anghraine | Entries tagged with film: rogue one

So my best friend J and I were talking about creative writing, and how sapped I've been through the later part of graduate school and also am just a slow writer, and about what writing for joy would look like, etc. I thought about for a little bit, then:

me: I think I know what kind of writing would bring me joy once my brain reconstitutes.
J: Yeah?
me: ...I could never, ever try publishing it professionally and wouldn't want to.
J: *pause* Oh, so fanfiction?
me: Yes. I wouldn't want to risk the wrath of Disney.
J: That has to mean Star Wars.
me: Yeah. I—there's one—I mentioned a few years ago that I wrote a Rogue One fanfic that I'm fond of ...
J: The one where they escape but get stuck on the Death Star?
me: Yes! It's pretty long and I stopped seriously working on it a long time ago, but it's very close to being finished and ... pretty long ... and it's always nice when someone recommends it as technically unfinished but satisfyingly resolved, but lol I tagged it as slow burn in 2017 and they, they never kiss or declare their feelings to avoid complicating such a dangerous situation, so it's just uhhh yearning and camaraderie for thousands and thousands of words. But also there's some plot.
J: That honestly sounds really cool. I should read it some time, but anyway, I think you should do it! I bet that would make you happy.
me: :)

He's not into fanfic at all—he tried a couple of times and it always just morphs into original fiction—and I've rarely talked to him about it at all, so I was touched that he both remembered the premise and was supportive in his creative writing friend capacity! Also, he's a big SW fan (bigger of ST, but even so) and Rogue One is his favorite SW film, so I was touched! He even ended up asking if they get blown up with the Death Star, how they're involved with the "rescue" of Leia, if they're involved with releasing the tractor beam, etc.

I told him about how I really wanted to get the scale of the Death Star across with the long elevator trips and such, and a bit about how I wanted our heroes to be competent but also not to face no serious challenges or stakes, even though a lot of Imperials are pretty silly. I specifically wanted Cassian to face a situation where he had to set aside the big picture for the sake of some extremely flawed individuals and where Jyn, who sees the personhood in random strangers but can lose sight of the big picture, to face a situation where she has to sacrifice an individual for the greater good. The guy isn't meant to be likable but he is meant to be very decidedly a person with his own feelings and relationships, his friend worries about him even when the other Imperials just assume he fell into a bottomless chasm or whatever, and then she and Cassian are left with a very suspicious dead body in the detention center where they're working.

J: lol they should throw it into the garbage compactor!
me: Oh, they do.
J: WHAT
me: :)
J: Really?
me: Yes. So when Leia and everyone jump in, there's—
J: *bursts out laughing*

We'd been trying to figure out how exactly to entertain ourselves last night, since my mind was so melted from Dissertation Day that I wasn't really up to much, and then J had a brainwave.

J: You could do research!
me: ............I'm not sure I really have that in me right now.
J: No, not that kind! Let's watch A New Hope. It's not as heavy or complex as the others, but it's really good and fun, and it'll be research for your story :)
me: :)

So we did! It was great, as ever.

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Bad Moon Rising (Creedence Clearwater Festival)

It's always a bit surreal to read a fic and become increasingly convinced that the author has been influenced by a post or fic of mine even though they never mention it, or me.

This has happened to me in a couple of fandoms. It's one thing when the author freely acknowledges influence, but sometimes it's a weird déja vu where they never mention me, and at first I don't want to assume I'm ground zero for [whatever], but it just becomes increasingly obvious that either they've read my thing or read fic by other people who were strongly influenced by something I said or did.

I've personally run into this the most with Rogue One and The Borgias fic. It's interesting because RO fandom (not SW broadly, just RO) and Borgias fandom are absolutely the nicest and most generally pleasant fandoms I've probably ever been in. They're both fairly low on discourse and high on actually making things and promoting other fans, so although my experiences of them aren't 100% positive, the overall feeling is one of broad good will and friendly exchange. So it's not that I mind seeing ideas and emphases that I'm pretty sure I came up with spreading beyond my own fic/meta/headcanons. It's just a slightly odd feeling when a formulation is so close to mine and so specific that it feels somewhat implausible that it wasn't influenced by me, personally, in some way, even though these fandoms are pretty big.

In Rogue One fandom it's actually fairly easy to trace influence for various reasons (one of them is a tendency for my stuff to spread through specific mutuals). It's harder with The Borgias, but now and then I'll read something and be like "okay, maybe this is egocentric goggles or something, but this really feels like you read we get dark, only to shine."

