100 Things I Learned By Writing Fanfiction # 5: You Will Lose Things

I just came across a comment that someone left me here about a story that she had written and lost.  I wish I could help, because I know this pain well, and there's nothing less satisfying than trying to reproduce something you wrote that you don't have anymore.  It seldom works.  If you manage to get something worthwhile, you're lucky.  You'll probably still feel a hollowness in your gut because it's not really what you want your readers to see.  It's just the best you can do the second time around.

Confession # 8: I Used To Be Terrified of Darth Vader

So, I don't like Anakin.  I love Darth Vader.  And I used to be terrified of Darth Vader all at the same time? Yes.  Well, technically no, I suppose.  I didn't know anything about Anakin for most of my life.  I already loved and was terrified by Darth Vader long before the Prequels came out.  Never let it be said that I am an uncomplicated woman.

I had a recurring nightmare about Vader for years.  It began in my early childhood, after I saw Star Wars, and it continued well into my adult life.  In the dream, Luke and Leia had been captured and were being held on a spaceship.  I think it was supposed to be Vader's flagship, Executor, but I'm not sure since Executor appeared in The Empire Strikes Back, and the ship in my dream looked more like Tantive IV, the one where Leia was boarded and captured in the original film.

Anyway, I snuck on board the ship and was trying to rescue the twins, but Vader knew I was there and found me.  The bulk of the dream consisted of me running through the white hallways with Vader chasing me.  Eventually he would draw his lightsaber and close in.  There were sometimes more details, depending on whether or not I made it to the twins.  If I did, there were some lines of dialogue, but only Vader did the talking, and the only other sounds in the whole dream were his breather (getting closer) and the snap-hiss of his lightsaber.

I didn't stop having that dream until around 2008, when I was deep in the heart of a Vader related project with Aruna7.

Short Personal Update

I've re-injured my arm.  It's doing all right, but I've gone back several steps in terms of my ability to type.  The 8 Confessions series is finished--I wrote up the last one a couple of weeks ago.  I've got a few posts in the 100 Things I Learned From Writing Fanfiction series and some informative/tutorial content on my other blog that I've been working on here and there.  I'll get those up in the coming weeks.  After that, it will depend on how my arm is doing.  Let's hope it's not another 4 month ordeal.

Confession #7-I Love Darth Vader

Earlier in this series, I wrote at length about how much I dislike Anakin Skywalker.  It should follow then that I hate Darth Vader, but I don't.  I was afraid of him for a long time (I'll talk more about that next week) and I always thought he was horrible to Princess Leia, but he intrigued me.  His dialogue with Obi-Wan in A New Hope showed me someone who was, for all his apparent strength, still trying to prove that he was better than his old teacher.  His interactions with Luke showed me someone who was capable of acting with honor--in a bizarre, twisted way.  So, I came to like Darth Vader a whole lot by the time he died.  I just wish that Anakin Skywalker had lived up to Vader's potential.

I learned to love him a whole lot more by writing about him.  I'll (hopefully) be talking about that again when I return to my 100 Things I Learned From Writing Fanfiction later this year.  Granted, the things I wrote about in my fanfiction were based on my own inferences and observations, so, maybe I love my own ideas of Vader's character a little more than the person we see on the screen but I'd like to think that I learned a little something about the Dark Lord from all the time I spent exploring that character.

Confession # 6-I Wanted to Marry Lando Calrissian

This is going to be a short post in comparison to most of the others in the series.  There really isn't a deep confession here.  Remember that I was a little girl when I first watched Star Wars.

I think I shipped Han and Leia before I knew what "shipping" a couple meant.  The term most likely hadn't been invented yet.  Either way, I knew that Han and Leia were going to get married someday.  I never liked Luke, so even though I thought it would be awesome to be Princess Leia's sister, there was no way I could marry him. 

Somehow, it occurred to me that I could marry Lando.  Lando was pretty awesome.  He was charming, funny, a little bit dangerous and prone to getting into trouble.  He probably needed to have a wife to keep him in line.  If I married him, I could have all kinds of adventures, and I'd probably get to hang out with Han and Leia all the time!  So, there you have it.

...I feel the need to mention that I also wanted to marry Michael Knight,  Danny Williams from the original Hawaii 5-0 and James T. Kirk.  I guess I was going to be a polygamist.