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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Mod!Challenge Representing the Underrepresented: A Special Mod-Challenge

Discussion in 'Fan Fiction and Writing Resource' started by Briannakin , May 19, 2018.

  1. Cowgirl Jedi 1701

    Cowgirl Jedi 1701 Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Dec 21, 2016
    She's not reluctant to speak plainly about it. That's the trouble. Once free, she chooses to fight back by speaking out.
     
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  2. mavjade

    mavjade Former Manager star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Sep 10, 2005
    What do you feel is currently underrepresented (or mis-represented) by mainstream media? Do you write fanfics to fill in this place?

    Like Bri, there are a ton of things I think are underrepresented or misrepresented in media. I purposely try to support things that are more diverse and show that life is lived in many different ways, from many different perspectives because I think it's important. So my list won't at all be even close to the things I think are misrepresented, but just a few things I want to touch on that have had a more personal impact. (And some have already been mentioned but I'm going to again.)

    LBGTQ+ - Every bit of this acronym could be a dissertation, but I'm going to focus on the part that has the most impact on my life. Bisexual people are often represented as sexually promiscuous or even greedy, but in the same token you often don't see the bi specific discrimination that comes from all sides: "You're just trying to hide that you are gay", "How can you be Bi when you are in a relationship with a..." etc.

    I have written a bi character, though I didn't set out to write him as bi because I felt it needed to be filled in, at least not consciously. He told me that was what he is and I went with it. It felt right.



    Women - in general but I want to say specifically women in positions of power/who are assertive. They are often portrayed as a *****, or too emotional to do the job and need a man to come rescue them. I mean this is what happens in real life too and I think that's because, in part, which how the media shows it.

    I try to write women who are realistic, can do anything they set their minds, but I do mostly gravitate toward male characters. I don't know if this is because I'm so conditioned by the media to prefer them, but it's something I need to work on personally.



    This is really specific to the U.S., so apologies: People from Appalachia who are often portrayed as unintelligent, uncultured, incestuous, and adverse to all modern things.They are often used as the butt of a joke when you need someone who is an idiot. I've literally had people say to me "but you wear shoes!" when I say I'm from West Virginia. Not to mention that I speak well, and didn't marry my brother or a cousin. I wish I was kidding. But this is the impression people get from media.

    I've never written fic that has any impact on this topic because most media doesn't use Appalachia as a basis for anything unless they want to make it a joke. Though it occurs to me there have been a few opportunities outside of Star Wars, and I could probably work it into a SW fic too.





    I agree with this! I feel like a lot of times people with learning disabilities are shown to be unintelligent, when a lot of people with learning disabilities are very intelligent. I also feel like dyslexia is what is mostly shown, which is pretty common so I have no issues with that, but there are a lot of others as well.

    It's true there is a lot of judgement and I like that you are planning on writing something about it. Homelessness also crosses with a lot of mental illness which is often misrepresented itself. People become homeless for a lot of different reasons, and the people saying "just get a job" aren't helping anyone.
     
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  3. Sith-I-5

    Sith-I-5 Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 14, 2002
    My thoughts have been working on a cross-dressing Rebel on Hoth, either crewing Echo Station 3-T-A, or the ion cannon.

    However, if someone can direct me towards a glossary of Appalachian words and phrases, I may tackle an A-Team where the A stands for that region, not "army".
     
    Last edited: May 25, 2018
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  4. mavjade

    mavjade Former Manager star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Sep 10, 2005
    Most glossaries I can find fall right into the misrepresentation and are more of the 'make fun of the hillbillies' types. Also, for the most part it's more of a dialect thing rather than words/phrases themselves, though there are certainly those too. "Ya'll" is quite common (though that's also a southern thing), hollow (pronounced hall-er) which is a place, "fixin" as in getting ready (I'm fixin to go to the store). There's a lot of putting "the" into phrases where they don't usually appear (It's pourin' the rain), and "a" in front of words (I'm gonna keep on a-goin' down the road.)
    The Wiki Appalachian English explains it pretty well.
    There's also a pretty good interactive documentary called Hollow that's about the county next to the one where I grew up.
     
