fic(-ish): Personal Canon (a.k.a. really, Canon Now That I've Thought Of It)
How this started is, penny_lane_42 wrote an entry full of points of "personal canon" for certain characters in her fandoms (five per character), and it was all generally awesome, and yanked me out of my new story dithering and gave me something to do at work when it was slow (receipt paper ftw). However, this is me, the girl who wanted to write a short story, which turned into a novel into the trilogy that ate her life, and I'm not so great with *points*, and especially not with, you know, sentences. Or words. I ramble. Also, I apparently still have plenty to say on Always, so the characters I've picked are ones in said monster, and most of the points pertain to the monster's AU and mythology. Ergo, my take on "personal canon" is not so much confined to five points, frequently runs on longer than did its source of inspiration, and--since they're largely in the Always 'verse--they're actually kind of canon. Or "canon."
Rambling, and I haven't even started the main point. Well. Krista-fic is coming (and with slight overlap from this, because hers certainly opened the floodgates), and then Rose-fic, but until then there are just rambly lists of 6-13 character "points." Enjoy?
Lera Verili
1) Sometimes Lera wonders if Nichyn is the love of her life, or really just her greatest friend in all the worlds, and the one who always needed her most. She has always only ever wanted to do the right thing, after all.
2) When Lera first came to Quatroc, there was a scheduling conflict, and Nichyn couldn’t meet her. Instead, Clayra showed her to a dusty, far away servant’s room for a bedchamber. For a week, Lera slept on a bed with no mattress, in a room (closet) with no windows. Gantik, of all people, was the one who apologized and hurried her to the right room, down the hall from Nichyn. She never told Nichyn about his mother’s actions. It wasn’t worth it.
3) Lera has never felt comfortable around Nichyn’s stepfather. Sometimes she sees him…looking at her, and that part of her she once shared with Devnos freezes up and reminds her of all the nearby escape routes and defensive weapons. Gantik is much kinder to her, much readier to help her, than Clayra is. It still takes her years to teach herself not to tense when left alone with him.
4) After the divorce, Lera was told to live with her mother, because it wasn’t safe to stay with her dad. He never told her, but Lera knew about his involvement in one of the more extreme male-rights activist groups. And although he definitely wouldn’t have wanted it, she was more than a little involved in the group and its danger. She swept aside those plans for the more dire situation on Nichyn’s planet. She’s always felt a little guilty about that, even if it was inevitable.
5) Lera learns the Na’Lein languages (sacred and common) far, far too quickly and well. To be honest, “learn” is the wrong verb; Lera remembers it as if it was her childhood tongue. She thinks of Devnos, remembers the fear in everyone’s eyes, and she pretends to be a dullard with languages. Soon, she dreams in Na’Lein, but she teachers her children how to speak Basic.
6) There is no word, in Basic or in Na’Lein, that hurts her quite like khalan.
7) On NLY, Lera sometimes misses even Hasi, but she never rethinks her choice.
8) She hates the desert with every fibre of her being-she is very much a Gallinore girl, and she needs rainstorms and flowers, humidity and spices. She hates the Na’Lein landscape for being too dry and unforgiving, harsh in every way that Gallinore is lovely and wild. The people are even more difficult, but at least she loves them.
9) She tells herself, when Nichyn’s first political bride is as beautiful as Hasi, that she doesn’t care about being plain. At the wedding reception, society and in-laws happily shun her, and Nichyn must stay close to his wife’s side. At the end of the horrible evening, she admits that she wouldn’t know what to do with beauty, anyway.
10) She loves Nichyn, but she knows she could have been happy (and less likely to be widowed, or herself assassinated) if she had accepted Arelyk’s last-minute sort-of proposal at the spaceport before she left Gallinore. She chose Nichyn and NLY. Lera never looks back.
