5128: Fire and Light - Rey Jade and Friends
Hi. I’m back. I took a sabbatical that was only meant to last a year only for things to happen whenever I tried coming back at the beginning of the year as I’d originally planned, but this year I’m actually starting to post again within the planned new year.
And, we’re starting off with Rey “Not-a-Skywalker” Palpatine week which means Star Wars crossovers this week. Eventually “Not-a-Skywalker” will be added for Sues that aren’t what they claim to be, hence part of the reason for this week. The other reason is because Star Wars isn’t drawing numbers in as it once was. It’s not something to celebrate, but something rather sad to see given this is one of the fandom to draw in big numbers before Harry Potter drew in the numbers.
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Title: Fire and Light
Perpetrator: AmazingGraceless
Sue-O-Meter: Bad (If I were judging this as an original fiction piece instead of fanfic, I’d have said this deserved the good rating. At least, for the first few chapters.)
Cover/Banner Art: The cover art is not very good. I see pictures of Rey and Kylo Ren.
Summary: “"...despite all the girls giggling about him, Rey Jade knew he was trouble." The Hogwarts AU no one asked for. Random!Rey, NOT RELATED AU. Reylo of course.”
Full Name: Rey Jade, (thank you for not calling her a Skywalker!), Ben, Poe, Finn
Sueworts Houses(s): Given the disconnect from canon that I mention in this write-up’s Origin/CtC section, they’re all getting sorted into Quanonreip, but they feel like innocent first year members of Quanonreip house.
Species: They’re supposed to be Star Wars characters transposed into the Harry Potter universe, but change the names and - yeah, no. Not until they evolve into such in later chapters.
Appearance: The story is mostly dialogue and lacking in the description department.
Possessions: The Gryffindor Sword is litteraly Rey’s. She litterally says she can feel it is hers.
Origin/Connections to Canon: Star Wars characters who aren’t Star Wars characters take the place of the Harry Potter characters, but if the tags on the A03 post of the story are anything to go by, this is meant to take the place of the next-generation characters. The problem is that the characters are the characters in the name only at the start, and Hogwarts is Hogwarts in name only. Mind you, there are mentions of characters like Harry Potter and Slughorn, but they’re just that, mere mentions.
There gets to be more and more connections to Harry Potter as the story progresses, moving it out of the original fiction territory into the fanfic territory. Rey and her companions are now attending Hogwarts. Supposedly. Rey doesn’t know her parents, but does, something we learn in the third and forth chapters, which is kind of a connection, but not really. She’s a Muggleborn despite having a a mother who wants to send her off to Durmstrang. We’re going with the Obi-Wan is her grandfather theory.
Plot: The first chapter is about the characters attending a class to learn a new spell after discussing pink magic in the previous class. Chapter two they start a project and Rey gets paired with Ben. Turns out Anakin was the last master of death. (Face palms.) Pink magic is movie canon, and Master of Death is fanon.
Third chapter involves discussion of immortality and chapter three claims the last one was Luke Skywalker, not Harry Potter. (Face palms again.) Rey complains that the Master of Death isn’t a woman. (Another face palm.) She doesn’t know about her parent, but according to Ben in chapter four that is a lie. (Okay. I like that one, even though it feels poorly implimented.) She also claims she did all of the work on their school project despite the fact he filled her in on lot of the whole Master of Death stuff. (At least I think. It is a bit hard to follow, given we’ve been told one thing regarding who the Master of Death is, and then something completely different.) Chapter five has Rey’s mother wanting to ship her off to Durmstrang which she can’t go to because she’s Muggleborn, only - (face palm) - if her mother’s wanting to send her to Durmstrang, Rey is obviously not Muggleborn, so what is the point of faking her parentage? Anakin gets taken over around chapter six-seven.
She has a prophesy from her grandfather. (No. It’s not Palpatine, thankfully. This story was written form 2015-2016, long before Rey “Not-a-Skywalker” Palpatine was revealed to be a Palpatine. That’s chapter eight, and Ben shimmers into her sight, and I found myself confused. Because there is Ben, and then her grandfather. And I think after calling Ben so many times, suddenly Ben is her grandfather. She gets invited on a date with Ben Solo, claims a sword is hers because it is calling her and gets the obligatory make over. The date is for sticking her with all the work. Supposidly. The writer didn’t exactly set this up well. It’s something we’re told, and a date really isn’t the appology I was expecting given how much she acted like she didn’t like him.