    Last edited: May 26, 2018
  5. divapilot

    divapilot Force Ghost star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 30, 2005
    I have seen a lot of people struggle with anxiety issues. Often the anxiety issues are whitewashed as the character being 'kooky"or having these weirdo habits. Anxiety is a lot more subtle than that. I would love to see a look at a Force sensitive child who is intellectually impaired. (Someone wrote something along those lines once, iirc.) Roughly 20% of our student population is special needs, yet they are rarely portrayed. The only times I can think of where Downs' Syndrome students were realistically portrayed.are in Glee, and there was another show (My So-Called Life, I think?) where the main character's brother had Downs Syndrome.

    Many people suffer with chronic pain. You never see that in the media, unless the pain is associated with another injury or with a specific disease. But there are lots of people who struggle to make it every single day with Lyme disease or rheumatoid arthritis other conditions that cause constant pain.

    I do think that the portrayal of autism is misrepresented in movies and tv. I think that it's always seen as this goofy geek thing that super smart male physicists have. But women can be autistic, and not every autistic is going to be a highly successful scientist. And it isn't always a fun time.
    I did in fact write a fanfic character (two, in fact) to explore the idea of mental health issues. One was someone who was suffering from undiagnosed long-term depression, and the other was dealing with generalized anxiety. And I wrote Jacen Solo as dealing with PTSD as opposed to just being sithy.

    I like the idea that in canon, Kanan lost his sight and he did not miraculously regain it. He learned to deal with life as a blind person. I agree with what @Briannakin said about shows featuring people with disabilities and the plot of the show is how they get cured. I respect Rebels for not going that way, and for having Kanan's life be as fulfilling and valuable after his blindness as it had been before his blindness.
     
    Last edited: May 26, 2018
  6. WarmNyota_SweetAyesha

    WarmNyota_SweetAyesha Chosen One star 8

    Registered:
    Aug 31, 2004
    Hmmm. Wonderful points @divapilot -- true points in general, for sure. @};- In SW, I think everyday, even hard-hitting chronic things like depression/physical pain is something authors shy away from, besides the probabl squicky issues [face_thinking] is they feel like in an advanced society like prevails on many worlds in the GFFA, such conditions would hopefully! be rare. Which, of course, would make their occurrence even harder to deal with. :p
     
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  7. divapilot

    divapilot Force Ghost star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 30, 2005
    True; I was thinking more in the lines of what is presented in our own current media. When you do see someone with chronic pain, it's Dr. House, who deals with it by becoming a pill addict and being miserable to everyone. And depression sometimes runs a dangerous risk of being romanticized, as if being suicidal is somehow darkly glamorous.
    In the GFFA I agree chronic pain would probably not realistically exist due to advances in palliative care. But there would probably be some cultures that would reject medication for cultural reasons, or would not have access to it.
    Depression, though, I think would still be around, although they may have better resources for treating it. You can function pretty well with depression and nobody knows that you're going through it, Ditto for functional drug addicts/alcoholics. People can be very clever about presenting one face in public and another in private.
     
    Last edited: May 26, 2018
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  8. Raissa Baiard

    Raissa Baiard FFoF Artist Extraordinaire star 4 VIP - Game Host

    Registered:
    Nov 22, 1999
    Organ transplantation is horribly misrepresented in popular media; it’s too often a plot device instead of portrayed anything like realistically. If it’s not horror stories about black market organs (not really possible due to the narrow window an organ can survive after being removed from the body and a rigorous matching process to minimize rejection), it’s “heartwarming” stories about someone taking on the characteristics of their organ donor (no. Doesn’t happen. Plz stahp already with this trope.) However, it’s not really something I can bring to fanfic, because in a society that can clone an entire person or replace a limb with a cybernetic alternative, they no doubt have ways to replace a failing organ that don’t involve transplant. I have, however, used aspects of my experience growing up with heart defects in my stories; my recent story where a charceter remembers being teased for looking different is based on something that happened to me in first grade.
     