11) The first time Nichyn was targeted for an assassination, there was no warning. Lera had been on NLY for three years; Nichyn was running for magistrate of an old extremist district of Quatroc, and walking through the streets on his campaign when a passerby drew a knife and blood. Nichyn asked Clayra to tell Lera, he asked for her and more than once; instead, Clayra put it off until late that night, when Lera had returned from one of the schools. There was no reason for it, beyond sheer malice; Lera was only told (by a disapproving servant, who thought Lera had dallied while knowing) that Nichyn had been calling for her, hours after he had resigned himself to Lera being unable to get away. Clayra never apologized, or even admitted wrongdoing. Lera never forgave Clayra for that.
Isra
1) Isra grew up amongst the aristocracy, to a man only slightly less cunning than she became. Her mother, who was not the mistress of the house (so to speak), was all but irrelevant to Isra’s upbringing. She was also completely, violently mad. She murdered her lover’s wife before Isra could finish her schooling. Isra’s mother grabbed her and ran, and they were servants in another aristocrat’s house before she was fourteen. She never saw her father again, but she has kept every one of his secrets, and remembers all of his enemies.
2) Isra decided, at a very young age, that she would not be raped. Her pragmatism intruded, and she amended her strategy. She chose an educated, ridiculous fop on her father’s staff, and convinced him he was in love with her. She chose a kinder deflowering for herself, and then had the boy sent away. She was eleven. She thought there was far too much cuddling before and after. (She can’t remember if it hurt so very much, compared to some of her other lovers.)
3) She didn’t love Gaffil. After, she compares every man she meets to her once lover, only equal. No one will measure up. (She refuses to miss him).
4) She never saw the point in tears, never felt a particular inclination toward them. Her positions in life have always required immediate, exact action, deceit and strategy, with never a moment to spare for anything, let alone tears.
5) Isra never expected to survive the resistance, let alone the revolution. During every degradation, every humiliation and loathsome act, she comforted herself with that belief.
6) At her father’s direction, Isra committed her first murder when she was eight. It was necessary.
Jaina Solo
1) The day the Second Imperial War began (or, at any rate, the day picked by the history books) was Zekk’s lifeday. She and Peckhum had made a cake, but it burned; they were too busy staring out the window as the first bombs dropped on Coruscant.
2) Every time she has to make a decision that hovers in a grey area, Jaina thinks about what Jacen would do. She doesn’t always follow his example (she got all the pragmatism, he all the philosophy), but she always considers it. Sometimes, she thinks she can feel and hear him, helping her through the worst of it.
3) In the darkest nights after she lost Sanar, she wonders if Zekk was really worth all she lost while waiting and fighting for him. When she let Sanar go to NLY alone, she never thought that she was choosing one beloved over another. She doesn’t know (or won’t admit) if she would have chosen differently if she had known.
4) She can still remember the first time she flew: first safe with her father’s arms around her, his hands guiding hers, and then increasing distance (freedom) with her father’s excitement and Chewie’s encouragement surrounding her, until she knew that Force potential (and legacy) or no, she would always be a pilot.
5) When she and Kyp made out that one (and a half) time, neither of them were even half as drunk as they claimed. Maybe, if things were very, very different- Well, there are many things that Jaina doesn’t bother thinking about. Jacen was the philosopher, and Kyp the brooding hero; Jaina just gets the job done. But it always felt right that Kyp and Sanar fell in love.
6) Jaina chose Zekk, for better or for worse. She couldn’t have realized the impact of her choice at the time; she was only nine.
7) Jaina dreamed of Na’Lein deserts long before she went to Sanar after 777.
8) She’s better than it, knows far better than it, but part of Jaina still hasn’t forgiven her mother for so readily cutting their bond when Jaina needed her.
9) Once, when she was very young, she called Winter “Mama.” Jaina remembers, with some work, that everyone went very pale, and that Leia looked as if she had been struck. As an adult, Jaina swears to strike a compromise for her children, even if she has to settle down as a full-time ordinary Jedi Master. She’ll look after the Solo-Skywalker legacy some other way. She and little Mikhail are the only ones left, after all.
Krista Harif
1) One of her earliest clear memories is of her parents’ last farewell-and then Gryq and their grandpa telling her that her parents had gone away and wouldn’t be back. She was seven, so of course she didn’t understand; orphans were just heroic holo-film figures.
