Otter's Rock

For various reasons, I have read a lot of Star Wars AUs recently.  And I have many Thoughts on the subject, but here are a few.

First, I know the Prequels are huge targets of opportunity.  There are so many things one could fix!  And think of all the lives one could save by making Anakin not turn to the Dark Side!  BUT.  It would be awesome to see some Original Trilogy AUs, or more AUs that involved Han, Luke, and Leia, because dammit I LOVE THEM.  And if you could get Mara and Lando involved too, that would be great.  I can think of several AUs that would be awesome to read.  Or how about, instead of Obi-Wan time-traveling back, you have the OT group somehow get sent to a parallel universe where Anakin never turned, and things are way different, and they have to figure out how to get back to their own universe.  Something.

Second.  If you are going to write something where Obi-Wan goes back in time to his younger self (there are several where his consciousness from the OT era ends up in his PT era body), please do not make him magically an idiot.  He's back in time to change things, right?  Instead of making up reasons why he can only make small changes for blatantly plot reasons, have him do something really unexpected that changes things so that Palpatine is left going, wait, what?  and scrambling madly to catch up.  All of those reasons why (for one reason or another) things have to happen pretty closely to the way they did in the movies just come across as shoddy writing.  For a particularly egregious example, there is a story where he arrived back in time just before AotC started, and he was going to try to prevent the Battle of Geonosis from starting by capturing Jango Fett so he never had to go to Geonosis, but he failed!  so he went to Geonosis anyway.  I'm like, Dude.  You know where he's going and what you're going to find there.  Send the information to the Council (and maybe other information you know because you are a Time Traveler,) and capture him later!  Or, if you have to go to Geonosis, don't eavesdrop on the SAME MEETING YOU DID BEFORE.  Break into Dooku's office for proof he's a Sith or something!

Third.  I get that Obi-Wan and Anakin have a close relationship.  But if you're having Obi-Wan go back in time from Vader-era to Anakin-era, I'm pretty sure it's not going to be as easy as "oh, sob, he did horrible things, but let's forget about all of that because he's young and cute now and if I let myself love him maybe he won't turn!"  Make them work for it!  It would make for a much better story, and far more interesting.  Anakin murdered all of Obi-Wan's friends.  Personally.  And then went off and did horrible things to the rest of the galaxy.  It may not have happened yet in this galaxy, but in this scenario Obi-Wan remembers it happening, and has to have at least some doubts that it may happen again.  Don't just sweep that under the rug!

Fourth.  If you are going to have Anakin be the one to have his consciousness thrown back in time ... let us not make him completely unrecognizable as a character, mmmkay?  Like, this is a dude with a wicked temper and a taste for killing helpless people he didn't like when he was a good guy.  Instead of him trying to be the Bestest Jedi Evar to make up for his horrible choices in the original timeline, I'm pretty sure it would be a lot more likely for him to, I dunno, try and kill Palpatine and most of his henchmen.  Or do something stupidly and shortsightedly violent and damn the consequences.  It could still be all angsty and stuff!  Think about how Obi-Wan and the Council would react!  Think about how the Senate (which Palpatine has already been priming to distrust Jedi) would react to a Jedi killing the Chancellor!

melannen is considering creating a meta recs community that would function like a cross between crack_van and poetry (i.e. different people sign up to rec different weeks to make sure that there's a constant stream of meta recs coming out, but anybody can post at any time so if you see something that should be shared, you don't have to wait).  It would hopefully give all the good parts of what metafandom used to do without the bad parts.  It's an awesome idea, but she's just working out details now.  So: go check it out and tell her what you think.

Disney Bought Star Wars! (and ILM, and generally the whole Lucasfilm empire)

This could be either really bad or really good.  They are planning on making more live-action movies.  My first thought was trepidation, but given the resources Disney is likely to pour into this, it has a chance of being good.  Particularly with GL being a consultant but not writing or directing anything, which will be good.  I mean, how much worse than The Phantom Menace could it be?

My main fear is that they will jetison the parts of the EU that I love (The Zahn books, and some of the X-wing books).  On the other hand, I hope they jettison the NJO stuff and the Courtship of Princess Leia.

Books filled my house as a child.  So did science fiction and fantasy.  (Every year, regular as clockwork, my Dad read The Hobbit to me and my younger brother.)  So, naturally, I became a great reader.  I read a lot, and I read fast.  And, in elementary school, oh joy of joys, I discovered the public library, which was only two blocks away from my parents' business.  You can see where this is going, right?  I started devouring the books there.  But, you know, they had a strict limit on how many books you can check out at a time (only twenty!  the horror, the deprivation!), and I read fast and constantly, and YA books are usually pretty short.  So one day, the librarian (who knew me quite well by then) took me over to the adult (grown-up, not porn, get your minds out of the gutter) section of the library and showed me the science fiction section, particularly the Star Trek novels all on the same shelf.  I was probably just starting middle school, by that point; it's one of the clearest memories I have of childhood, that glorious moment when I saw all those books I had never read, and all of them so much bigger--i.e. more-to-read--than the YA and children's books.  It was awesome.

I started out with the Star Trek books, already being a fan of the series.  Once I'd read all of those, I started expanding.  And one of my first finds was Honor Harrington.  (The series as DRM-Free multiformat e-books)


I was in love. Here was a female character like me, with whom I could identify!  ( Why Honor Harrington is Awesome )

Journeys with Autism: On the Matter of Empathy

One of the worst, most damaging, most incredibly false stereotypes of people on the Autism spectrum is that they lack empathy. This is absolutely untrue in the sense that most people mean it; most people on the spectrum are at least as empathetic as neurotypical people, if not more so, we just don't know how to express it in ways that most people understand. Scientists measure our ability to manifest emotion in socially appropriate ways and even knowing that difficulties in learning social cues is one of the major signs of the disorder, assume that a lack of social cues implies a lack of emotion. And then to add insult to injury, scientists dismiss out of hand the testimony and critique of people who actually have an Autism spectrum disorder.  Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg does an excellent job of refuting the stereotype and explaining her own empathy/emotional responses as a person with Autism.  I highly recommend it: go read!

