Dragonfall

I had a big fanfic in a previous fandom where one of the big reveals was the involvement of a kind of infamous villain, whose presence was built up to and foreshadowed through the whole fic until his reveal without ever mentioning his name, so that the name drop would be a gut punch. It worked especially well because of who the villain was and his presence in that fandom space specifically (it's very complicated) and if it was an original story this reveal wouldn't work at all the way it was written in the fic. Because if you don't have a predisposition to think about that character and his relationship to the hero in a very specific way, then just seeing their name won't do much to you; the reveal and the recontextualisation it pushes upon you hinges on your previous knowledge of the source material.

I think it's an interesting tool fanfic authors are given. One of my favorite fanfic of all time is partially a re-imagining of its source material's canon, and something it does is introduce antagonists much earlier in the story or deepen npcs' stories. It then works to evoke a tragic irony that again wouldn't work if you didn't know the source material, and it's something the author obviously has a lot of fun with.

I got a comment on a fic that is less than a year old and it was mostly an apology for being a comment on an "old fic" and how late they were in commenting.

Fandom is not trends.

Fandom is a cross between a library and having a slumber party with your friends.

The thing is, there’s no way to know where these people are coming from. In the before, when fandom was more in the corners we all knew about, you could search LJ or a message board or whatever social bookmarking site we were using. You could join the community and participate.

You could get a little dopamine hit by seeing someone tell their friends why they loved your story.

Anymore, those recs are hidden in discords, or in tiktoks or instagram slideshows that you can’t search for. They’re inaccessible, not discoverable unless you’re already there. You may never know why 27 people left kudos on an old story of yours, what they liked and found in your writing. You just get the thumbs up and a kinda lonely feeling, cause these could be your people. You could like them, maybe. You could be friends.

But you’ll never find out why they stopped by, or what people are saying about you behind your back, and that’s sad.

Violet: *drinks*

Second squad: You've been arrested?!

“…Aetos asks Sorrengail, panicking like the infantry soldier he should have been”

“Aetos takes his hands off Sorrengail’s shoulders, and I decide to let him keep them. For now.”

“Gods, please give me a reason to beat the pompous, Codex-loving shit out of him. Just once.”

“Odd time to grow a spine, but good for him.”

“I scoff. Fucking rule-loving coward. He doesn’t deserve to breathe the same air as Violence. She’s half his size and a thousand times braver. Talk about a disproportionate relationship.”

“Aetos scurries away like the little rat he is.”

1. Slow down at emotionally important moments.

Big emotions need space to land. If a scene feels rushed, pause the plot briefly to show how the moment affects the character.

2. Add reactions, not explanations.

Instead of explaining what a character feels, show it through physical responses, hesitation, or small actions that reveal emotion naturally.

3. Ground every scene in the senses.

If a scene feels thin, add one or two sensory details—sound, texture, smell, or temperature—to make the moment feel lived-in.

4. Let thoughts interrupt action.

A line of internal thought can deepen a scene without slowing it too much. Thoughts show stakes, fear, longing, or conflict beneath the action.

5. Expand consequences, not events.

You don’t need more things to happen—you need to show what matters. Focus on how events change relationships, decisions, or self-perception.

6. Strengthen setting where emotion peaks.

The environment should echo or contrast the emotion of the scene. Setting is not decoration—it’s emotional reinforcement.

7. Add specific details instead of general ones.

Underwriting often relies on vague language. Swap “they argued” for one sharp line of dialogue or a specific breaking point.

8. Let dialogue breathe.

Short dialogue exchanges without pauses can feel flat. Add beats—silence, gestures, interruptions—to give the conversation weight.

9. Show transitions between scenes.

If scenes jump too quickly, readers feel disoriented. A brief transition helps establish time, mood, and emotional continuity.

10. Clarify stakes early in the scene.

If readers don’t know what can be lost, scenes feel empty. Make sure the character wants something specific and fears losing it.

11. Use the “what are they feeling right now?” check.

After each major beat, ask what emotion is dominant in that moment. If it’s missing on the page, the scene is likely underwritten.

12. Expand scenes that feel “too clean.”

As a Youngling, he learned his head is not always occupied by his thoughts alone. Echoes from unsuspecting nooks and crannies (and war) overload his brain, giving him everything they once were.and forcing his mind to compute emotions too strong, too heavy. He had desperately wished, at the time, that it was his own feelings that were too big for his body.

After his Master dies, his lightsaber is twice the size of his own. It hangs heavy on his waist, bruising the sides of his thigh whenever he lands. It's foreign, unsuitable, a tragic reminder that drags his weight down yet he finds himself clinging to it like a child during the coldest nights on Bracca. No matter how many times his palms encircle the hilt, it would never fit the way it should.

His first poncho was five sizes too big. Prauf, like every other Scrapper, was living hand to mouth. "You'll grow into it" he insisted, a quiet muffled chuckle betraying his amusement as the heavy material hovered by his ankles. Cal is thirteen and his face itches from the cold, but the poncho is warm and it reminds him distantly of home. Cal never grew as big as Prauf, and the poncho still hangs past his shoulders, a few sizes too big.

Cal is seventeen and the names of a thousand Force Sensitives rests in his palm. He's seventeen, and the future of his kind is compacted into a single Holocron stained by bloodshed. His gut twists and turns with uncertainty and fevor and deep fatigue from the lengthy chase and almost getting his insides boiled, and he desperately wants to reach out snd grab that opportunity for a future. But Cal is seventeen, and can give nothing more to these children than their freedom. He's seventeen and he is unfit to guide the new Order, and it gnaws at him.

He's seventeen and he doesn't fit into this found family who place their needs over the Fight. So he leaves to find a place where he could fit as if being one of the last of his kind would allow him such mercy.

He's twenty-two and his emotions eventually settle as the sounds of battle become white noise and bodies become numbers. He is angry and betrayed, and loathing himself and losing himself, but the need to Fight thrums like electricity under his skin. He's twenty-two and he no longer fits into the mold of the old Jedi Order. He is not them, something in between.