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nubianamyHaving a large back catalog of fic means I wake up each morning to a kudos post from AO3. Most of my stuff doesn't get read anymore (for so many reasons, but mostly because the fandom jumped the shark long ago) but there are a few things I get kudos on regularly, if not daily. Every now and then, my stand-alone pieces get read, and these are notable days. I'm proud of myself for venturing into new fandoms with these stories, because it represents a ton of research to get familiar with them enough to feel willing to put myself out there. One of these stories is the backstory I developed for Finn, then known as FN-2187, for my plotted-but-mostly-not-written Finn/Poe story.
After watching Episode VII The Force Awakens and falling in love with this pairing, I wanted to write a response fic, but I also wanted it to be canon compliant. That meant I would have to do some reading about the characters and their backstories. Wow, is there a lot of source material in the Star Wars universe! There are actual canon novels about Finn and Poe and Rey's history, and the most useful one for me was Before the Awakening. It provided just enough information about Poe's family, as well as Finn's fire-team and the structure of stormtroopers' lives. Also, because TFA was still only available in theaters, I read the novelization of the movie and took lots of notes on their interactions.
Rereading Finn's backstory a few years after writing it, I'd forgotten a lot of the details, but I'm still really proud of this story. It was fascinating to attempt to write a romance around the trappings of a society where people seldom touch, where emotions and physical responses are managed with chemistry, and where individualism is strongly discouraged. I think the following story I wrote from Poe's point of view was a more engaging, better-crafted story, but I'm more proud of this one because it was such a stretch for me.
After watching Episode VII The Force Awakens and falling in love with this pairing, I wanted to write a response fic, but I also wanted it to be canon compliant. That meant I would have to do some reading about the characters and their backstories. Wow, is there a lot of source material in the Star Wars universe! There are actual canon novels about Finn and Poe and Rey's history, and the most useful one for me was Before the Awakening. It provided just enough information about Poe's family, as well as Finn's fire-team and the structure of stormtroopers' lives. Also, because TFA was still only available in theaters, I read the novelization of the movie and took lots of notes on their interactions.
Rereading Finn's backstory a few years after writing it, I'd forgotten a lot of the details, but I'm still really proud of this story. It was fascinating to attempt to write a romance around the trappings of a society where people seldom touch, where emotions and physical responses are managed with chemistry, and where individualism is strongly discouraged. I think the following story I wrote from Poe's point of view was a more engaging, better-crafted story, but I'm more proud of this one because it was such a stretch for me.
