Fanfics, fanfics and more fanfics

My gift for @emjenwrites as part of @fandomtrumpshate

redraw of that scene from the clone wars movie ft. ahsoka gets a shirt!!!!

We blinked, and it's 2024, and our EIGHTH year of running this auction. 2024 has all the same problems as last year but more — but we also have a lot to be hopeful about, and a lot of good projects worth supporting and fighting for.

You can look at this page (also linked in our header) for the list of this year's supported nonprofit organizations. We'll be posting more detailed profiles of each of them in the coming weeks. Below is the full calendar for this year's auction.

February 5th: creator signups open

February 19th: creator signups close

February 29th: browsing period begins

March 5th: bidding opens

March 9th: bidding closes

March 16th: proof of high bid donations due

March 21st: proof of 2nd chance donations due

December 31st: fanworks due

Back in 2021, as we were pulling together the fifth FTH auction, we joked together behind the scenes about how great it felt that the name of our auction was no longer quite as on-the-nose as it had been in our first few years. But it's 2024, and in all likelihood 45 will be back on the ballot: just one of the many sobering and scary things we're facing down this year.

But for the past seven years, we've had the privilege of watching thousands of fans -- yes, literally thousands -- dedicate their time and money and energy to the twin projects of sending support to some amazing organizations while building and strengthening community ties within fandom. Now, more than ever, that kind of community-building is essential.

We hope you'll join us, and join one another, in sending much-needed financial support to these amazing organizations and in putting more joy and beauty out into the world in the form of fanworks. These are dark times, but when we join together we can make them a little brighter.

The Saint of Joy and the Saint of Patience

Buckle up, anon, cause I have a lot of thoughts about Jacen Solo and his fall, and my take on this is that yes both of these things contribute, but maybe equally important are personality characteristics that get amplified by the grief and the PTSD. Among other things, my personality profile for Jacen includes the following:

Deep seated insecurities. When he’s younger its constant joking, wanting people to laugh, wanting people to like him  In the early days of the Yuuzhan Vong War it’s his place as a Jedi, whether or not he’s following the light side, his constant questioning of how well he’s doing this. Also, his place in his family - in Balance Point I think it is, Jaina flat out tells him he would be a good healer and he would be. It would be using the Force primarily to heal rather than to harm - and Jacen has a natural empathy and ability to connect that would make him really good at it. But Jacen pushes it aside as not the answer for him. Whether he realises or not - he’s a Solo & a Skywalker, a young boy in a family that is larger than life in pretty much everything it does so it makes sense. Later on with Tenel Ka and Allana he can’t be a public part of Allana’s life - which creates pressure on how well he is able to be a father to her. These insecurities coagulate in shame, that he isn’t enough whether it be for the galaxy, or for Tenel Ka, or for Allana, and he keeps trying to prove himself.

Fear of vulnerability. This isn’t as apparent when he was younger, but becomes more apparent as the war happens and the stakes of failure become higher. At the same time it creates distance between him and his family. From his and Anakin’s disagreement over the use of the Force, to the heart-breaking moment in Destiny’s Way when Jacen and Jaina are meditating together, and Jacen reaches out and Jaina pulls back. It’s understandable, because Jaina has lost so many people, she’s pulling into herself to keep from being hurt. But Jacen needed that connection and it doesn’t happen. He wants to know he’s doing the right thing. And he wants to be known and seen. With consistently strong authentic connections the insecurity and the fear of failure would have balanced out, I suspect, but instead we get Isolation.

This isn’t a personality trait, and it isn’t PTSD or grief although it is under-girded in ways by both of those things. Jacen ends up extremely emotionally isolated in nearly every way that he can be, which ends him a place where all of the above including his grief and PTSD from the war can be manipulated far more easily. At the same time it makes it difficult for those who are closest to him (his parents, his Uncle, Jaina, even Tenel Ka) to see what is happening to him.

By the time LotF happens, Jacen’s family has been broken with Chewie’s loss and Anakin’s. He doesn’t have a deeply close relationship with his sister, he’s spent five years on his own gaining a tremendous amount of knowledge, but without any close connections. He tends to view himself as having a lot of knowledge on equal level with Luke, but he doesn’t view Luke as a colleague or confidant, he has a relationship with Tenel Ka, and a child with her, but he can’t share that with anyone, and the safety of Allana dictates that he not spend a lot of time there and that he is careful about what he allows to be shared with anyone else which places walls between him and Tenel Ka. He maybe doesn’t share everything with Tenel Ka in order to protect her, and likely that goes both ways. Jacen lacks a true confidant at that point, the closest, perhaps, is his cousin - but Ben is not an equal, he’s a learner. And this is really a problem. Especially when you look at the fact that empathy and connection were one of his strengths, maybe even one of the things he needs the most in his life to be balanced and healthy.

Where does Traitor fit into all of this? Because the Jacen that comes out at the end of Traitor and walks into Destiny’s Way and continues through the end of the war feels more confident, right? Yeah…. Vergere fans the isolation because she’s taught Jacen things nobody else knows and nobody else trusts her which puts Jacen in a position of having to choose between what he’s learned and believes and what his family believes. She didn’t light the fire, but she fanned the flame, which digs further crevices between Jacen and everyone who cares about him.

So what we end up with by LotF are the first two characteristics, that in a healthier environment might never have become the sort of motivators that they do, amplified by isolation, which is in some ways is a fallout of the grief and PTSD from the war. 

