Those pesky fanfic acronyms, abbreviations, and random odd terms

[polgarawolf]

Hi, all! The owner/moderator of this lovely community asked me to post about some of the more often used fanfic acronyms/abbreviations. Of course, after I agreed, I discovered that the best fandom glossary I know of no longer seems to function (though it might come back online later, in which case I suggest that those who're interested check back

Comments

Re: My little tirade on Jude Watson

[polgarawolf]

Ah. Oh, sorry if I'm spoiling anything, then! I don't think I said anything too spoilerish, since you've been reading up on the storylines on the SW Wiki, but if I did, then sorry! Almost all of the storyline with Siri is in the Jude Watson books - first in the Jedi Apprentice series (where Obi's Qui's Padawan) and then Jedi Quest (where Anakin's Obi's Padawan). They're young adult books by Jude Watson, except for the first, which is by a fellow named Dave Wolverton (who wrote The Courtship of Princess Leia, if that tells you anything), and while about half or so of them generally have an okay idea at the heart of them, she repeats the same freakin' storylines, with minor variations, in every darned generation from Dooku down to Anakin, and not only are her characters all caricatures of themselves, basically, she insists on writing Qui-Gon as if he were a long-suffering saint and Obi-Wan as semi-competent at best and Anakin as if he were destined to be evil from birth and was practicing to don the black suit from the moment he got into the Jedi Temple. I can't bloody stand the way she writes any of the main characters and she obviously did so bloody little research into the way the Jedi Order's set up before she started writing that she has people emoting all over the place, falling in love left and right, and talks quite seriously about this ridiculous notion that Obi-Wan would have been allowed to visit his homeworld and his family as a child in the creche, which is complete and total bullshite, because once you're in the Order, you're bloody well IN the Order. They don't let you go home for visits. The Order deliberately removes children from their families too young to be able to rememeber those families so the only bonds they form will be to the Order and the Republic and their Masters/teachers and so they won't learn or know any better about how the rest of the galaxy functions when it comes to loving people and forming attachments to people. The inconsistency is based on such bloody obvious laziness on her part that it sets my teeth on edge. Actual fans could've done a better bloody job and been more bloody accurate and consistent to the canon than her, for pity's sake! Hence, I can't take her or her stuff seriously. I reserve the right to appropriate characters from her stories, but I haven't had a single person I've borrowed from one of her stories turn out like she's portrayed him/her so far yet, and since her storylines in light of the way she portrays her characters really make no sense, I'm not too surprised. I mean, honestly! She treats Qui-Gon like a long-suffering martyred saint, and then she writes about him doing the most bloody appallingly selfish things - like abandoning a fourteen-year-old Obi-Wan on a planet in the middle of a generations' long civil war because the secret object of his affection (Tahl) got what amounted to a bad scratch and panicked about getting her home to the Temple and the Healers and abandoned their mission on the planet, as well as Obi-Wan (who wanted to stay and try to help the people who were struggling to find a way to end the war) without a second thought in order to do it. And you know about how he abandoned his first Padawan (Xanatos) after killing his father right in front of the young man's eyes, right? Yeah. Qui-Gon is very good at abandoning his charges and responsibilities whenever something else comes up or things get difficult/messy. And you don't want to even get me started in on her sainted Ferus Olin. You just don't. Trust me. Basically, though, what she writes about contradicts the attitude that she holds for her subjects. Really, the only thing those books are good for are for understanding why Obi-Wan turned out the way he did (Qui-Gon f*cked him up, plain and simple) and for trying to get at the heart of how screwed up the Order really is and how hypocritical so many of the Jedi (like Qui-Gon) really were. IMHO, anyway.

Re: Whole reply if it fits - 1

[polgarawolf]

Finding out about stuff on the SW Wiki is what made me finally break down and read some of the Jude Watson books. The other stuff I've mostly kept up with, aside from the some of the comics (though most of the comics I've read have been through one or another of my cousins. I don't actually own any of them, aside from the scans I've gotten from proud_snapist (you've seen one of my posts on my lj about how she puts up links to sendspace downloads with SW EU stuff, right? If not, go visit and ask for things you'd like to read that you don't have access to, and I'm sure she'd be happy to repost things!). The books are just easier to keep track of, for me. Of course, I've stopped reading the post-NJO stuff, because they storylines and the writing's gotten so crappy, but I know everything that's happened in the books up through the thred book of that awful Legacy of the Force series, whether I want to know it all or not! *lol!*

Re: Whole reply if it fits - 1

[polgarawolf]

Eh, if it's shallow, then I'm shallow too! Obi-Wan = eternal love, and I prefer my Obi to be Ewan, if that's all the same with anyone else!!!

I played the first two sets of VHS tapes of the OT to death. My sister helped some, with the first set, but by the time they'd been played to death, she was tired of it all (had moved on to Star Trek). I was still fascinated, though, so I kept watching and making up stories for the backstory and the in-between the films bits. Obi-Wan was always the msot fascinating character, for me, with Anakin running a close second. The other major players were in a very distant third. Don't get me wrong, I love the Big Three. But Obi-Wan and Anakin and their (mysterious)friendship has always been my major hook for SW. The prequels and the prequel-era EU really only made it worse, because I was at once even more fascinated with them while being mostly not very satisfied with the backstories Lucas et al had finally come up with. Everything else is pretty much automatically of secondary importance to me, canon-wise and in the EU. I mostly keep up with the rest of the EU because at first that was all there was and since Obi-Wan had died for Luke so that he could escape with Leia and eventually come to have a reason to redeem Vader and so return Anakin to the fold and to Obi-Wan it seemed fit to keep up with what the kids were up to. It's stopped seeming like a thing I should do, though, pretty much ever since the NJO series, since they've pretty much managed to put the galaxy in a place where you can tell the destination is going to be even worse than it was when the Republic fell apart.