There’s some weird line of Ben deserving a pureblood, but Rey, “yet at heart, she is a muggle-“ because, uh? Later there is a Quidditch match. Ben is of course the traitor. Ben of coruse hurts Rey. But he’s under a spell. (Horcrux to be exact, and yes, that’s another face palm.) And for some reason chapter seventeen is called Scars.
Special Abilities: Lightsaber spells are a thing in a world that doesn’t need lightsabers, but this feels like a forced connection to the Star Wars fandom and makes the story feel like fanfic on crack, something not meant to be taken seriously. Which, if this is the case, good job Suethor. You managed to pull one over on Pottersues. And no, that’s not the same as this being trolfic. I don’t think this is the case, but the story feels like the writer is trying to juxtapose Rey’s story with Legends, so we’ve also got the twins and Anakin Solo running around. It’s a story that’s a not!related AU, as the summary said.
But then Ben is still a Ben Solo? Is it that Rey’s last name is Jade? That just means she’s related to Mary Jade, not that she is Mary Jade and Luke’s daughter. The Chamber of Secrets is involved with what’s going on despite the chamber having lost power, which is why Anakin Solo is the way he is. And Horcrux are still around despite this being a next-gen story.
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Notes: I would have loved to give this one the okay rating, because there are definitely things about this story I really like, such as the attempt to utilize Legends, of how this story went with the Obi-Wan theory for Rey. Compared to Twilight crossoveres which lean towards plot-what-plot, this actually has a plot while utilizing some of the typical teen drama such as Rey getting a makeover from the other girls in her dorm.
However, the Star Wars characters feel like the Star Wars characters in name only as the story started. Connections to canon aren’t worked out as well as it could be. This isn’t surprising given the story was started in 2015 which is a very short time for the writer to do proper world building. It doesn’t help either that the writer just started writing and posting fanfiction at the beginning of 2015 either.
The actual conflict doesn’t work either. The Chamber of Secrets shouldn’t be an issue and the horcrux should have been dealt with. There’s some snipe about the Master of Death not being female, and the sword being Rey’s because she feels it is hers. It feels ever so mild compared to our plot-what-plot Twilight stories and what I was actually expecting for the first day of Rey “Not-a-Skywalker” Palpatine week.
Oh. WTF moment! I read chapter seven regarding the prophesy given to Rey by her grandfather and I didn’t think of the grandfather she has in this story. Totally not the writer’s fault. Another WTF moment was how there are signs of Rey/Ben being toxic, with him hurting her, but the writer does soundly resolve that issue narratively, meaning I don’t have to use the Subject Matter Not Kawaii tag.
Honestly, Suthor should be proud of what they wrote.
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Sample:
After sitting through Professor Jinn's Magical Theory lecture, Rey slipped out of the classroom with her friends, Poe and Finn.
"I didn't understand a word of that last part about pink magic," Finn admitted nervously. He and Poe then immediately stared at Rey. She raised an eyebrow.
"Are you asking me because pink is a 'girl color'?" She demanded.
"No, it's that you're the best at the class," Poe said quickly. While he was the Quidditch star under Mr. Antilles, academics weren't so much of his thing. Unfortunately, if he wanted to get into the Aurors, like his parents before him, he would have to take advanced magical classes like Magical Theory. In fact, the only reason that Rey and Finn were in there in the first place was because he begged them to suffer with him.
"I've only got the grades I do because I apparently remind him of his prodigy, Ben Kenobi," Rey reminded them. Why, though, she didn't understand, since she wasn't related to him. She was a muggle-born, for God's sake!
"Still, you are pretty good," Finn said. He and Poe were in big trouble. If they couldn't wheedle her into this one after she'd sworn off of helping them "since they were big boys now," they were in big trouble.
"Not helping you!" She trilled. "Copy the notes off of someone else."
"But we're used to reading your handwriting," Poe protested as the walked into Professor Solo's classroom.
"Find someone else," she deadpanned as she slipped into her seat, wand on her desk as Professor Solo liked it. He believed in knowing how to use both muggle and magical weaponry and often expressed the importance of both.
"Please, I'll give you all of the cakes I get from Mum the next few months," Poe pleaded. Rey considered. This meant that he really was serious. Unfortunately, that's when Professor Solo entered the room, and everyone shut up before they could get into too big of trouble.
"Alright, today, we're going to be going over the lightsaber spell on your wand," Solo said. "This is a very dangerous spell. I want all of you to be extremely careful. Understand?"