2) She didn’t want much for a father; she had three of them, and Gryq took his guardianship as seriously as a pregnancy test.
3) Cel is usually the easiest brother-he’s only six years older than her, and the most likely to treat her like a little sister. That said, he’s also the brother in Intel, and he’s better at it than her. He can be just as protective, and far trickier. Her boyfriends always underestimate him; she only gives them one blanket warning.
4) If Krista was an introspective person (and of course she avoids that whenever possible), she might have noticed how closely she watches her boyfriends’ reactions to and interactions with her brothers. Few, if any, stay strong in front of her brothers, and she loses interest as quickly as they start talking about curfew and your brothers would kill me.
5) Krista imagines her mother was something like Miko’s-lovely and bright and always ready with a hug and soothing words-but she’ll never really know, and all her memories have long turned into fantasy and air.
6) She tries to keep in touch with some of her ex-boyfriends during the war, but she never reads the news reports for names. She learned her lesson after the first several deaths and turnings.
7) Zekk is really hot. And Jaina is a good friend-one of Krista’s few real girlfriends. But if she had had an opportunity, even knowing what the future was, she still would have shot Onyx in those days before he turned back. Twice, even.
8) There is more to Krista than meets the eye; but she can be just as shallow and silly as everyone suspects, and quite often she doesn’t care.
9) When Miko told her he loved her, and then left, she cried hard enough and long enough to get past her waterproof mascara. He was her best friend, and one of the very, very few men she has cried over or for in her lifetime. Between that loss and all the close calls he’s put her through (before and after), he certainly earns more of them.
10) Years after 777, Krista still has nightmares of that room, fighting and bleeding and (more than) dabbling in the Dark side, and feeling Miko disappear from the Force. She will never forget recovering in MR HQ, believing Miko was dead, thinking Dejah was taking her to Miko’s corpse. Krista never talks about it outside the darkness of nights with her husband, and then only when it’s worst, but she remembers.
11) Krista and Miko’s wedding had two strangers as witnesses. Krista couldn’t find her make-up bag, and she only had lip gloss throughout their vows and even during their wedding night. She never felt more vulnerable, but she couldn’t bring herself to care-Miko was waiting at the end of the aisle, and she couldn’t have wanted this more.
12) Krista’s first instinct with any boy is to flirt. She never saw anything wrong with that, but then she did marry the one who took her seriously instead of flirting back.
Zekk
1) Zekk can’t remember his parents’ voices, and he doesn’t know if he’d recognize them if he ever saw them outside of his static-filled holo-capture.
2) Ennth has an obviously small population even for a dwarf planet; natives had no last names, distinguishing themselves instead by the names of their parents. On Ennth, everyone carries the dead with them into a better future.
3) His problems with Jaina were not the only reasons for Zekk’s turning; to say otherwise is both too simple, and too ridiculous, and he just can’t pretend it was like that. He can’t take the easy excuse (not anymore), nor can he pretend his turning was less Dark than it was.
4) The first time Zekk saw Jaina Solo, he thought she was the prettiest street urchin he had ever seen-when she was lost and covered in grease, he thought she was just like him.
5) …He learned otherwise when she invited him into her house. She didn’t see a difference; he did, right from the start.
6) Zekk used to wash up twice, and choose his best clothes, whenever he went to the Solo house, in case Leia Organa Solo was there. Peckhum always rolled his eyes and muttered something about impressing mothers-in-law.
7) Onyx is a metaphor, not an excuse, not even a reason, however tempting that thought may be.
8) Zekk cannot know, let alone remember, the number of deaths he has been directly responsible for. H cannot even try to calculate the number for whom is he is simply responsible.
9) Jaina was his best friend for years before he had even a crush on her-she is younger than him, and even three years makes a difference for kids.
10) On his darkest days, despite all he’s accomplished and found, Zekk thinks that death post-redemption is the easier, cleaner route for all concerned. He can’t commit suicide, though-besides it being cowardice on his part, there’s Jaina. He may not owe her his love because of what she did for him, but he does owe her more than to throw away her sacrifice.
