For trope_bingo
May. 2nd, 2020 08:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyofleithianTitle: When All Your Wishes Come True
Summary: A fanfiction writer gets a chance to rewrite a show that went wrong.
Prompt: Reading/Writing
The thing about the series hiatus was the simple, honest fact that it wasn’t the same. Lexi could remember when the reboot had been first announced. A fresh new direction, they’d said. A whole new adventure, featuring completely new characters, completely new planets. Things like that. Lexi could remember how excited she’d been, especially considering how shitty the novels and tie-ins had turned out to be. Unlikeable characters, just about everything. And the reboot had started out great. Then it had gone downhill in season three, after the old showrunner had left and a guy stepped in. (Some would have made the snarky comment about “men ruin everything”. Lexi wasn’t sure, but this man certainly did)
It had fallen apart. Plotlines dropped. Sexist characterization. Racist characterization. Somehow, the critics had eaten this shit up. Lexi couldn’t say she got it, especially in modern fucking times. At the age of twenty-one, she wished she did get it.
It was after her online class discussing Dracula that Lexi supposed that she would go on her Google Docs and start writing her fix-it for how the series had gone so far. Star Mage. It had been such a part of her life now that she couldn’t picture anything else.
She had gotten into it when she was nine years old. She hadn’t been able to watch it when she was five, thanks to being terrified by the battle scenes as well as the villains. It had been ironic that as she got older, she became fascinated by them. In the case of Nyris, the villain of the reboot, he’d been interesting. He’d had a surprisingly endearing sense of humor; not the Freddy Krueger type but instead the type that was snarky and wry and kind of close to Lexi’s mother’s kind of humor. God, to think that Lexi’s mother had loved watching Star Mage with her, had encouraged Lexi’s fanfiction. Don’t let anyone tell you that your fanfiction’s “less than”, her mother had said. You’re brilliant. Fearless.
There were a lot of things that Lexi missed about her deceased mother. Including sharing her fanfiction with her. Lexi had been nineteen when her mother died, and just because she wasn’t a child didn’t make it hurt any less. Lexi liked to think her mother was with her, even though she couldn’t see her, encouraging her writing...
She’d definitely encourage the shit out of this.
Lexi opened up a new file in Google Docs and began typing. Just notes for the moment.
Problems with the Star Mage 2013 reboot...
It wasn’t like it should be personal. After all, the new showrunner, Zachary Mulligan, had only written a bad set of seasons and killed off Nyris. Like villains were meant to be at the end. It wasn’t like Mulligan had killed a real person.
It didn’t stop it from feeling personal though, Lexi would say that much.
Nyris had mattered. The creators had wanted him to matter. Mulligan had talked about how much he mattered. A man who had been the result of a magic ritual to conceive a child gone wrong. A man who was capable of compassion, in between his cruelty, who people in his adoptive family had believed in. Who the dark sorceress Mirani had said was her last hope, her masterpiece.
He was supposed to matter at some point, right?
And maybe that was the worst part. Feeling like an idiot for caring.
Lexi began to type out her list of problems.
***
Planning them was extensive. There was the main character Mara’s story — rotating around Nyris like a hapless Earth around an inexplicably cruel and boring sun. (That had been another thing that had bothered Lexi. Mara had been a great, fully fleshed out character at first, before Mulligan had decided to make her into Harley Quinn without the acknowledgment that what happened to her was fucked up. And Mulligan had decided to strip Nyris of everything that made him interesting. It wasn’t even pandering to the Mara/Nyris shippers, because he did it badly. At least the Mara/Nyris shippers actually seemed to give a fuck about both characters even if the ship wasn’t Lexi’s cuppa) There was how Nyris had inexplicably gotten the nothing’s-his-fault treatment, revealing that his adoptive father had somehow framed him for burning down the Academy that Nyris was going to because he was “jealous” of Nyris. There was everything else. Lexi supposed the best way to do things was go back to the start.
How to fix Nyris/Veran’s backstory:
+ Obviously change the Darius reveal. Like, REALLY?! REALLY, ZM, REALLY?!?!