  9. Briannakin

    Briannakin Former Manager star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Feb 25, 2010
    Wow. So many things have been brought up here that I totally didn't think of, but that I totally agree are under/mis-represented in media. Agism in Hollywood, especially with women, is just horrible. An entire dissertation could be written on any of these things alone.

    I want to read this because that is just so much better and makes much more sense than what happened. It always bothered me that we rarely got to see the aftermath impact all these horrible events (IE the Vong war) had on characters.

    Yeah, I have yet to finish Rebels, but I really respect how his blindness was handled and not cured (... more on that below).

    This brings up something I kinda would like to discuss in this thread. Sure the GFFA is more medically advanced, but I think we can still write it with limitations and still deal with issues like chronic pain in fics (and not have to do any write-arounds). I think certain profic writers took the medical advancements and went a little too far with them as an excuse to torture and bring the characters to the brink of death (*cough* Crucible... and well Apocalypse... pretty much all of NJO) only to have them come back perfectly healthy and fit enough to save the day again in the next book. I once had a character (a Skywalker) with a brain injury and someone said it wasn't realistic because we see Mara Jade getting some sort of brain injury healed in one of the books. But Luke still had scars after his bacta bath in ESB, Vader still complained about pain and the limitations of his suit (in Rise of Darth Vader). So I think we can write characters with earth-diseases or suffering long-term affects from injuries or made-up GFFA. As we all know, my muse has been rather earth-based for the past few years and I am loving how I can write characters with disabilities and not be expected to "cure" them by the end of the fic, but I think that should be the cade for GFFA fics as well.


    Also. another thing I think is misrepresented in media: pregnancies, specifically I think certain aspects, like the mental and physical aftereffects are underrepresented. I've never been pregnant but two of my aunts suffered from Post-Partum Depression and I witnessed one go through it two times. Media represents having a baby as this wonderful, magical experience and that puts so much pressure on women to be happy when they feel miserable, both mentally and physically. I think of the pics of the Duchess of Cambridge coming out of the hospital. Sure, some women have great pregnancies and postpartum, but so many other women don't.
     
    Last edited: May 26, 2018
  10. Mira Grau

    Mira Grau Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    May 11, 2016
    That would interested me as well. I tried to get a little bit of that in my Jacen story but its more about him dealing with his guilt, self-loathing and inner darkness.
     
    Last edited: May 26, 2018
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  11. WarmNyota_SweetAyesha

    WarmNyota_SweetAyesha Chosen One star 8

    Registered:
    Aug 31, 2004
    @Briannakin -- @};- @};- That is a brill! idea and spawned a bunny or two, about dealing/coping with pregnancy's aftermath, and how their clueless but well-meaning spouse :oops: wants to "help". [face_thinking] Especially for highly competent and usually resilient women like Leia or Mara [face_love]
     
    Last edited: May 26, 2018
  12. Sith-I-5

    Sith-I-5 Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 14, 2002
    I think some writers, even pro-fic ones, have difficulty pausing their narrative flow to mention, or work in, issues that would be constant and ever-present, like chronic pain, or depression perhaps, throughout their stories.

    I know two detective series, one Russian-based, one US-based, where the main protagonist has an artificial leg, but it or the pain from it, does not get mentioned that often within a book. With the US one, when he gets up in the morning, he has to massage the stump, put a sock over it, insert it into the artificial leg, then it never gets mentioned again, unless another character makes reference to a "peg-leg lieutenant". And that is from a pro-fic writer.

    What about Princess Leia? Between movie tie-in novels and the EU, how many books has she been in? How often, as in what percentage of the time, do we see any emotional fall out from being forced to watch her planet explode?

    That fanfic here, of her observing an anniversary with candles beneath the Hoth base, was a way better reference than anything offered by professional writers.
     