11) Jaina never wants to talk about it, but Zekk makes sure that their children know what kind of hero their mother is, willing to die (and then live) for others.
12) Jaina never lets him see her grieve for Sanar, though he knows that perhaps only Jacen’s death caused as much pain. It reminds him of her brothers, and everyone else Onyx-he-cost her. He’s amazed every time she smiles at him, or slips into his arms. He wasn’t (isn’t) worth it.
Rambling, and I haven't even started the main point. Well. Krista-fic is coming (and with slight overlap from this, because hers certainly opened the floodgates), and then Rose-fic, but until then there are just rambly lists of 6-13 character "points." Enjoy?
Lera Verili
1) Sometimes Lera wonders if Nichyn is the love of her life, or really just her greatest friend in all the worlds, and the one who always needed her most. She has always only ever wanted to do the right thing, after all.
2) When Lera first came to Quatroc, there was a scheduling conflict, and Nichyn couldn’t meet her. Instead, Clayra showed her to a dusty, far away servant’s room for a bedchamber. For a week, Lera slept on a bed with no mattress, in a room (closet) with no windows. Gantik, of all people, was the one who apologized and hurried her to the right room, down the hall from Nichyn. She never told Nichyn about his mother’s actions. It wasn’t worth it.
3) Lera has never felt comfortable around Nichyn’s stepfather. Sometimes she sees him…looking at her, and that part of her she once shared with Devnos freezes up and reminds her of all the nearby escape routes and defensive weapons. Gantik is much kinder to her, much readier to help her, than Clayra is. It still takes her years to teach herself not to tense when left alone with him.
4) After the divorce, Lera was told to live with her mother, because it wasn’t safe to stay with her dad. He never told her, but Lera knew about his involvement in one of the more extreme male-rights activist groups. And although he definitely wouldn’t have wanted it, she was more than a little involved in the group and its danger. She swept aside those plans for the more dire situation on Nichyn’s planet. She’s always felt a little guilty about that, even if it was inevitable.
5) Lera learns the Na’Lein languages (sacred and common) far, far too quickly and well. To be honest, “learn” is the wrong verb; Lera remembers it as if it was her childhood tongue. She thinks of Devnos, remembers the fear in everyone’s eyes, and she pretends to be a dullard with languages. Soon, she dreams in Na’Lein, but she teachers her children how to speak Basic.
6) There is no word, in Basic or in Na’Lein, that hurts her quite like khalan.
7) On NLY, Lera sometimes misses even Hasi, but she never rethinks her choice.
8) She hates the desert with every fibre of her being-she is very much a Gallinore girl, and she needs rainstorms and flowers, humidity and spices. She hates the Na’Lein landscape for being too dry and unforgiving, harsh in every way that Gallinore is lovely and wild. The people are even more difficult, but at least she loves them.
9) She tells herself, when Nichyn’s first political bride is as beautiful as Hasi, that she doesn’t care about being plain. At the wedding reception, society and in-laws happily shun her, and Nichyn must stay close to his wife’s side. At the end of the horrible evening, she admits that she wouldn’t know what to do with beauty, anyway.
10) She loves Nichyn, but she knows she could have been happy (and less likely to be widowed, or herself assassinated) if she had accepted Arelyk’s last-minute sort-of proposal at the spaceport before she left Gallinore. She chose Nichyn and NLY. Lera never looks back.
11) The first time Nichyn was targeted for an assassination, there was no warning. Lera had been on NLY for three years; Nichyn was running for magistrate of an old extremist district of Quatroc, and walking through the streets on his campaign when a passerby drew a knife and blood. Nichyn asked Clayra to tell Lera, he asked for her and more than once; instead, Clayra put it off until late that night, when Lera had returned from one of the schools. There was no reason for it, beyond sheer malice; Lera was only told (by a disapproving servant, who thought Lera had dallied while knowing) that Nichyn had been calling for her, hours after he had resigned himself to Lera being unable to get away. Clayra never apologized, or even admitted wrongdoing. Lera never forgave Clayra for that.