***
It was after one particularly draining class that Lexi flopped back on her bed and started writing. Setting up Mirani.
It had been months since one had seen a surviving Dark Mage of the old Alliance alone in deep space...
Not a bad opening line. Not Dickens, but Lexi didn’t have to be. Not really. No one was Dickens on their first try, not even Dickens. She wrote, and it was like every word was just coming together.
Lexi wrote. She typed and typed, and somehow it felt right.
***
The chapter took a while, but it finished, and Lexi was able to post it on the Secret Archive. Just recently launched, an alternative to other fanfiction sites. She had mostly been posting little ficlets trying to do some missing scenes exploration, and this was her first actual WIP. She couldn’t help but feel at least a twinge of excitement despite herself; here she was, her first WIP for this fandom, ever!
It was while she was polishing up, adding tags here and there and making sure everything looked right, that she noticed a strange checkbox underneath the comment moderation checkbox: MAKE CANON?
Lexi sighed. At this rate, she’d welcome making her bit of nonsense canon. Just to make things right...
She clicked it. Maybe it was a joke. Maybe...
It was after hitting SUBMIT that Lexi felt the house start shaking around her.
***
She woke up. Her phone, her old phone, with the Star Mage case was in her hand. How? Lexi had had to replace it with a teal case in 2019, after it had gotten cracked too much. And the date on her phone was January 1st, 2018. How...?
Even scanning the Internet didn’t answer her questions. Somehow, everything she’d written in the first chapter had not only come true, but stuff in her notes as well. Nyris and Isaac the bounty hunter being married, and Isaac trying to save his husband — praised for the flashbacks showing their chemistry. Mara and Daniel, the former operative for Mirani, getting together.
She’d done it. All of it.
A knock on her door. “Lexi? You okay?"
Her mom’s voice.
It was all well and good for her show to be fixed, but having her mother back was an even greater gift.
“Coming,” Lexi said. “What’s for breakfast?”
“Thought I’d make pancakes. New Year’s Day and all.”
Lexi grinned. “I’m heading down.”
Everything was fixed. Now, the next step? The next step was likely to enjoy every moment of it.
Summary: A fanfiction writer gets a chance to rewrite a show that went wrong.
Prompt: Reading/Writing
The thing about the series hiatus was the simple, honest fact that it wasn’t the same. Lexi could remember when the reboot had been first announced. A fresh new direction, they’d said. A whole new adventure, featuring completely new characters, completely new planets. Things like that. Lexi could remember how excited she’d been, especially considering how shitty the novels and tie-ins had turned out to be. Unlikeable characters, just about everything. And the reboot had started out great. Then it had gone downhill in season three, after the old showrunner had left and a guy stepped in. (Some would have made the snarky comment about “men ruin everything”. Lexi wasn’t sure, but this man certainly did)
It had fallen apart. Plotlines dropped. Sexist characterization. Racist characterization. Somehow, the critics had eaten this shit up. Lexi couldn’t say she got it, especially in modern fucking times. At the age of twenty-one, she wished she did get it.
It was after her online class discussing Dracula that Lexi supposed that she would go on her Google Docs and start writing her fix-it for how the series had gone so far. Star Mage. It had been such a part of her life now that she couldn’t picture anything else.
She had gotten into it when she was nine years old. She hadn’t been able to watch it when she was five, thanks to being terrified by the battle scenes as well as the villains. It had been ironic that as she got older, she became fascinated by them. In the case of Nyris, the villain of the reboot, he’d been interesting. He’d had a surprisingly endearing sense of humor; not the Freddy Krueger type but instead the type that was snarky and wry and kind of close to Lexi’s mother’s kind of humor. God, to think that Lexi’s mother had loved watching Star Mage with her, had encouraged Lexi’s fanfiction. Don’t let anyone tell you that your fanfiction’s “less than”, her mother had said. You’re brilliant. Fearless.
There were a lot of things that Lexi missed about her deceased mother. Including sharing her fanfiction with her. Lexi had been nineteen when her mother died, and just because she wasn’t a child didn’t make it hurt any less. Lexi liked to think her mother was with her, even though she couldn’t see her, encouraging her writing...