    Last edited: May 26, 2018
  13. Raissa Baiard

    Raissa Baiard FFoF Artist Extraordinaire star 4 VIP - Game Host

    Registered:
    Nov 22, 1999
    This.For some of us pregnancy is a time of doubt and uncertainty as much as it is happiness.

    I'm dealing with some of these issues in the story I'm writing about Hera's pregnancy (which I really need to get back to). She's got all-day morning sickness and she's dealing with a lot of emotions, wondering if she'll be a good mother, if she'll love her child like she should--fears that are actually pretty common to pregnant women, but no one really talks about. So when they happen to you, you feel like the Most Horrible Person Ever, because what kind of woman wonders whether she'll love her own child? I'm also considering working in some of my experiences with having a highly monitored, higher-risk pregnancy--even when everything's going fine, there's always the fear in the back of your mind that something could happen--and maybe even post-partum depression. (I literally only felt happy when I was holding my baby, yet my husband didn't realize anything was wrong with me.) Of course that's a very long ways down the road in the story, so we'll see how things work out...

    @Sith-I-5 That's a great point about Leia and the emotional fallout of the destruction of Alderaan. I think there's even a meme of her with Luke something like "Oh, let me comfort you over the death of your martial arts instructor now that my whole planet is gone." :p
     
  14. Briannakin

    Briannakin Former Manager star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Feb 25, 2010
    Sith - I agree, some writers don't pause to deal with physical and/or emotional fallout after trauma. I don't expect every author to - sometimes the narrative is more important - but having more recognize those issues would be appreciated. I totally agree with your example of Princess Leia and the emotional fallout rarely being mentioned in the profic. Fanfic does allow for those pauses, which I enjoy reading and writing.

    I totally understand this, and I really look forward to you (hopefully) taking these things on in a fic. I know for my aunt, she couldn't even hold her second son, she was so depressed and she thought that she didn't want him. Thankfully my mother was around to help out. Once my aunt got help and got on medication, things were better, but there's a lot of stigma "what kind of mother doesn't love being pregnant and babies".

    For my mom, this actually got pretty dangerous. My former-step-father is not a nice guy all around, but after she had my TWIN brothers, she was pretty tired and emotional (understandably - it wasn't PPD but the woman had just given birth), yet he got so upset with her (to the point of threatening her) when she wasn't all happy to greet his family in the hospital room after her C-Section.
     
  15. Sith-I-5

    Sith-I-5 Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 14, 2002
    Trying to rally my thoughts regarding pregnancy, segued onto forced marriages: there may still be generations alive who suffered the "shotgun wedding", but I know within the Asian community, and I am sorry if this offends Americans, but in Britain, "Asian" refers to the people of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh; nothing to do with China.

    But anyway, arranged marriage is still a thing. My friends put a brave face on things, or maybe they really don't mind, and are protecting the rest of us; but to lose your hopefully carefree, single lifestyle, because other people, parents, an aunt, decide on your behalf that you need to get married to this particular girl or boy.

    One friend, happily married now, had one relationship called off after several months by the girl's mother because some ******* stars did not align.

    On the matter of being under-represented in mainstream Western media; it probably appears a lot in theirs (eg. Bollywood), but there is so much singing and dancing, that I wouldn't know, even if they were singing in English - I don't do singing in films [face_not_talking], thanks to hearing that in later trailers, I backed out of watching The Lego Batman Movie, so fast, I probably ran over a porg. I was excitement dialled to eleven till that point. :(

    Although, this has not happened to anyone I know, far as I know; I am aware that some young'uns - teenage, early Twenties - go on holiday with parents back to the home country, only to be told after the plane lands, that this is in fact a wedding trip, you are going to be visiting marriage bureaus, to see if there is anyone you like...actually, now I remember, that has happened to a colleague. He does seem fine with it, now. He wasn't overly chuffed at the time.

    Me: "Welcome back! How was your holiday!"

    Him: "Yeah...I'm married now."

    "REALLY?! You never said anything."

