If you asked me what I’ve been up to, I would reply, “What have I been doing since the pandemic proved that evil souls exist, then my country reelected Jeffrey Epstein’s buddy because a woman President sounded terrifying? Oh, I dunno…I’ve been working, marketing my fiction, keeping my head down, watching the world turn, pondering the idea of fascism, writing a fanfic novel, getting older.”
 
Fanfiction is a strange beast. Like any idea, a fanfic idea intrigues when it hits, makes a writer want to go down rabbit holes. Only the story universe is somebody else’s intellectual property so an author can’t charge money. For practicality’s sake, I filed the concept in the back of my mind. 
 
But the idea, inspired by a line from a character in the story universe, kept knocking around my skull. (For context, I state the quote on the first page of my pdf.) Then the pandemic happened. For shits and giggles, also something to do, I researched related topics and plotted out scenes. In fiction writing, my narrative comfort zone is first-person. This story needed to be third-person and I saw a chance to push myself. I thought of people who intimidate fragile men like Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Doing so helped me flesh out my main character. (Her name is Syl.) While I scribbled, I still didn’t commit to cranking out a story draft back then.

Only…guess what? A few years after Covid, the idea kept yelling at me so I put other stories aside and went for it. Looking back now, writing and rewriting this kept me grounded in the era of MAGA. The story functioned like a lens, a way to make sense of my country’s flirtation with extreme right-wing ideology.
 
To this post’s non-USA readers, if it’s bizarre to observe from outside, try living here. Some in the United States wish for an authority figure. But instead of a strongman, we got white nationalists pitching crypto and dating advice. My fanfic is my way of trying to understand a country with chattel-slavery beginnings and an uncertain future. I responded to the USA’s post-Obama meltdown by interpreting the ugliness through a story universe that I’ve loved since I was five years old.

Thank you, George Lucas.
 
Please give it a read.