ham sandwich at his workstation.
so i just googled the phrase “toeing out of his shoes” to make sure it was an actual thing
it’s all fanfiction
which reminds me that i’ve only ever seen the phrase “carding fingers through his hair” and people describing things like “he’s tall, all lean muscle and long fingers,” like that formula of “they’re ____, all ___ and ____” or whatever in fic
idk i just find it interesting that there are certain phrases that just sort of evolve in fandom and become prevalent in fic bc everyone reads each other’s works and then writes their own and certain phrases stick
i wish i knew more about linguistics so i could actually talk about it in an intelligent manner, but yeah i thought that was kinda cool
Ha! Love it!
One of my fave authors from ages ago used the phrase “a little helplessly” (like “he reached his arms out, a little helplessly”) in EVERY fic she wrote. She never pointed it out—there just came a point where I noticed it like an Easter egg. So I literally *just* wrote it into my in-progress fic this weekend as an homage only I would notice. ❤
To me it’s still the quintessential “two dudes doing each other” phrase.
I think different fic communities develop different phrases too! You can (usually) date a mid 00s lj fic (or someone who came of age in that style) by the way questions are posed and answered in the narration, e.g. “And Patrick? Is not okay with this.” and by the way sex scenes are peppered with “and, yeah.” I remember one Frerard fic that did this so much that it became grating, but overall I loved the lj style because it sounded so much like how real people talk.
Another classic phrase: wondering how far down the _ goes. I’ve seen it mostly with freckles, but also with scars, tattoos, and on one memorable occasion, body glitter at a club. Often paired with the realization during sexy times that “yeah, the __ went all they way down.” I’ve seen this SO much in fic and never anywhere else
whoa, i remember reading lj fics with all of those phrases! i also remember a similar thing in teen wolf fics in particular – they often say “and derek was covered in dirt, which. fantastic.” like using “which” as a sentence-ender or at least like sprinkling it throughout the story in ways published books just don’t.
LINGUISTICS!!!! COMMUNITIES CREATING PHRASES AND SLANG AND SHAPING LANGUAGE IN NEW WAYS!!!!!!!
I love this. Though I don’t think of myself as fantastic writer, by any means, I know the way I write was shaped more by fanfiction and than actual novels.
I think so much of it has to do with how fanfiction is written in a way that feels real. conversations carry in a way that doesn’t feel forced and is like actual interactions. Thoughts stop in the middle of sentences.
The coherency isn’t lost, it just marries itself to the reader in a different way. A way that shapes that reader/writer and I find that so beautiful.
FASCINATING
and it poses an intellectual question of whether the value we assign to fanfic conversational prose would translate at all to someone who reads predominantly contemporary literature. as writers who grew up on the internet find their way into publishing houses, what does this mean for the future of contemporary literature? how much bleed over will there be?
we’ve already seen this phenomenon begin with hot garbage like 50 shades, and the mainstream public took to its shitty overuse of conversational prose like it was a refreshing drink of water. what will this mean for more wide-reaching fiction?
QUESTIONS!
I’m sure someone could start researching this even now, with writers like Rainbow Rowell and Naomi Novik who have roots in fandom. (If anyone does this project please tell me!) It would be interesting to compare, say, a corpus of a writer’s fanfic with their published fiction (and maybe with a body of their nonfiction, such as their tweets or emails), using the types of author-identification techniques that were used to determine that J.K. Rowling was Robert Galbraith.
One thing that we do know is that written English has gotten less formal over the past few centuries, and in particular that the word “the” has gotten much less frequent over time.
In an earlier discussion, Is French fanfic more like written or spoken French?, people mentioned that French fanfic is a bit more literary than one might expect (it generally uses the written-only tense called the passé simple, rather than the spoken-only tense called the passé composé). So it’s not clear to what extent the same would hold for English fic as well – is it just a couple phrases, like “toeing out of his shoes”? Are the google results influenced by the fact that most published books aren’t available in full text online? Or is there broader stuff going on? Sounds like a good thesis project for someone!