    "Turns out it wasn't a holiday..."
     
    Last edited: Aug 10, 2018
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  16. Findswoman

    Findswoman Fanfic and Pancakes and Waffles Mod (in Pink) star 5 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Feb 27, 2014
    @Sith-I-5 and @Raissa Baiard , your points about Leia's emotional fallout after the destruction of her homeworld have put a story idea in my mind, though I’m still not quite sure it would be the sort of thing this challenge is looking for. Maybe I’ll write it first and then see. ;)

    And I-5, I want to say @Mira_Jade was the author of the story you mentioned with the candle memorial ceremony, which I agree was an absolutely beautiful and fitting tribute. =D=
     
    Last edited: Jul 13, 2018
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  17. mavjade

    mavjade Former Manager star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Sep 10, 2005
    Yes. That's one of my biggest peeves with the show 13 Reasons Why (apologies to anyone who liked it.) To be fair, I didn't watch the whole thing, but it was because I couldn't. I just couldn't do it. I can stomach quite a lot, but after having treated so many people who have attempted suicide (which is the thing at work that really gets to me) and had my own issues in the past of not being suicidal but not caring if I lived or died, watching what seemed like making suicide cool made me want to throw up. It terrifies me that even one kid watches it and thinks, "I'd like to do that."

    I think I've talked about this before, but this is a place where I get stuck all the time. The adage write what you know, well what I know are medical things. And I get so bogged down in "well they'd have a cure for that" or "that wouldn't be very serious with their tech" I end up talking myself out of writing all together. When I see other people doing it, I don't think that way, just for myself. But there would certainly be medical issues that couldn't be cured, or they didn't have the tech to fix.

    That's a huge peeve of mine as well. I know a show that kinda got things right, but I'm going to save further info about it for a future discussion topic so I don't want to start it here. I just wanted to say how that drives me nuts too.
     
  18. Ewok Poet

    Ewok Poet Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 31, 2014
    I can't even describe how much I HATE this. :mad::mad::mad:

    I wanted to die, literally no longer exist, from July to October 2017, I could barely move, it was only every next month that I was aware of how much the previous one sucked. You're blocked, you either can't eat or overeat, you either can't sleep or you oversleep. You either don't want to socialise, or you don't have the will to, yet you desperately miss people. It's like the whole world is black.

    So, if people who didn't live it would just steer away from it...that would be nice. I can't order anybody what to do, but this is tricky, tricky stuff to portray. :vader:

    "You think this torment is romantic // but it's not, except to you..."
    - Emilie Autumn, "Swallow"

    This sums my past situation perfectly.

    I was advised to watch that one. Now I won't. O_O Yikes.

    I was also told NOT to watch "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend".

    It happens a lot here, too. Basically, wedlocks. One wild night = no abortion = unwanted marriage. I have friends who did this and wanted to get away, as well as some who did it ON PURPOSE.

    [face_rofl][face_rofl][face_rofl]

    They do...LOVE CURES EVERYTHING. :rolleyes:

    And now I have to bend over the loo. Hate that trope.

    Paging @gaarastar58.

    Ewww. :mad:


    My Anjie is slightly Force-sensitive and a bit...well, weird.

    No, not My So-Called Life. Angela's younger sister, Danielle, is - in fact - the sanest person in the Chase family.

    I remember there having been a character who had a brother with Down Syndrome residing in a special care unit, in the Australian teen soap Heart Break High.
     
    Last edited: May 28, 2018
  19. CaraJinn

    CaraJinn Jedi Knight star 3

    Registered:
    Jan 8, 2018
    Agreed. I spent, literally 4 months in deep depression some years ago and that was a very dark place to be. It began in June when my boy friend left me, but then it escalated to a full scale depression. I cried basically every evening from June until October. Then my doctor put me on antidepressiva which worked wonders in that respect that I stopped crying, but through the entire winter I didn't go out except going to work and into the groceries store on my way home. I barely managed to find energy enough to take a shower, and I don't believe I washed the floor for 2-3 months.

