Why Isn't there More Attack of the Clones Fiction?

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Title:	Why isn't there More Attack of the Clones Fiction?
Creator:	Lucy Gillam
Date(s):	August 15, 2002
Medium:	online
Fandom:	Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones
Topic:	Fan Fiction
External Links:	Why isn't There More Attack of the Clones Fiction?, Archived version
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Why isn't there More Attack of the Clones Fiction? is an essay by Lucy Gillam.

It is part of the Fanfic Symposium series.

Excerpts

In the first version of these columns, I marveled at the absolute explosion of Phantom Menace fan fiction, so it may seem odd that I’m wondering here why the second movie of the trilogy has generated so little interest. Okay, point taken. However, even if you don’t personally get the appeal of TPM for fanfic writers and readers, the existence of that appeal certainly can’t be denied. Taking that as a given, why then has AOTC generated so little fiction, and in particular, so little slash? I mean, you’ve still got Ewan, looking yummy as ever (and IMHO, yummier, now that he isn’t saddled with that dorky haircut). And while I know not everyone shares my opinion that the second movie was at least marginally better than the first, I’m betting that even those who thought AOTC was a step down aren’t holding TPM up as a major artistic achievement. So – why so little fiction?

As with other recent phenomenon, I’ve heard a lot of surface explanations, all of which are valid and logical and no doubt true. And as with those other phenomena, I suspect that there’s another reason lurking underneath the surface. We’ll get to that in a minute.

Many of the more apparent reasons for the lack of slash involve the appeal of the most obvious couple. Or, more precisely, the lack of appeal. I am, of course, speaking of Obi-Wan/Anakin, and you can stop shuddering now – I’ll try to refrain from giving you mental images. Unless you want them, of course, in which case you're on your own.

One of these reasons is that Anakin is smack in the middle of a major romance (more specifically, a major heterosexual romance. Not sure how much that matters, but accuracy and all). No matter how badly that romance is handled (and it’s handled pretty darned badly), we can’t deny that it’s there, and as long as Anakin is professing (badly) that Padme is the center of his universe, it’s a bit harder to throw him into bed with someone else. Now, you could point out that this hasn’t stopped LOTR writers from slashing Aragorn with 2/3 of the Fellowship, but I would point out that the courtship there is in the past (or in the books, in a glorified footnote), and is a fairly minor part of the story. The (really, really, really bad) love story between Anakin and Padme is central to AOTC, and thus harder to ignore. Some stories have taken the route of portraying Amidala (the name is deliberate, since the examples I’ve seen were written pre-AOTC) as a sort of consolation prize (see Basingstroke’s Shores of Destiny and Clarence’s Good Intentions on the Road to Hell), but these are rare.

The second apparent answer, and perhaps the reason for the lack of such stories, is the lack of any “vibe” between Obi-Wan and Anakin. I confess I’m sometimes perplexed by those pronouncements, not because I particularly see a slashy vibe between the characters, but because there is a whooooooole lotta slash based on one or two or no character interactions. Supplemental novels aside, the TPM explosion was at least begun by ten lines of dialogue and a half-second touch. At least Obi-Wan and Anakin spend some screen time talking, and it could be argued that their snarking provides more of a traditional basis for slash than “train the boy.” Which brings us to the most often-cited reason: Anakin’s lack of appeal. Yeah, he’s cute in a boy-bandish way, but he’s also (a) bloody annoying, and (b) poorly acted. He’s a step up from Jake Lloyd, but simply put, he has all the charisma of a pet rock.

Seldom has an entire fandom been Jossed quite as thoroughly as TPM fandom was Jossed by AOTC. Leaving aside the “reviving Qui Gon” AUs for the moment, let’s consider the nearly ubiquitous soul bond. You know the one I mean: the psychic/empathic connection in the Force, created either intentionally or involuntarily, that represents the ultimate level of romantic commitment for Jedi. Well, penultimate: the ultimate is the rarer “lifebond,” which ensures that neither partner will survive the other. Try finding ten stories in the Master Apprentice Archive that don’t contain one of these. Really. It’s harder than you think.

As a side note, I can’t be the only person rather intrigued that Lucas has basically said that Jedi can fuck but not fall in love. Interesting value system, there, George - considered suggesting that to the Vatican? On the one hand, this could be an intriguing idea for exploration in fiction. On the other hand, it can be an intimidating one, and honestly, I suspect that a lot of writers and readers might find it a little distasteful. There is the "forbidden love" angle, in which feelings develop despite attempts to avoid them, but there's also the possibility that someone raised in this value system would embrace it as unselfconsciously as so many people raised in contemporary Western culture embrace the idea that sex and love should be tied. And such a character could easily come across as cold or unfeeling, or just generally unsympathetic. At the same time, I suspect there are TPM readers (and to a limited extent, I'm one of them) who've grown bored with the repeated themes and stories and would like to see something new, perhaps something done with the new material AOTC provided. They may (or may not) be in the minority, but I can't believe they aren't there. Something my beta reader pointed out intrigues me: in many ways, it is still "TPM" fandom. Even in this essay, I've used the term "TPM" to refer to second-trilogy fiction. I suspect that originally this was a convenient way to separate second-trilogy fiction from "SW" (first-trilogy) fiction, but terminology can shape perception. The primary second-trilogy archive is called "Master-Apprentice" and for all that it does contain a variety of pairings, does reinforce Q/O as the primary pairing (the picture on the front page is from the first movie, and I'll give you three guess who it's of). None of this should be taken as accusatory: if that's where the majority of interest lies, that should be reflected in the archive. At the same time, I wonder if writers who might be tempted to explore AOTC feel they would have a limited audience.