See also: the gay fanfiction pronoun problem, ship names, and the rest of my fanguistics tag.
Kix is canonically alive in The Force Awakens era, friends.
“You keep twisting like that, it will take twice as long to heal,” Kix warns in a tone usually reserved for uppity cadets. It works, Finn gingerly straightens his posture, and Kix ties off the fresh bandages with a careful tug.
“Good to go-” he says, biting off ‘trooper’ just as Finn’s hand twitches with the urge to salute.
FAKE BOOK COVERS FOR BOOKS REFERENCED IN TIN SOLDIERS:
1. Miller, John. Birth of an Icon: Captain America and the Restoration of the Hero. New York: Routledge, 2001. Print.
2. Anderson, Lynn E. Captain America: Behind the Mask. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Print.
3. Mbatha, Michelle. The Anatomy of a Sidekick. Bucky Barnes and the Propaganda Machine. New York: Routledge, 2011. Print.
4. Everett, Lloyd. The Star-Spangled Man: Captain America in Comic Books, War Photography and Propaganda. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2009. Print.
5. Singh, Kajal. Taking up the S.H.I.E.L.D. Peggy Carter and the Post-War Era. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2010. Print.
6. Reid, Maya. The Popular Life of Captain America. Steve Rogers in Popular Culture and Fandom Practice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Print.
Another, less serious, coping post (but also a little bit serious)
And the other things that I am doing, in no small part because the Republicans would HATE IT:
- Read a lot of slash
- Write a lot of slash
Partly because, yes, it’s a relaxing thing where I can read about love and feel better. And partly because I like doing things that would make James Dobson clutch his pearls.
But also because slash was a huge part of what made me question my conservative Evangelical upbringing, become a liberal, vote for and support progressive causes, and eventually realize that I was bi myself.
How so, Laura? You ask. That’s just silly. They’re only stories.
I am the daughter of an Evangelical minister, raised in the deep South. I went to religious school. All of my activities were either church or school-focused. Everyone in my social circle was from either church or school. I knew a tiny handful of people who weren’t white and nobody at all who was openly LGBTQ. I was told very little about sex and what I was told was steeped in sexist, racist, homophobic rhetoric. (The curriculum my school used for sex “education” was called “Sex Respect.” Look it up; it’s horrifying.) I was literally taught that Christians could only vote for Republicans. (”What about Christians who vote for Democrats?” I asked, and was told, dubiously, that they MIGHT not go to hell, but that they were certainly not following the Lord’s will. I was also raised to view other, more liberal Christians with skepticism.) One of my proudest achievements in 10th grade or so was when I wrote an anti-abortion poem (called, I shudder to recall, something like “the cries of the murdered children”) and it was published in the school newsletter and put up on the main bulletin board, right outside the office.
So I went away to college, a wee Christian Republican, and landed in a dorm with free broadband internet. I met people who weren’t like me, and made friends with them, for the first time in my life! I was still in the South, and still keeping pretty squarely to religious college circles, but I was at least meeting people of other races and religions, and liberal Christians who showed me a different side of my faith. I still didn’t know any out LGBTQ people, but I was scandalized by my RA, who I thought was super cool, being in both Campus Crusade for Christ and Straight But Not Narrow. Eventually, I had a gay computer science TA, and I remember looking at his rainbow jewelry with wide eyes, like I was seeing an alien. (Hopefully, he just thought I was confused by the homework.)
(Note: I was VERY confused by the homework, and he was a FANTASTIC TA, and I would never have passed that class without him. Bless you, gay CS TA.)
Anyway, at the same time, I started devouring fanfic for the shows I loved, X-Files and Star Trek and Star Wars.
And I discovered… so much.
