Star Wars Fanon:Café Fanfic/August 2014

Café Fanfic is a discussion topic centered around fan-fiction. Authors are encouraged to contribute to the café's monthly discussion, which are designed to stimulate ideas and encourage engagement between members of the SWF fan-fiction writing community in a criticism-free zone.

Participants in Café Fanfic are also welcome to submit ideas for the next month's topic of discussion.

Previous topics can be found in the archive list at the bottom of the page.

There are three basic premises for Café Fanfic
 * 1) Please restrict this to stuff from your fan-fiction (written or possibly just conceptualized).
 * 2) You can suggest and make observations, but no condemning other people's work
 * 3) "I don't know" is a perfectly acceptable answer.


 * August's topic: Star Wars has a long history of not just including battles between the big factions (Empire vs Rebels, Sith vs Jedi), but also the incorporation of lawless fringe elements such as Han Solo, Black Sun, the Exchange, and the Fetts. How do you use those elements in your writing?

Sakaros
I'll take a whack at this.

Like many things, I've written more in RP and supporting articles that hasn't made any appearance in my limited fan fiction (the Bosh-Garratt slavers and especially Red Eclipse come to mind), but one that has appeared in my fan fiction is the Nightside Raiders, who, led by their Captain-General Kilwyo Kesh, are the main antagonists of "It Takes Only One". "It Takes Only One" allowed me to explore the effect of criminal elements on everyday people in the Golden Empire, rather than merely the government's reaction to those effects.

Having conquered the Tetrarchy of Mezlagob, the Empire had to deal with all the fringe elements and criminal syndicates that the Tetrarchy had previously managed. It was a novel experience for the Empire; since Rin Sakaros founded the Empire from nothing and built it planet-by-planet from previously unconnected worlds or small groups of worlds, she had never had to deal with intersystem crime organizations before. In "It Takes Only One", we see Rin label Kesh as an Enemy of the Empire, depriving him of all protections of citizenship and basically saying anyone who can hurt or kill him is obligated to. On the surface it's easy to take this as "Rin put on her srs bsns face", but I see it more as an act of desperation. She knows Kesh is a scourge to the Empire and has to be taken out of the equation, and she's basically admitting that the Royal Navy, the Order of Keltrayu, and all the planetary law enforcement bodies together can't stop him.

It's an interesting study of the fear effect the Nightside Raiders had. Despite the fact that Rin and her Armada had laid the smack down on the Tetrarchy only seven years previously (that is, in living memory of everybody in a position to do something about Kesh), local citizens were still more afraid of Kesh and the Raiders than they were confident in the Empire's ability to protect them. Doubt in the new government? Inability to shake habits of fear which were firmly rooted long before the Empire came along? Probably a bit of both. In the non-fan fiction bulk of my articles, Red Eclipse had a similar effect, though there it was the organization as a whole as opposed to the Raiders, where it was mostly Kesh personally.

Now that I sit down and overthink it, the Raiders' role in "It Takes Only One" could also be a commentary on citizen involvement in law enforcement. It was a fun story to write because the hero was an average guy, but the story required an average guy to be the hero because the Empire, with all its might and formidable arsenal of weapons, couldn't stop Kesh until the people helped out.

To a lesser extent, crime and fringe elements feature in "Freedom" too; Tak Sakaros is held as a slave in a fighting ring on. But the fringe there is more about setting than storyline.

One thing I haven't written is the "lovable scoundrel" archetype, like Han Solo—unless you find Tak Sakaros lovable, and even for me as the creator, that's a stretch.