She’d definitely encourage the shit out of this.
Lexi opened up a new file in Google Docs and began typing. Just notes for the moment.
Problems with the Star Mage 2013 reboot...
It wasn’t like it should be personal. After all, the new showrunner, Zachary Mulligan, had only written a bad set of seasons and killed off Nyris. Like villains were meant to be at the end. It wasn’t like Mulligan had killed a real person.
It didn’t stop it from feeling personal though, Lexi would say that much.
Nyris had mattered. The creators had wanted him to matter. Mulligan had talked about how much he mattered. A man who had been the result of a magic ritual to conceive a child gone wrong. A man who was capable of compassion, in between his cruelty, who people in his adoptive family had believed in. Who the dark sorceress Mirani had said was her last hope, her masterpiece.
He was supposed to matter at some point, right?
And maybe that was the worst part. Feeling like an idiot for caring.
Lexi began to type out her list of problems.
***
Planning them was extensive. There was the main character Mara’s story — rotating around Nyris like a hapless Earth around an inexplicably cruel and boring sun. (That had been another thing that had bothered Lexi. Mara had been a great, fully fleshed out character at first, before Mulligan had decided to make her into Harley Quinn without the acknowledgment that what happened to her was fucked up. And Mulligan had decided to strip Nyris of everything that made him interesting. It wasn’t even pandering to the Mara/Nyris shippers, because he did it badly. At least the Mara/Nyris shippers actually seemed to give a fuck about both characters even if the ship wasn’t Lexi’s cuppa) There was how Nyris had inexplicably gotten the nothing’s-his-fault treatment, revealing that his adoptive father had somehow framed him for burning down the Academy that Nyris was going to because he was “jealous” of Nyris. There was everything else. Lexi supposed the best way to do things was go back to the start.
How to fix Nyris/Veran’s backstory:
+ Obviously change the Darius reveal. Like, REALLY?! REALLY, ZM, REALLY?!?!
***
It was after one particularly draining class that Lexi flopped back on her bed and started writing. Setting up Mirani.
It had been months since one had seen a surviving Dark Mage of the old Alliance alone in deep space...
Not a bad opening line. Not Dickens, but Lexi didn’t have to be. Not really. No one was Dickens on their first try, not even Dickens. She wrote, and it was like every word was just coming together.
Lexi wrote. She typed and typed, and somehow it felt right.
***
The chapter took a while, but it finished, and Lexi was able to post it on the Secret Archive. Just recently launched, an alternative to other fanfiction sites. She had mostly been posting little ficlets trying to do some missing scenes exploration, and this was her first actual WIP. She couldn’t help but feel at least a twinge of excitement despite herself; here she was, her first WIP for this fandom, ever!
It was while she was polishing up, adding tags here and there and making sure everything looked right, that she noticed a strange checkbox underneath the comment moderation checkbox: MAKE CANON?
Lexi sighed. At this rate, she’d welcome making her bit of nonsense canon. Just to make things right...
She clicked it. Maybe it was a joke. Maybe...
It was after hitting SUBMIT that Lexi felt the house start shaking around her.
***
She woke up. Her phone, her old phone, with the Star Mage case was in her hand. How? Lexi had had to replace it with a teal case in 2019, after it had gotten cracked too much. And the date on her phone was January 1st, 2018. How...?
Even scanning the Internet didn’t answer her questions. Somehow, everything she’d written in the first chapter had not only come true, but stuff in her notes as well. Nyris and Isaac the bounty hunter being married, and Isaac trying to save his husband — praised for the flashbacks showing their chemistry. Mara and Daniel, the former operative for Mirani, getting together.
She’d done it. All of it.
A knock on her door. “Lexi? You okay?"
Her mom’s voice.
It was all well and good for her show to be fixed, but having her mother back was an even greater gift.
“Coming,” Lexi said. “What’s for breakfast?”
“Thought I’d make pancakes. New Year’s Day and all.”
Lexi grinned. “I’m heading down.”
Everything was fixed. Now, the next step? The next step was likely to enjoy every moment of it.