Like I said, I don't mind this "oh, they definitely read [fic]" experience, it's just a little odd when it's my own fic and it's not acknowledged at all, yet is so specific and obvious that it seems kind of undeniable. Sometimes people do acknowledge the fic that inspired some element (AO3 has a mechanism specifically for this purpose) and that's really sweet and gratifying, but not nearly as surreal—maybe because that's a more old school approach and so more familiar to me personally, but also because the explicit acknowledgment ensures that it's not a gradually dawning realization but known from the first. The "huh, I also used that idea, cool to see it again..." -> "wow, that is actually really close to how I think about it, even in phrasing, interesting..." -> "okay, did this person read my specific fic?" -> "uh, yeah, they definitely read it" thing is a kind of different experience from an AO3 alert, you know?

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Sail Away, Sweet Sister (Queen)

I reblogged this Jyn/Cassian gifset in shades of blue and red.

Tagged: #oh this is nice #it's such a beautiful film :')

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Girls Just Want to Have Fun (Cyndi Lauper)

It feels like I'm increasingly seeing posts that are like "a bold and daring thought: what if genre fiction actually is a lesser art form" and "fanfic really is cringe and shallow in a way original, or at least literary, fiction definitionally isn't, as a natural byproduct of the form."

I have many complaints about fandom trends, both generally and specific to certain fandoms. I have always had lots of complaints about these. But I hate this. I hate the snide, snappy versions of this especially, but I also hate the more earnest arguments about how this just naturally arises from the existence of magic or spaceships or the re-purposing of pre-existing characters. I hate the attempts to pass off nostalgia for ye olde SF/F + handwringing over the corruption of the youth/womenfolk/etc as somehow progressive. I hate framing the most absolutely conventionally pretentious arguments about why less "respectable" genres really truly deserve to be disrespected as revolutionary.

There are deeply ahistorical and short-sighted elements to this that I've ranted about before (most recently with regard to fanfic here), and trying to additionally suggest these ideas are dangerous and transgressive and simultaneously so obvious as to be above criticism is so nonsensical. If you want to talk in sweeping generalizations about how SF/F is trash and fanfic is trash, you can do that, but the demand to be welcomed for doing so in fandom spaces and that the entirely predictable result of people getting annoyed just shows how right you are and how defensive fandom is about their unsophisticated tastes is just raw entitlement and elitism. Upsetting people is not a vindication of your position.

( Read more... )

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Mr. Blue Sky (Electric Light Orchestra)

heckofabecca said:

I rewatched the rest (ie the end) of Rogue One today... I cried

I replied:

Rightly!!

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: The Grand Illusion (Styx)

I reblogged this gifset of an injured Cassian holding Jyn back from killing Krennic. I reblogged it directly from

jubaah, who had said:

#:) #:D #i still cant believe the amount of drama there was over they not kissing when we have stuff like this... are you kidding me #this is the sexiest and best star wars couple. no i haven't watched most of the star wars movies and shows. but i know im right #the longing...

I added:

#you are so so so right

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Uptown Girl (Billy Joel)

I reblogged a gifset by garethsedwards for an AU where Cassian is an undercover agent among the Partisans at nineteen and meets sixteen-year-old Jyn. I added:

#awww now i'm having persuasion au feelings #this is lovely!

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Tubthumping (Chumbawamba)

I reblogged a gifset showing Jyn helping the injured Cassian escape the tower on Scarif, and the two of them smiling at each other in the third (and last) gif. I added:

#their expressions in the third ;_;

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin)

I reblogged a gifset that superimposed the "I'm not used to people sticking around when things go bad" / "Welcome home" Jyn/Cassian interchange from Rogue One over Jyn and Cassian's faces as they cling to each other before dying.

Tagged: #adjkfkj; #okay #the NERVE #of reversing this #in such a perfect way #!!!!!!!!!

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: These Are The Days Of Our Lives (Queen)

I don’t watch The Mandalorian until months after the fact, but I am living for all the parallels gifsets.

Tagged: #this particular character parallel is EVERYTHING #like. i care more about it than literally anything else in star wars and lf isn't downplaying it like fandom does?? #yesssss #vagueblogging intensifies #though of a different flavor of vagueness!

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: '39 (Queen)