Journeys with Autism: On the Matter of Empathy

My own experience is similar.  I am highly empathetic.  Part of my job is to visit people who are ill or injured.  Obviously, you have to connect with them, but my supervisor says I get too emotionally affected by/invested in them.

This is true in other places in my life, too.  For example, I don't enjoy watching comedies, because I empathize too much with the characters.  I can't separate myself from them, gain emotional distance.  So much comedy is based on uncomfortable or embarrassing things happening to a character and the audience being expected to laugh at it.  I can't; I feel as if I were the person in that predicament.  It's not funny to me, because I empathize too much with the characters.

But expressing that empathy has always been a problem for me, although not so much any more.  My natural body language doesn't express my emotions in ways people not on the spectrum might expect.  For example, you know how teenagers are so emotional?  The world's horrible one day, their life is ending, and the next life is awesome?  Yeah, that happened to me, but when I was having horrible days no one noticed, and on days when everything was fine I occasionally had teachers coming up to me to ask me what was wrong.  My physical and facial responses to emotion didn't match what they were looking for.  This is a problem when it comes to showing empathy: people don't always (often don't, actually) notice the things people on the spectrum do to show empathy, so they assume they don't feel it.  I remember one incident in particular in high school where a friend of mine was going through a bad breakup, had problems at home, and one day it all came out as we were eating lunch together in the cafeteria.  She was crying, sobbing her eyes out.  I felt so bad for her, I felt her pain.  What did I do?  I sat there eating my french fries for a few minutes while I tried to figure out how to comfort her in a way that she would understand, how to express my emotional response to her pain in a way that would support her.  It took me a few minutes to figure out that what I needed to do was get out of my chair, walk around the table, and give her a hug.  From the outside, I'm sure it looked like I was completely heartless: there my friend was, right across from me, crying her eyes out, and I sat eating french fries.  But it wasn't that I didn't empathize with her, the problem was simply that I didn't know how to express that empathy.

In the years since high school, I've learned to read social cues a lot better.  And I've learned to project body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice that match my emotional state and are socially appropriate.  Those are skills I can learn.  I didn't have to learn the emotions, those have always been a part of me.

And people buy into the stereotype, and assume I'm cold and unfeeling.

I love Mark Twain--doesn't everybody?--and while re-reading one of my favorite of his essays, I had a thought.  The essay is "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses," a hilarious critique of "The Leatherstocking Tales" by James Fenimore Cooper, the only one of which you have likely heard being The Last of the Mohicans.  Although they were hailed as classics and great works of literature in their day, they've largely fallen out of circulation, largely for the reasons Mark Twain lists.  (Though a modern critic would add quite harsh words about the overwhelming levels of prejudice and condescension towards non-whites in the stories.)

Anyway, the point is, that most of the problems Twain lists can also be found in the worse kinds of fanfic, the kind that make discerning readers hit the back button quite quickly.  I know that none of you, dear Readers, would ever commit these heinous crimes against the Literary Art, but in the hope that some among you may find them Useful, I hereby present "The nineteen rules governing literary art in domain of romantic fiction" as given by Mark Twain, with some additions by myself.

( Nineteen Rules )

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There will always be bad!fic, if for no other reason than that every writer has 1 million bad words in zir, and zie just has to write until zie gets them out.  (I know there is a great deal of my early work--two whole novels, and some other stuff--that will never see the light of day again.)  Still, it's a lot quicker to get those million bad words out if one has some idea of what to look for in good work, because if you can find it in your own, it's a lot easier to polish what you've got.

Given the overwhelmingly negative response to LJ's newest "feature," being able to crosspost to FB, and the privacy problems with the way it was implemented, now seems like a good time to mention that I have many, many Dreamwidth invite codes just waiting to be used.  Comment to this post with your e-mail (comments screened) and I will send one to you.

(My biggest problem was that tags with a "/" in them weren't working this morning.  I'm assuming it was an unintended side-effect of fixing the one case of reposting where tags weren't working correctly?)

Anyway.  Fun stuff!  Pro author Patricia C. Wrede is doing very interesting writing meta in her blog; the latest one is on writing humor.  Well worth checking out; she's a great author and knows her stuff.  (I love her Enchanted Forest series, and Sorcery and Cecelia.)

There's a discussion going around the internet at the moment, about feminism, modesty, and claiming your own achievements. Here's an interesting post by synecdochic with good links to other parts of the discussion.

Go!  Read!

I've been a member of fandom for over ten years now (and boy, it sure doesn't feel like it's been that long). Over the years, there have been numerous wanks, flame wars, kerfluffles, fails, etc., etc., on a wide variety of subjects, some of which seem to consume the entire online fandom, not just bits and pieces of it. Currently, the issue is warnings. A few months ago, it was race. I usually try to stay fray-adjacent, even when it's an issue I care deeply about. (I really don't like conflict, and fandom is my safe space away from conflict, among other things.) Over the years I've noticed some patterns that I think will be useful to more people than myself.

( First, while people come to fandom for various reasons, they stay because fandom is a safe space for them. )

( Second, every major fail or wank I've ever seen was caused by one basic thing: a failure to recognize when you're stepping on other peoples' issues when those issues are opposing, compounded by a failure of basic courtesy. )

( Let's take the current warnings argument as an example. )

( How to make fandom safe/unsafe )