- Joined
- Jan 19, 2020
Funny thing is, I think Luke might be the best written character in TSR? That's mostly based on samples from the chapters rather than a dedicated reading, but as stated, yeah. He's cautious but polite. He asks legitimate questions. He treats Aliana with the dignity and respect that any person deserves without bowing down and kissing her butt like the 'good characters' are supposed to. Under the assumption he fled to this remote planet to become an angry hermit, he's pretty chill when confronting Aliana and Rey. I dare say Lily treats him with more respect than the movie does, interpreting him as a broken, haunted man instead of a comically bitter hermit.
I'm also certain this is unintentional, and this is a pretty funny consistency in Lily's writing. The character's we're supposed to like are inconsistent, smarmy shitheads who everybody good on the planet bows down to and the ones we're supposed to hate -- identified by how they don't worship her characters -- wind up being the most reasonable, understandable, and relatable. Leia is badly written but she's the only person in the Resistance that makes a lick of sense. Luke is supposed to be a mom-killer and potential child murderer but he's very mellow and reasonable. Over in Poke-Madhouse we don't see enough of characters outside of the compound, but Dr. Ponytail is the only person who acts like a human being in that train wreck and I want her to succeed in suing Lily's ass off for ruining the Silph Co. experiment to revitalize a near-extinct species.
I think the only character she's 'succeeded' at making unlikeable intentionally is Anevay's mother.
Get bent, Lily.
- -
The person who was previously reading through TSR got to this point and it strikes me all over again that, once more, this fic was supposed to be about Rey escaping a 'toxic relationship' and finding love and happiness with somebody else, but instead it's all about ME ME ME ME Aliana. Rey is supposed to be the one who wanted to find Luke. As I recall, she kept at him, demanding he listen to her and train her. I'm not big on Rey a character but at least she had a drive and determination.
Instead, it's all Aliana. Rey isn't just flabbergasted or star-struck, she is completely silent through the whole 'negotiation' at the start. Aliana is the one who calls out to Luke. When he leaves, Rey doesn't object, Aliana just keeps going. Rey is rooted to the spot while Aliana completely consumes the scene, and the follow-up isn't Luke being intrigued by the girl who wants to be a Jedi, it's him finding Aliana and asking her for an exposition dump.
Rey has been utterly stripped of her agency throughout this story, and it's intentional. It's part of Lily's character interpretation of Rey. She has said in Asks that Rey's motivation boils down to 'left Jakku, no more thoughts'. Lily did this thing when they went to see Maz where Rey was really taken aback by a planet being so green and teeming with life, and she asks Aliana if they can go visit an ocean planet afterwards. If Rey's motivation was to expand her horizons and really see all the galaxy, I could at least get behind her as somebody who's sheltered and who has the joie de vivre to want to explore. But instead she's literally boiled down to 'be with Aliana', 'make a life with Aliana', 'settle down with Aliana', 'hang off Aliana like a keychain'.
I know this whole story is just 'okay but what if I was in Star Wars and I was a super cool Sith Lord and I had all the best stuff and Rey loved me and I was so cool you guys', but again again again, we're dealing with somebody who is approaching thirty and claims that this is better than canon, and who's writing like a fourteen year old who just learned about fanfiction.
And boy do I mean writing like a fourteen year old.
- -
Actually, I would have read the sentence "She honestly could not get over how pleasant the cloak smelled" and then cut off all contact. Holy shit.
It would be hyperbole to say that was the worst sentence I ever read, or the worst paragraph, but it's up there. I've said before that Lily's writing is 'competent', structurally, compared to a lot of other fanfiction out there, but it hits this kind of... uncanny valley of the English language. It's mostly correct, but there's something off about it, and the more you actually read, the more it becomes clear.
She's constantly using bad similes. She's constantly reiterating the point. She's constantly explaining something that should be evident from expression. She used the phrase 'could only be described as'. She fills her sentences with unnecessary verbiage. She repeats herself multiple times in a row. She reiterates the point excessively. That fucking 'sniff the cloak' paragraph is nine sentences long and she throws in "she honestly could not get over it", like apparently she might have been lying about it being pleasant? We had to be told 'honestly'? That's a colloquialism for forum discussions, not prose.
(Also, rose water and cinnamon? Yick.)
It's amateurish in a way where you would think the person is young and trying too hard. You want to make a point about the cloak because it seems like it's romantic? Better ram it down the audience's throat until they vomit.
