it's fine if you dont want to acknowledge character's personal live because even in starwars some of the main characters we dont know much of past what's been shown/talked about on screen. We don't need wiki fodder as lily loves to call it, we need content. fawning over hair or what type of cologne your SO likes is something that feels so out of place in a starwars fanfic and is more suited in a romcom.
It could work if your a competent writer but- ok need i have to finish that thought?
one of lily's main issues is not having a structure or a general theme for her fanfics. they're whatever she wants them to be. fine, brilliant, have fun but you'd think the rantsona who loves to give writing advice (aka rules that if you don't follow your a piece of shit) would be able to write for shit.
Lily, for the love of god just take some writing classes or something.
She doesn't need writing classes, she needs to get her head out of her ass. No amount of writing classes can teach you how to do that (and in the current environment I fear that quite a number will just encourage it).
Regarding this particular thing, the problem is that she's writing this entirely for self-indulgent purposes. Aliana has this rich (relatively speaking) backstory and life, she has friends and confidantes, she's ostensibly a character. Rey isn't. Rey is an accessory to Aliana, like all the characters are ultimately accessories to her.
She's admitted at much. According to Lily, Rey has no desire beyond Aliana. Being with Aliana fulfills all of her needs. Other her friends? Nah, she's got Aliana. Going on an adventure to see all the beauty the galaxy has to offer? Nah, she'd rather help Aliana with the incredible administrative work that would come with space-communism. The fulfillment of manual labor and working on ships? Apparently there's a cologne for that.
It all really culminates, of course, into the 'romantic' finale where Aliana lives a long and happy life and dies peacefully in her sleep, so Rey gets all her affairs in order and
commits suicide because there is no point to living without Aliana. She has
nothing that she cares about beyond Aliana-- not her hypothetical friends, not their children, not their grand-children. (Notably, Aliana would
not do the same for Rey.)
It's pure egocentrism. Nobody else in the story actually exists except for the author's pet; everybody else is literally there to serve some purpose to Aliana.
Maybe a writing class could provide the outline to not doing this, but it wouldn't matter, because Lily isn't capable of it. She refuses to acknowledge that other people have their own thoughts and experiences, which is why all the 'good characters' all instantly agree with Aliana and nobody else is ever defined by their past and backstories. She
can't imagine it. She
can't sympathize with other people that aren't her, she
can't get in somebody else's head and think 'what would this be like?' Even when she writes Aliana she can't actually imagine what it's like to have been through what she's been through; all of Aliana's emotional moments are just caricatures of better stories, ultimately ringing hollow... except for the anger behind her training being interrupted.
And no amount of writing classes can teach you basic human empathy.