When you combine this with Vergere’s work in Traitor, and you end up with a perfect storm. Jacen wants to do something that matters on a galactic scale and he wants that to be peace for the galaxy. He wants to keep his daughter and her mother safe - in some ways they’re the closest thing he has to an emotional connection - but he can’t tell anyone about this. He’s seen what a galaxy at war looks like and he’s willing to do anything to keep it from happening on that scale. He doesn’t feel comfortable talking to any one about these things, because of the isolation. In this way, he mirrors a lot of what happens with his grandfather - there’s an inability to be authentic about his motives, his fears, his hopes - and it allows everything to fester until it feels like becoming a Sith is the only way to solve the problem. Emotional isolation is a huge part of Anakin Skywalker’s fall. (And to slightly derail this is one of the problems with the notion of ‘no attachment’ in the Jedi Order - you need some healthy attachment as a human being, see… basically all Attachment theory research… and sure you can have unhealthy attachment and it can combine with selfishness to create a fall to the Dark Side, but I would argue that attachment is not only not dangerous to a Jedi, but it is necessary for any sort of healthy emotional well-being, and thus for being able to stay in the Light). 

Give us another universe where Jacen maintained a close tie to someone within his family, or where he had a marriage that was public and recognizable, or where he received counseling after the war instead of spending five years roaming the galaxy, but not building any sort of relationship, and I suspect you would have had a far different outcome. That’s a lot of words, anon, and I don’t know if you’re still with me, but thanks for the question.

Below are conditions frequently seen in people diagnosed with PNES. Our Tommy checks most of these boxes:

A thought crossed my mind and so Imma just jot it down here.

If I look at these screenplays with my screenwriter hat on, rather than the fan hat… these aren't ‘very good’ feature scripts, by conventional standards. They’re ‘okay’ at best.

As a conventional feature script, there’s issues all over Attack of the Clones, for instance. Too much expositional dialogue, too much plot not enough emotion. Again, “show, don’t tell”, always. When we do get character-driven dialogue, it’s phrased in a very formal dialect rather than a more conventional one.

But this is nothing new, right? Like, we’ve seen so many articles and videos criticizing the Prequels online. Myriad are the “let’s rewrite the Prequels” videos… and most of them rewrite the trilogy from the ground up. Some of these even result in stronger scripts (the Belated Media one is really good)... but that's, like, cheating.

Anybody can "fix" a story by just starting over. The real challenge is fixing it in a way that the TV shows and comics I grew up stay the same. A proper rewrite would take everything Lucas wanted to do with the prequels and only execute it better.

Now the screenplays I write aren't too shabby (got into a few script competitions but I've only been doing it for 4-5 years, so I'm clearly no master yet ^^') so sometimes I ask myself:

Could I write a feature script that

1) is classically "better"... (more aligned to screenwriting conventions, aka, a single protagonist who takes up most of the 120-minute screentime, clear inciting incident happening at page 15, midpoint of the script being a reversal of what happens on page 90, etc).

2) ... while also saying everything Lucas wanted to say? (by keeping every theme and subject, every commentary, every planet, every design and every line that spun-off into a TCW episode)

And the answer is "no".

At some point, I'd need to do away with some of the elements that have come to make the Prequels so iconic.

I mean, take Attack of the Clones, for instance. You're already trying to juggle two plots:

PLOT 1, Anakin and Padmé fall in love. Classic romance. Think Romeo & Juliet.

PLOT 2, Obi-Wan's investigation: noir-style with massive political implications. Think State of Play.

Each of these two plots is a feature film by itself. But then you've got all these subplots, but they're all CRUCIAL to the story of the Prequels. Off the top of my head:

SUBPLOT, the Separatists vs the Republic conflict, the Military Creation Act, Palpatine getting emergency powers: commentary on how a democracy turns into a dictatorship.

SUBPLOT, Anakin and attachment: commentary on how a good person turns into a bad person. Setting up this crucial flaw that'll doom Anakin in the next film. He loses his mother in this film and begins to feel very possessive of Padmé.

SUBPLOT, Obi-Wan & Anakin: former needs to put faith in his apprentice, latter needs to be less arrogant. Arrogance them also "rhymes" with Luke's arc, sets up how Anakin loses his arm and subtextually hints at how Dooku fell to the Dark Side.

SUBPLOT, everything with Count Dooku: quod sum eris, he is what Anakin will become.

SUBPLOT, Padmé being a target for assassination: moral people in positions of power will always be the first to go. If war is brewing, voices encouraging peace will be silenced or overshadowed.

SUBPLOT, the theme of duty: the Jedi are duty-bound to serve the Senate and so they're cornered into either joining the war or watching it ravage the galaxy. Also, Anakin and Padmé's respective duties make their romance forbidden (source of conflict).

SUBPLOT, Yoda crying for Anakin's loss, Mace supporting Anakin. The Jedi trust and approve of Anakin, making his betrayal in the next film harsher.

SUBPLOT, Palpatine's manipulation of Anakin, also laying groundwork for the next film.

As well as showcasing new planets, characters and set-pieces and action sequences that help you (Lucas) revolutionize digital cinema and VFX.

Orienting it all towards a target audience of 6-12 year-olds.

These are complex stories. You can't tell them properly without including all these elements. Like, in The Phantom Menace, you can't have Anakin start out as a 14-18 year-old (as most rewrite videos suggest) because the attachment to his mother wouldn't be as strong, by that point.

And, like, this is probably the very thing that Lucas had to face when writing the Prequels:

You either adapt the tale you're spinning in a conventional feature structure and lose a looot of stuff... or you tell the story you want to tell and you do it right.

And movies have to be concise, the runtime is very limited. You only have 120 minutes to tell your story, give or take. So you can see how these screenwriting conventions quickly become restrictive, especially to an artist like George Lucas.

Would the Prequels have worked better as an 8-episode limited TV show? Probably, yeah! Hell, you can kick many of those deleted scenes right back in (they provide SO much context).

But back in the early 2000s, you wouldn't get that kind of budget for a TV show. TV was considered to be "lesser" than film.