    And for the record - almost 3 years after the depression started, i suddenly realized that I had begun forgetting taking the pills. I reduced them very slowly over a period of 2 months and since then depression has been all gone. It's...hmmm...11 years since that happened.
     
  20. Ewok Poet

    Ewok Poet Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 31, 2014
    That was a like of sympathy. I'm so, so sorry that this happened. At the same time, it's amazing that you could work!

    And unlike you, I could not cry at all. I believe that I have cried only 2-3 times since, but I can display other emotions. My depression was caused by a misdiagnosis of a far worse illness and forcing antipsychotics on me for no reason. Been on antidepressives since September, the doctor plans to wean me off by the end of the year, though I plan to change her, I wrote in the social thread about how horrible she is.

    ...

    Thinking about my plot bunnies, I would like to write about something that has not been mentioned here, yet. Know when you're on the "wrong" side of a conflict? There is this "collective fault" and you're an acceptable target, for reasons I cannot quite fathom. I have experienced this on my own skin after the 1990s and it's a horrible thing, especially when they do it to a young person who had no voting rights whenever the wrong thing had occurred. So, I am going to write about that and the emotional fallout the character(s) are experiencing because of it.

    Does it even make sense?
     
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  21. Sith-I-5

    Sith-I-5 Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 14, 2002
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  22. Lady_Misty

    Lady_Misty Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 21, 2007
    Maybe there's more than I think but it always bothers me when in entertainment the step-parent is evil or overly cruel to their stepchildren.

    My parents were married before and had children with their ex spouse and (until my Dad's ex mother-in-law pulled a lot of crap) raised the other's children as if they were their own (my Dad did make some mistakes with my brother Harley that really upset my Mom but she forgave him and moved on) and for years Raquel would tell people her last name was my Dad's last name because she considered him to be her Father instead of her biological Father (of course he did kick Mom out while she was pregnant with Raquel and wasn't part of her life). She once shared with us when Mom picked her up from school because she was out doing errands and decided to give Raquel a ride home from school (or maybe we were going somewhere, I can't remember) that her classmates were really confused when the Office announced to a 'Raquel Smith' that her ride was here to pick her up and they were asking who 'Raquel Smith' was because the only 'Raquel' they knew was 'Raquel Jones' then they saw her get up and get ready to leave.

    My Dad considers Harley and Raquel his. it meant a lot to Raquel when Ryan tried to cause some trouble at Grams's funeral by asking Dad 'how many kids do you have? Ten?' And Dad said 'I have twelve' and Ryan said something about not really having twelve children and Dad reaffirmed 'I have twelve children'. Raquel was in tears because it meant so much to her to hear Dad counted her and Harley as his and was willing to shut his own son down and not allow him to cause strife.



    I don't know about pregnancy but I do know from listening to my Mom that you're going to be sore and might tear down there. She tore at least once, was cut eight times, I think, one time she tore she hadn't been cut. She left the hospital early, the day of giving, only once with Jean, I think, and swore never again because it hurt too much to sit down even with the cushion they sent home with her; she usually stayed two days before going home.


    Throwing this out for something for people to consider: if you wanted to do a character that lost a limb or was born without one and wanted to explore it you could have them be part of a group that rejects cybernetic replacements as unnatural or feels that you're not really replacing what's lost because it's just a pale, unnatural replacement for what was lost/missing or they want to make a point that you don't have to have replacements to have a normal life.


    I left a review for a fan fic where i commented that it seems that Leia is left a lot to suffer alone.

    She had no one to comfort her for Alderaan's destruction or absolve her of the guilt she might have felt (maybe someone did) she's unceremoniously told she's the daughter of Darth Vader, the man that tortured her twice and restrained her as Alderaan was destroyed and responsible for enforcing the Emperor's Will throughout the galaxy then left to deal with the revelation all on her own and afraid to share the knowledge with the man she loved. Then she gets a respite for an unknown period of time with only spousal arguments to mar her marriage then her and Luke's secret is unceremoniously exposed for all the galaxy to hear by someone she trusted, those she thought were her friends abandon her because she is now 'poison' and her career is in tatters then she learns that her son turned against Luke, destroyed his Jedi Academy and ran off to join her enemies, Luke takes off for parts unknown and Han leaves her. She's alone for several years before reuniting with Han and she probably feels guilt for his death and Luke refused to come back himself to help her.

