All the nerderies and feels!

More SW fic blogging.  I’ve been skipping around lately, I haven’t found anything of length to super engross me since I finished Wake the Storm.  I’ve started the sequel, but I didn’t want to tear through it too quickly, because I could probably finish that 300k+ fic in a week and then where would I be?? Better to keep moving around! I read some of You Became to Me, which I really want to like because the author has a strong grasp of the world and I like the thought put into the characters, the focus on the worldbuilding was super satisfying for me, but the length of the paragraphs is far too long (I want to split them into thirds constantly) and there’s way too much narrative standing around and telling the reader things while nothing happens.  I have trouble tracking the scenes because there’s a constant stream of summing up backstory instead of actually showing it to us.  Which is a shame, because there’s a really great fic underneath all of that, I think. I’ve also been reading this author’s fic, well, at least the Obi-Wan & Anakin fic, which is only a small handful.  It’s a shame that my interest in Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan petered out because there’s a ton of really quality stuff (between the JA novels and fic like this) but until Anakin shows up, my heart just isn’t in it.  I’m halfway through Fallout and really enjoying it, though!  Especially Obi-Wan’s complete and utter disregard for stopping to actually heal/say in the medbay when it comes to himself.

I still haven’t finished most of the longer SW fics I’ve started, but that’s no reason not to start another one, right? Because I started Fire and Ice last night and I could not put it down at all.  The first half (which I’m only a bit of a ways past) is basically:  Anakin won the duel on Mustafar and decided to keep Obi-Wan alive and holds him and Padme basically prisoner because he still craves their approval and desperately wants their love.  It’s so fucked up and Anakin is legitimately terrifying, while Obi-Wan (who has been cut off from the Force) and Padme (who is heavily pregnant) cannot hope to truly fight back against him, but they never give up. The emotions run really high in this one and I got swept up in them, I never stopped loving Anakin’s character but I was properly horrified by everything he did, while also just.  Jesus, I have even more love for Obi-Wan’s character and what he has to struggle through--being cut off from the Force, the death of everything he’d spent his whole life building, the loss of the Anakin he loved, the struggle to go against the Jedi Code to even admit that he loved Anakin at all, the balance between telling Anakin what he needs to hear vs what will set off another rage fit--is amazing. I don’t want to spoil anything about the second half of the story, though, I think it’s fairly obvious where it’s going from the beginning (but is no less enthralling for it) and it’s gorgeously characterized and it hits a perfect place between platonic/familial and romantic love between Obi-Wan and Anakin for me.  And there are scenes that are... what they should be, where I got emotional with the characters or I couldn’t stop reading because the action was so intense. I want to complain about having another fic suck me in before I’ve finished the others, but goddamn this one is beautifully written and hits my id dead on.

Oh, no.  So, I’ve been watching Star Wars: The Clone Wars and this is really causing me to fall face first into Trash Lord Anakin Skywalker Feelings, like I really did not expect this, it was just something more to watch because I liked all the characters and it was at a point in time where things were still hopeful, so it went nicely hand in hand with my time travel/fix it fic reading binge. And I don’t really have strong ships in Star Wars, I just kind of like a handful and then generally go along with the canon.  BUT OKAY SEE.  I’ve been reading Sins of the Father, which is an AU where Anakin became Emperor Vader and Padme lived but went into exile and eventually came back and she’s written beautifully in this fic and apparently I want suitless Emperor Anakin fic like it’s my fucking job, so this is hitting me hard. But it’s making me kind of legit invested in Padme’s character, in the Anakin/Padme ship.  I have Feelings about them now.  So, okay, I’m reading that and having feelings about that pairing, I’m watching The Clone Wars and having feelings about Anakin in general, I’m always having time travel feelings, so I’m reading Futurus at the same time, where they accidentally get dumped 25 years into the future and it’s a little quick in the beginning, but by the middle has been hitting my id pretty hard. Because Anakin is just so in love with Padme and she’s amazing but then Obi-Wan gets side-swiped by a lot of shit going on and is hit with his feelings for Anakin like a brick to the face and APPARENTLY the way to my heart wanting Obi-Wan/Anakin/Padme is through both of them going, “Yeah, he’s kind of dumb, but god we love that idiot so much.” and now I guess I ship them as a trio, too???? WHY HAVE I DONE THIS TO MYSELF.

More Star Wars fic blogging. I started in on Double Agent Vader last night and promptly read the whole thing through because omg yes double agent Anakin I am so here for that. Especially when you add in that he’s working with Leia!  The writing is gorgeous and I kept having to force myself to slow down because I wanted to get more more more of it.  So far, it’s following ANH pretty tightly and working around it, so there’s no reveal of their biological connection yet, but I’m definitely hoping that it’s an AU by the end because I want everything to work out.  Gorgeous writing and characterization so far. But then I finished that and so I started in on Reprise which is another time travel fic, but this time older Obi-Wan goes back in time physically and so he’s interacting with his younger self and I spent an extra hour reading last night that I shouldn’t have because I was getting up to the big reveal and couldn’t put it down.  It has a bit of an epithet problem, but otherwise it’s super addicting and wonderfully written.  I’m not quite halfway through it and I’m going to be sad when I’m done.  ):

Despite what I really want is TFA-based epic genfic, since that doesn’t really exist yet, I’ve been rewatching The Phantom Menace (wow, Jar Jar is even more cringe-worthy than I remember, even with the Sith Jar Jar theory, it’s really hard to get past that horrible stereotype) and that led me straight back to prequel trilogy time travel fic. I love time travel/canon divergence/fix it fic in any fandom, but especially ones where so much shit goes wrong, and I think Star Wars fandom is probably the best I’ve seen for it. (Naruto gets a lot, but I’ve found only a handful that I’ve liked.) Currently I’m about 2/3rds of the way through Shadows of the Future and it’s really engaging!  Having rewatched half of TPM before picking this up, I was reminded of just how cute Anakin could be and this fic does a great job of nailing down that cute little kid mixed with the underlying anger in him and yet having an Obi-Wan who actually connects with him, who does a much better job of helping through his emotions.  There’s a fair amount of fluff because so far the first 2/3rds of the fic take place over a very short span of time (like a third of it just covers a couple of days worth) but it also has some really good emotional resonance and the characterization is good, the writing is good, and it’s a lot of what I want out of fandom. It’s decently long at just under 130k and it’s complete, so it’s a really good place to start.

Oh no Star Wars hell, I am in it now.

This is the worst kept blog ever, but all I can ever think to complain about is my fic reading habits. Which, right now, is still something of MCU fic, but also, jfc.  I have about 300-400 Tolkien fics on my reader right now and yet INVARIABLY, every goddamned night, I'm still scouring the web for more of them. IN MY DEFENSE, there are some really amazing fics about those fucking elves, okay.  Whether about bb!Legolas' childhood or focusing on the hilarity of just HOW BADLY the first age elves were such ginormous fuck ups, all of it is really, really good. (Never, ever have I laughed so much as when diving into Silm fandom, because 90% of the fandom seems to agree, yeah, this shit really happen and, yeah, it's hilarious.)