Isra
1) Isra grew up amongst the aristocracy, to a man only slightly less cunning than she became. Her mother, who was not the mistress of the house (so to speak), was all but irrelevant to Isra’s upbringing. She was also completely, violently mad. She murdered her lover’s wife before Isra could finish her schooling. Isra’s mother grabbed her and ran, and they were servants in another aristocrat’s house before she was fourteen. She never saw her father again, but she has kept every one of his secrets, and remembers all of his enemies.
2) Isra decided, at a very young age, that she would not be raped. Her pragmatism intruded, and she amended her strategy. She chose an educated, ridiculous fop on her father’s staff, and convinced him he was in love with her. She chose a kinder deflowering for herself, and then had the boy sent away. She was eleven. She thought there was far too much cuddling before and after. (She can’t remember if it hurt so very much, compared to some of her other lovers.)
3) She didn’t love Gaffil. After, she compares every man she meets to her once lover, only equal. No one will measure up. (She refuses to miss him).
4) She never saw the point in tears, never felt a particular inclination toward them. Her positions in life have always required immediate, exact action, deceit and strategy, with never a moment to spare for anything, let alone tears.
5) Isra never expected to survive the resistance, let alone the revolution. During every degradation, every humiliation and loathsome act, she comforted herself with that belief.
6) At her father’s direction, Isra committed her first murder when she was eight. It was necessary.
Jaina Solo
1) The day the Second Imperial War began (or, at any rate, the day picked by the history books) was Zekk’s lifeday. She and Peckhum had made a cake, but it burned; they were too busy staring out the window as the first bombs dropped on Coruscant.
2) Every time she has to make a decision that hovers in a grey area, Jaina thinks about what Jacen would do. She doesn’t always follow his example (she got all the pragmatism, he all the philosophy), but she always considers it. Sometimes, she thinks she can feel and hear him, helping her through the worst of it.
3) In the darkest nights after she lost Sanar, she wonders if Zekk was really worth all she lost while waiting and fighting for him. When she let Sanar go to NLY alone, she never thought that she was choosing one beloved over another. She doesn’t know (or won’t admit) if she would have chosen differently if she had known.
4) She can still remember the first time she flew: first safe with her father’s arms around her, his hands guiding hers, and then increasing distance (freedom) with her father’s excitement and Chewie’s encouragement surrounding her, until she knew that Force potential (and legacy) or no, she would always be a pilot.
5) When she and Kyp made out that one (and a half) time, neither of them were even half as drunk as they claimed. Maybe, if things were very, very different- Well, there are many things that Jaina doesn’t bother thinking about. Jacen was the philosopher, and Kyp the brooding hero; Jaina just gets the job done. But it always felt right that Kyp and Sanar fell in love.
6) Jaina chose Zekk, for better or for worse. She couldn’t have realized the impact of her choice at the time; she was only nine.
7) Jaina dreamed of Na’Lein deserts long before she went to Sanar after 777.
8) She’s better than it, knows far better than it, but part of Jaina still hasn’t forgiven her mother for so readily cutting their bond when Jaina needed her.
9) Once, when she was very young, she called Winter “Mama.” Jaina remembers, with some work, that everyone went very pale, and that Leia looked as if she had been struck. As an adult, Jaina swears to strike a compromise for her children, even if she has to settle down as a full-time ordinary Jedi Master. She’ll look after the Solo-Skywalker legacy some other way. She and little Mikhail are the only ones left, after all.
Krista Harif
1) One of her earliest clear memories is of her parents’ last farewell-and then Gryq and their grandpa telling her that her parents had gone away and wouldn’t be back. She was seven, so of course she didn’t understand; orphans were just heroic holo-film figures.
2) She didn’t want much for a father; she had three of them, and Gryq took his guardianship as seriously as a pregnancy test.
3) Cel is usually the easiest brother-he’s only six years older than her, and the most likely to treat her like a little sister. That said, he’s also the brother in Intel, and he’s better at it than her. He can be just as protective, and far trickier. Her boyfriends always underestimate him; she only gives them one blanket warning.