I had been so sheltered that I was rabidly curious for ANY information about sex. Before college, my best sources had been Harlequins and medical dictionaries and old sex manuals from the 70s I snuck peeks at when browsing the used bookstores. I learned at church camp that “fellatio” meant “oral sex”, but I didn’t know what that WAS. I was eighteen years old, and I thought that how sex worked was that the man stuck it in, came immediately, and then pulled back out again. (Somehow I guess the Harlequins had been too purple-prose in their sex scenes to convey the idea of thrusting?) And here was the information superhighway, ready to give me not only information, but lovingly crafted stories of Mulder and Scully (my obsession at the time) falling in love. And falling into bed.
I was scandalized the first time I discovered slash. It was a Mulder/Skinner, and it was super tame – nobody even did anything physical, it was just an acknowledgement of an attraction. But it seemed like the most transgressive thing EVER to me. And we all know about the erotic charge of the taboo, right?
I started reading slash. Lots of slash. X-Files and Star Wars and Star Trek and Highlander and Sentinel and Due South and Pros and Buffy and Starsky and Hutch and anything else that was well written or had characters I even halfway cared about. At first it was because, honestly, it was hot, and I felt guilty every time even though I wasn’t going to stop. I reasoned that it wasn’t real, right? Just stories. No real people were doing anything wrong, and masturbation was only a sin if you fantasized about real people while you did it.
And then, over time, I got more and more uncomfortable with the sorts of things my church said about “homosexuals.” Because even though I still didn’t have any close friends who were gay, I’d spent several years reading gay love stories, and you know what happened? I loved those characters. I identified with them, I felt for them, I wanted them to live happily ever after and get married if they wanted to and have families if they wanted to and they weren’t doing anything wrong by loving each other.
And if Ray and Fraser, or Jim and Blair, or Kirk and Spock, weren’t doing anything wrong and should be protected, then the real live actual LGBTQ people in the real world weren’t doing anything wrong, and they should be protected, and my family and my school and my church had been lying to me all along.
That wasn’t an easy conclusion to reach. It was hard. It hurt. I sat in my room desperately Googling “can Christians support gay rights” and “what does the Bible say about being gay” and sobbing. I was afraid. What if this was what my mother, my teachers, had warned me about, that I would go away to school and lose my way, lose the truth, backslide, lose my salvation? Would my family love me anymore if they knew? I had started drifting a little leftward politically and testing the waters with relatively minor things like opposing the death penalty and my mother had harangued me about it until I cried; I couldn’t imagine what it would be like for something like this.
But once my eyes had been opened, there was no going back. I was afraid, but I had to be honest with myself.
I left my church. I went to a more liberal church that some gay people went to, and that used gender-inclusive language and didn’t preach about “homosexuality”. It was still Baptist, though not Southern Baptist, and they had a brick church and a steeple and choir robes, so it passed well enough to get my mom off my back.
I stopped hanging out with only church people and made fandom friends, and many of them were LGBTQ.
Today, I’ve moved churches again, and now I’m happily to go to a social justice-promoting Episcopalian church with a sweet, grandmotherly priest. I have many dearly loved friends who are LGBTQ, and I’ve realized that I myself am bisexual, though I don’t think I’ll ever come out to my family or to anyone who might tell my family. I am solidly progressive in my values and my charitable spending and my letters to Congress and the things I speak up for.
Eighteen-year-old me would have probably voted for Trump, even after all the ugliness, because Trump was the Republican and good Christians vote Republican and I was a good Christian.
Slash was the thin end of the wedge that cracked open my perspective so I could entertain the thought that maybe the things I’d been taught weren’t true. I’m not saying that’s the only way it could have happened, but that’s the way it did happen.
So I’m going to keep voting and speaking up and donating to progressive causes. I’m going to give all the support I can to the marginalized and oppressed in the real world. Of course I am. But also? For all the kids growing up in conservative and Christian families, who have an uneasy sense that some things don’t quite ring true? For the ones who are struggling with questions and doubts, as well as the ones who are smugly sure of themselves? For the ones who know they don’t believe but aren’t safe to say so? For the ones who know they’re different but they’ve never met anyone like them and feel so alone? For all of the kids who are like I was…
I’m going to keep writing slash.
Steel Phoenix Studios 