There's just layers of bad, always made worse by how Lily props it up. I don't really recommend looking at the TVTropes for TSR, but if you do, you'll see that she definitely thinks her own farts smell like rose water and cinnamon.
I'm also certain this is unintentional, and this is a pretty funny consistency in Lily's writing. The character's we're supposed to like are inconsistent, smarmy shitheads who everybody good on the planet bows down to and the ones we're supposed to hate -- identified by how they don't worship her characters -- wind up being the most reasonable, understandable, and relatable. Leia is badly written but she's the only person in the Resistance that makes a lick of sense. Luke is supposed to be a mom-killer and potential child murderer but he's very mellow and reasonable. Over in Poke-Madhouse we don't see enough of characters outside of the compound, but Dr. Ponytail is the only person who acts like a human being in that train wreck and I want her to succeed in suing Lily's ass off for ruining the Silph Co. experiment to revitalize a near-extinct species.
I think the only character she's 'succeeded' at making unlikeable intentionally is Anevay's mother.
"She was too beautiful to stay mad at."Another cut for pacing reasons, have Rey's current feelings about Aliana.
No comment.
Get bent, Lily.
- -
The person who was previously reading through TSR got to this point and it strikes me all over again that, once more, this fic was supposed to be about Rey escaping a 'toxic relationship' and finding love and happiness with somebody else, but instead it's all about ME ME ME ME Aliana. Rey is supposed to be the one who wanted to find Luke. As I recall, she kept at him, demanding he listen to her and train her. I'm not big on Rey a character but at least she had a drive and determination.
Instead, it's all Aliana. Rey isn't just flabbergasted or star-struck, she is completely silent through the whole 'negotiation' at the start. Aliana is the one who calls out to Luke. When he leaves, Rey doesn't object, Aliana just keeps going. Rey is rooted to the spot while Aliana completely consumes the scene, and the follow-up isn't Luke being intrigued by the girl who wants to be a Jedi, it's him finding Aliana and asking her for an exposition dump.
Rey has been utterly stripped of her agency throughout this story, and it's intentional. It's part of Lily's character interpretation of Rey. She has said in Asks that Rey's motivation boils down to 'left Jakku, no more thoughts'. Lily did this thing when they went to see Maz where Rey was really taken aback by a planet being so green and teeming with life, and she asks Aliana if they can go visit an ocean planet afterwards. If Rey's motivation was to expand her horizons and really see all the galaxy, I could at least get behind her as somebody who's sheltered and who has the joie de vivre to want to explore. But instead she's literally boiled down to 'be with Aliana', 'make a life with Aliana', 'settle down with Aliana', 'hang off Aliana like a keychain'.
I know this whole story is just 'okay but what if I was in Star Wars and I was a super cool Sith Lord and I had all the best stuff and Rey loved me and I was so cool you guys', but again again again, we're dealing with somebody who is approaching thirty and claims that this is better than canon, and who's writing like a fourteen year old who just learned about fanfiction.
And boy do I mean writing like a fourteen year old.
- -
I'm actually going to give Mikaila the benefit of the doubt here. If somebody had handed me a dense paragraph that said 'Rey smelled a cloak' twelve different ways, my eyes would have glossed over, too.
Actually, I would have read the sentence "She honestly could not get over how pleasant the cloak smelled" and then cut off all contact. Holy shit.
It would be hyperbole to say that was the worst sentence I ever read, or the worst paragraph, but it's up there. I've said before that Lily's writing is 'competent', structurally, compared to a lot of other fanfiction out there, but it hits this kind of... uncanny valley of the English language. It's mostly correct, but there's something off about it, and the more you actually read, the more it becomes clear.
She's constantly using bad similes. She's constantly reiterating the point. She's constantly explaining something that should be evident from expression. She used the phrase 'could only be described as'. She fills her sentences with unnecessary verbiage. She repeats herself multiple times in a row. She reiterates the point excessively. That fucking 'sniff the cloak' paragraph is nine sentences long and she throws in "she honestly could not get over it", like apparently she might have been lying about it being pleasant? We had to be told 'honestly'? That's a colloquialism for forum discussions, not prose.
(Also, rose water and cinnamon? Yick.)
It's amateurish in a way where you would think the person is young and trying too hard. You want to make a point about the cloak because it seems like it's romantic? Better ram it down the audience's throat until they vomit.
There's just layers of bad, always made worse by how Lily props it up. I don't really recommend looking at the TVTropes for TSR, but if you do, you'll see that she definitely thinks her own farts smell like rose water and cinnamon.