Sakaros Talk 02:11, August 18, 2014 (UTC)
 * From the Forest of Goodwood:
 * As one who puts most of his creative effort into fan fiction rather than straight-up fanon (almost all of my articles are limited to things that directly or indirectly appear in narrative form first, using mostly the stories themselves as "sources" and adding a bit of explanation that would be too awkward or unwieldy for prose), I personally prefer to read other folks' stories as opposed to their encyclopedic tracts. Just by reading through the intro for Rin Sakaros herself, the dreaded specter of "Mary Sue" began to cast its shadow (having once gone through Tak's article, he's not much better off). This isn't intended as a belittlement, however, but as a word of advice from one writer to another: if you really want to give us the complete picture of Rin and make her a little less Sue-like, then by all means work your narrative magic and tell us a story about her. Having read your work, I know you can do it.
 * One of the things I really liked about "It Takes Only One" was how similar it was in scope and structure, as well as characters, to the classic Western short story (and later John Wayne film), "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence." Your tale was even better for two reasons: the fact that the protagonist had no personal aims or preconceived notions (he's not a dude lawyer out to "bring law to the lawless"), and the fact that SPOILER ALERT he did it himself. I like that you didn't dwell too much on what the Raiders really were at heart, how they had come to be, and their history with that other empire and the Golden one; instead you said just enough for us to understand just how vile these guys are and why they&mdash;and Kesh himself&mdash;were feared. That fear was more personal than collective, and your narrative drew on that angle to great effect.
 * I'd like to see something about this Golden Empire from a narrative point of view because I'm not really one to content myself with the somewhat dry (by necessity) style of a wiki-based encyclopedia. This ties in with my first note, because in addition to enabling us to see the galaxy through Rin's eyes, you can better carry forward the motivation and reality behind the foundation, expansion, conflicts and other odds and ends faced by the Empire itself. How is it different from all the other empires out there? What was so bad about the Tetrarchy of Mezlagob and what, if anything, prompted the two governments to go to war in the first place? Is the ultimate goal one of galactic domination, either through fair means or foul? It's all well and good to see that so and so did such and such for the betterment of all sentient beings, but we don't surf Wookieepedia to read about the lives of Jedi, Sith, Mandalorians or whatever individual characters; we pick up the media they are featured in. It is even better and can be far more rewarding (for both author and reader) to vicariously live that life and embark on that crusade through the crucible of prose.
 * Well, that's how I personally feel, and I hope you found it helpful somehow.  04:15, August 18, 2014 (UTC)


 * I have to preface by saying that, even if I had any desire to write a "Rin and the Empire" story (aside from The Fall of Keltrayu), I'm starting law school on Wednesday, and if I even find the time to write an encyclopedic article over the next months, I'm going to count it as a win.


 * Anyhow, I think I view SWFanon differently than most (but not all) other writers here; for me, it's never been about the community. Imagine, if you will, one of those storage facilities opens in your town ("5' x 5' spaces starting at just $19.95, and many other sizes available!  Call now for availability!").  It's absolutely massive, hundreds of football fields worth of square feet.  And what's more, it's free!  You can select any storage size you need at no cost.  But there's a catch; the doors of each storage unit are transparent.  It's triple-strength plexiglass and locked like a normal unit, so no one can get in and mess with your stuff except you or one of the storage facility managers (Admins here...this metaphor is getting away from me...), but everyone can see everything you put in.  Now, that might change some of your actions (you're not going to put your first grade drawing of a happy sunflower or more...adult items where people can see them), but you're still stashing stuff in there, you're just a little choosier about what goes in and how it's presented.


 * That's what SWFanon is for me: a repository for all my creativity that other people happen to be able to view. I put in a lot of painstaking work to make sure everything conforms to the Manual of Style, all the coding is correct, and everything has the right templates, but beyond that, I don't think often about the broader community in relation to my own work.  I've thrown my hat into the ring for the Wikia Awards a couple times (and a Quote of the Week once), but even my two featured works ("Freedom" and "It Takes Only One") were nominated by others.  I think of community awards...not even as icing on the cake, but more like a smiley face drawn on the icing—it's nice and brightens my day, but I can enjoy the rest of the cake just as much without it.


 * All that is said as a preface to my response about writing a Rin-focused short story or novella. I honestly have very little motivation for it.  It's not that I agree Rin is a Mary Sue (I don't, although I can see how a cursory reading of her article could lead to that guess), nor is it that I don't find her engaging as a character (I definitely do; I enjoy Rin's moral dilemmas and how she reconciles what she does with who she is).  It's that most of them have already been "done" for me, if you will.  My RP partners and I picked up the Golden Empire in 139 ABY, and it's now 154 ABY.  Rin isn't the main character, per se; the cast of characters is too broad for any one to be "main".  But she's a central character, and she's been heavily involved, even if only as a looming background presence, in all of the stuff we've RPed.  The three fanfics I wrote were all stuff that had originally been background information for RP, but which I decided I wanted to explore further.  Stuff that has already been RPed needs no further exploration for me; been there, read and wrote that.


 * There is a possible exception to the "I won't write anything from the timeline I've already RPed out", and that's the Battle of Shest Minor. But again, Shest Minor was something that was mentioned in RP, but which we didn't actually play out.  I find the story interesting and I think it's very defining for Breek Zagrev, so I might some day explore it in greater depth.


 * Hope that helps to explain why I write what I write. Sakaros Talk 15:42, August 18, 2014 (UTC)


 * P.S. Am I the only one who actually does read through Wookieepedia just to learn information, even when I don't (and never intend to) read some of the media involved? That can't just be me, right?  Hello?  Echo?  Sakaros Talk 15:42, August 18, 2014 (UTC)