    She's told that she's always been strong but there's only so much someone can take before they are crushed by the lack of true support.

    Leia deserves a medal and a long, long vacation.
     
  23. Lady_Misty

    Lady_Misty Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 21, 2007
    I didn't think I would write something but I was hit with inspiration so for approval the fic is behind the tag. Let me know if I should make some adjustments.

    Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



    My heart pounds in my chest and my breathing increases as I approach the Imperial Checkpoint. I have no reason to fear the masked Stormtroopers, I haven’t done anything illegal in my life, well that’s a lie: I didn’t update my identification for nearly nine months but I was waiting to move before I updated it so I wouldn’t have to do it twice.


    “Where are you going?” the Squad Leader asks me.


    “I’m going to visit my family in Denmac, my sister’s leaving for an off-world school in two weeks and since I don’t when I’ll see her again I want to spend time with her.” I answered.


    “Let me see your identification.” The Squad Leader states.


    My hands thankfully aren’t shaking as reach for my ID and stay firm as I hand it to be authenticated.


    The wait seems to drag for hours and unrealistic scenarios race through my mind: it’s been done incorrectly, someone stole my identity and is using it to commit crimes or worse a Rebel.


    “Thank you for your patience Mrs. Kilton, you may be on your way.” The Squad Leader says, ending my unrealistic musings, as he hands me back my ID.


    “Thank you, Sir,” I mumble as I slip it back into my bag.


    “Move along, move along,” he says, gesturing me onward.


    I do as ordered and breathe a sigh of relief when the checkpoint disappears from my rearview mirror.


    “You see, there was nothing to worry about, you worry to much.” I mutter to myself as I continue towards my parents’ house.


    It hits me five minutes further down the road that I will have to pass through the checkpoint again to return home.


    Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
     
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  24. mavjade

    mavjade Former Manager star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Sep 10, 2005
    EP - that makes perfect sense and it sounds like it will be a great read!

    I know it happens, but parents can be cruel to their children too, it does seem like it's step-parents that are always the evil ones in media.
    My sister is actually my half-sister but she's never been anything other than a daughter to my mom and a sister to me. My parents pretty much raised her and for a time, her sister who had no relation to my parents at all (my family is confusing.) Families come in all different types.

    Also, you don't need approval for your fic, if you think it's something that fits in this challenge then go for it! You can post it like normal when you are ready and then put a link here in the thread. It looks great, though!
     
  25. Lady_Misty

    Lady_Misty Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 21, 2007
    It's posted!

    http://boards.theforce.net/threads/mod-challenge-checkpoint-ocs.50049385/

    I forget if someone already mentioned it but several years ago there was a DDC with a Deaf Girl and her Mother worked as a Sign Language Interpreter.

    And I was hit with inspiration while reading a RO fan fic last night to move a concept I have forward and do it differently and maybe even do the original concept and change an aspect of it.

    A group of blind warriors beating up, ahem, defending themselves from some of Saw Gerrera's Partisans looking to make them pay for killing one of their buddies. Originally I toyed with maybe a member having sight or their pilot but recently I decided that seeing that they all have varying degrees of Force Sensitivity and because they wear masks if they need to they use some form of a HUD (heads up display) to tell them who certain people are and when they're in an unfamiliar area and cutting out the sighted pilot since they have the Force and training how to use it so they can probably pilot a ship safely even if they can't see and if the ship is unfamiliar to them they have their advanced helmets/masks and the Force to help them safely navigate the ship and controls; if I'm wrong in my logic please point it out so I can do them justice.
     
    mavjade and Kahara like this.