Inspiration Thursday
Following last week’s introduction to my time writing short stories, I won’t take too much today to write about one of my favourite characters, which only received a partially written form. You see, there are certain movies I had watched so many times and eventually would come up with a character and their behaviour throughout the scenes as a movie played on. I’ve touched upon this a few times already.
Every character, story or ‘verse I created in the past, whether it was in my own head, written as fan fiction or role-played, led me to this moment in time – the time of Just One. I can’t wait for you all to read the first book, and to bring out the other books in the series. In the meantime, these topics are intended for you to hear about my thought process, meet characters I’ve developed and get to know me. So, hopefully, you’ll enjoy this story as it is one of my all time favourite (un)written fan fictions.
Today’s Inspiration Thursday is a crossover with my topic of Character Introduction.
Original Unwritten Story
Most of you will know the story of Terminator by James Cameron. Science Fiction movies about machines gaining consciousness, starting a war between humans, and almost ending the human race. In the first movie, Kyle Reese came from the future to save Sarah Connor before the future leader of the human resistance, John Connor, was born. Spoiler Alert: By the movie’s end, we learn Kyle was John’s father, a fact he would never find out. It was why John sent him into the past. In the second movie, we have a Terminator protecting Sarah and John.
Terminator 2: Judgement Day is one of my all-time favourite movies.
Reese Connor is a character I initially invented as John’s twin sister. Obviously, that wasn’t a name she used in her everyday life, but that was the one given to her at birth. As I watched the series, I could let my imagination run wild and picture her in different scenes. She’s intended as a strong character, much like her mother, with a brain for computers and technology. T-800 doesn’t address this in Judgment Day, but T-1000 never attempts to harm Reese throughout the movie, almost as if he doesn’t see her. At the beginning of the third movie, she’s disappeared from John’s life, only to later learn she’d spent her young adulthood trying to ensure Skynet doesn’t happen, but instead, ends up triggering it way faster… and obviously, the first female Terminator should look like their creator.
I’ve never written any of this down, but I remembered most of the plotlines. I could re-do the scenes when I watched the movies again). This has a lot to do with how I came up with stories as a child, coming up with characters and plots without being able to write anything down. It seemed like a magical time, being able to come with so much, even if it never went on paper.
Roswell-Terminator Crossover
What did become the written version of this was a crossover story between the universes of Terminator and the TV show Roswell (blog post here), where “Reese Connor” became Maria DeLuca, unaware of her own past. It wasn’t a short-lived fan fiction as I had tried to follow Roswell while letting John slowly into the storyline, but only really kickstarting the story after the events of the show’s finale.
Fun fact about that fan fiction? Sarah gave her daughter to Amy DeLuca to protect her, knowing her daughter would cause the future. But Kyle Reese told her the machines know her as Maria Guerin, as John and Maria would learn from Sarah’s tapes (finally brought back in Terminator Salvation). She had given up on her daughter, afraid her daughter would bring a dark future, not realizing her action triggered it. You see, Maria DeLuca from the TV Show Roswell was with Michel Guerin, and it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to think there would come a day post-finale that this would occur.
I guess you could consider it an alternative reality to the original idea inside my head.
This story is probably one of many I’d written inside other universes, which I loved writing but have remained within my storage. It was also a great way to practice writing and develop characters, mainly when you use someone else’s creation and must respect who that someone is while interacting with or delving into their thoughts. Just as role-play has helped me, so has writing and coming up with stories in my head.
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I’d love to hear from you about fan fiction and/or the character of Reese Connor. There are a few characters like her in different universes. A little search online would show you there are many original characters (OC) like Reese all around the internet, written by many people. I’ve enjoyed reading some of them. If fan fiction is your thing, you probably already know.
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Drop a comment here, too. Would like to get your opinion. If you have any suggestions for either of the topics, feel free to drop them down below, too.
~ Love, L.V.
L.V. Luca 