dragonlady7

answered

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I was SO pleased with myself when I managed to get the Little Beep song to be plot-significant in the end. I was so delighted. I can’t do outlines of stories at all, I really have to just sort of go for it and see where things take me, and that can sometimes mean you get a chaotic mess. But that– the whole Star Wars epic was notable for several things, firstly that I actually got some of it beta-read before publishing which I’d never done before, and probably more importantly that I FINISHED IT, it’s a completed series, and maybe I had a few more extras I was thinking of tacking on the end but I actually completed all of the bits of plot and it has a defined structure and I clearly planned the whole thing.

Some of this was accomplished by very clearly shunting the resolution of some of the plot points off to a never-to-be-made sequel– the battle ends unresolved, the villains flee, but Our Heroes have a plan, and meanwhile are safe. Past epics of mine had floundered from this because I felt like a story had to encompass every possible plot point, so this was pretty significant writerly growth for me too.

I haven’t reread the whole series lately but I was looking for the Little Beep Reprise and found, instead, my favorite dialogue exchange of BB-8 ever:

“Kill them all,” BB-8 said, vibrating slightly in eir intensity.

“Sick,” R2-D2 said approvingly.

oh but the little beep reprise is just after that! oh gosh. well, one of them.

“Little Beep,” several of the droids murmured, and the only way to describe their tone was reverent.

“That was the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen in my life ,” Rey said fiercely, shocked at how protective it made her feel..

“I made up that song when BB-8 was new,” Dameron said, his expression a jumbled mixture of pained, embarrassed, and incredulous. “Ey liked it when I gave em a pep talk before recharging. And the other droids got jealous so I’d sing to them too. And I didn’t have time to do it all the time so I had em record it.” He shook his head slightly, rolling it a little side to side before quickly and obviously deciding that the motion was too much, squeezing his eyes shut tightly and grimacing. “I figured ey’d share it with some other droids but I never thought about them making copies .”

“We all listen to the Little Beep song when we recharge,” the power droid said, something hushed and reverent in his tones.

“It’s terrible,” Dameron said, “it doesn’t rhyme, I’m like, twelve years old, the guitar’s not even in tune properly, I recorded that for my astro like fifteen years ago–”

“No one else has ever sung to these droids,” Rey said, looking at the way they were all staring, all of them with their sensors pointed at Dameron, all of them perfectly motionless.

ahhhh the droid rebellion! I really should reread these whole stories.