4) If Krista was an introspective person (and of course she avoids that whenever possible), she might have noticed how closely she watches her boyfriends’ reactions to and interactions with her brothers. Few, if any, stay strong in front of her brothers, and she loses interest as quickly as they start talking about curfew and your brothers would kill me.
5) Krista imagines her mother was something like Miko’s-lovely and bright and always ready with a hug and soothing words-but she’ll never really know, and all her memories have long turned into fantasy and air.
6) She tries to keep in touch with some of her ex-boyfriends during the war, but she never reads the news reports for names. She learned her lesson after the first several deaths and turnings.
7) Zekk is really hot. And Jaina is a good friend-one of Krista’s few real girlfriends. But if she had had an opportunity, even knowing what the future was, she still would have shot Onyx in those days before he turned back. Twice, even.
8) There is more to Krista than meets the eye; but she can be just as shallow and silly as everyone suspects, and quite often she doesn’t care.
9) When Miko told her he loved her, and then left, she cried hard enough and long enough to get past her waterproof mascara. He was her best friend, and one of the very, very few men she has cried over or for in her lifetime. Between that loss and all the close calls he’s put her through (before and after), he certainly earns more of them.
10) Years after 777, Krista still has nightmares of that room, fighting and bleeding and (more than) dabbling in the Dark side, and feeling Miko disappear from the Force. She will never forget recovering in MR HQ, believing Miko was dead, thinking Dejah was taking her to Miko’s corpse. Krista never talks about it outside the darkness of nights with her husband, and then only when it’s worst, but she remembers.
11) Krista and Miko’s wedding had two strangers as witnesses. Krista couldn’t find her make-up bag, and she only had lip gloss throughout their vows and even during their wedding night. She never felt more vulnerable, but she couldn’t bring herself to care-Miko was waiting at the end of the aisle, and she couldn’t have wanted this more.
12) Krista’s first instinct with any boy is to flirt. She never saw anything wrong with that, but then she did marry the one who took her seriously instead of flirting back.
Zekk
1) Zekk can’t remember his parents’ voices, and he doesn’t know if he’d recognize them if he ever saw them outside of his static-filled holo-capture.
2) Ennth has an obviously small population even for a dwarf planet; natives had no last names, distinguishing themselves instead by the names of their parents. On Ennth, everyone carries the dead with them into a better future.
3) His problems with Jaina were not the only reasons for Zekk’s turning; to say otherwise is both too simple, and too ridiculous, and he just can’t pretend it was like that. He can’t take the easy excuse (not anymore), nor can he pretend his turning was less Dark than it was.
4) The first time Zekk saw Jaina Solo, he thought she was the prettiest street urchin he had ever seen-when she was lost and covered in grease, he thought she was just like him.
5) …He learned otherwise when she invited him into her house. She didn’t see a difference; he did, right from the start.
6) Zekk used to wash up twice, and choose his best clothes, whenever he went to the Solo house, in case Leia Organa Solo was there. Peckhum always rolled his eyes and muttered something about impressing mothers-in-law.
7) Onyx is a metaphor, not an excuse, not even a reason, however tempting that thought may be.
8) Zekk cannot know, let alone remember, the number of deaths he has been directly responsible for. H cannot even try to calculate the number for whom is he is simply responsible.
9) Jaina was his best friend for years before he had even a crush on her-she is younger than him, and even three years makes a difference for kids.
10) On his darkest days, despite all he’s accomplished and found, Zekk thinks that death post-redemption is the easier, cleaner route for all concerned. He can’t commit suicide, though-besides it being cowardice on his part, there’s Jaina. He may not owe her his love because of what she did for him, but he does owe her more than to throw away her sacrifice.
11) Jaina never wants to talk about it, but Zekk makes sure that their children know what kind of hero their mother is, willing to die (and then live) for others.
12) Jaina never lets him see her grieve for Sanar, though he knows that perhaps only Jacen’s death caused as much pain. It reminds him of her brothers, and everyone else Onyx-he-cost her. He’s amazed every time she smiles at him, or slips into his arms. He wasn’t (isn’t) worth it.