a miscellaney

[bedlamsbard]

* I am prodding very, very delicately at a possible sequel to Wake, which is tentatively titled "Queen's Gambit." The trick here, at least for me, is to keep it so firmly rooted in the canon even as an AU that there's no way it will work just as a plain original, which is what I've been worrying about. (In this case, not the parallel universe aspects, but the for the QK 'verse, because I've been looking at it and wondering if it would work better as an original novel than as fic.) I'm trying to keep "familiar enough to be instantly recognizable, different enough to be shocking" at the front of my mind while writing, which are generally good principles for a canon-divergence AU. (Yeah, I'm not too proud to say that I don't enjoy the shock factor, because I definitely do.)

And because I'm one of those people who loves to talk about what they're writing -- anonymous exchanges are basically killer for me, because under normal circumstances I just constantly livetweet my commentary on whatever I'm writing at the time and I can do that if I'm supposed to be anon -- a snippet. I hope it's as trippy to read as it was to write.

Nute Gunray, the Viceroy of the Trade Federation, was so angry that he was practically spitting in outrage. “I want them dead! That witch Amidala and her pet Jedi –”

“Obi-Wan Kenobi has made it abundantly clear that he no longer considers himself a Jedi,” Mace Windu pointed out, his voice chilly.

Gunray carried on as if he hadn’t heard the Jedi Master. “I was promised that they would be dead by morning! You Jedi swore to me that they would be eliminated! And now this.” He pointed one quivering gray-green finger at the hologram that was playing on a loop from the big holoprojector in front of the Supreme Chancellor’s desk.

Neither Windu nor Yoda glanced at it. They had already viewed it over a dozen times before the first summons from the Senate Building had arrived; it was probably still being analyzed even now by other members of the Jedi Council.

“Assassins the Jedi are not,” Yoda said sharply, tapping his gimer stick on the floor for emphasis. “Promises there were only in your own mind, Viceroy.”

“I was made assurances –”

“Not by us,” Windu informed him. “It is not the way of the Jedi to countenance murder, even for individuals so obviously…misguided…as Obi-Wan Kenobi and Queen Amidala.” He eyed Gunray with distaste. “I would be interested to hear from whom you received these promises, Viceroy.”

“As would I.” The big double doors to the Executive Office slid silently open as the Supreme Chancellor entered. “I know that I made no such promises, Viceroy Gunray.”

Dooku was a tall human male, gone a little fleshy with age but still with a face like a sword blade behind his white beard. Unlike the two Supreme Chancellors that had preceded him, Finis Valorum and Palpatine of Naboo, he shirked the heavy velvet robes of office and was instead rather plainly dressed in black, his only adornments hints of silver at his collar and cuffs. Ignoring the polite bows of the two Jedi Masters, he strode past them and seated himself behind his desk. He paused the holoprojector with a gesture, freezing the hologram on a still of Obi-Wan Kenobi with his white lightsaber ignited, standing over the two captured Jedi. Queen Amidala was clearly visible behind them.

“The Jedi may shrink from assassination, Master Yoda, but Master Unduli and Master Koth were clearly on Naboo for some reason. Whatever that was, the Naboo have interpreted it as a threat and reacted accordingly. Do you care to explain or shall I be forced to draw my own conclusions?”

* I'm wondering how much of my freakout/panic attack the other day came from the fact that I'd just finished a fic and had nothing else to occupy my brain with except for panic about my future and current living situation. It's definitely easier for me to stop and readjust if I have something to work on. (On the other hand, I don't necessarily multi-task really well, which is why I don't usually have multiple live WIPs.)

* On a similar note, I put off replying to this e-mail + doing any further application stuff until I had finished Wake, and since Wake's now done, I have to reply to this 2-week-old e-mail from Leicester about my pre-app, which, uh, I'm pretty sure I probably should have replied to before. (On the other hand, they also took about three weeks to reply to the original e-mail, so...I have no idea what that means.) So I need to (a) look at it and (b) come up with smart, reasonable, well-educated and well-researched answers to it.

* Every time I think about telling my parents some of my post-MA options I also have to think NO DON'T DO IT IT WILL ONLY END IN TEARS so I don't actually do so. Because it will end in tears. (But, for the record, and because at least if I cry on the internet no one will see me and judge me for it: post-bacc in classics at UC-Davis or UNC-Chapel Hill -- I'll probably miss the deadline for Penn -- MA in Classical Reception at Bristol (I've been burned by classics so many times that I should start moving back into the early modern period), PhD proposals at a couple of UK schools, Museum Studies at Leicester, Library Science at LSU are all things that I am considering if I don't get into the MA program I'm waiting to hear back from. I can make all those deadlines if I need to.)

* One of these days I need to actually find out how the East India Trading Company worked because I don't know and it's driving me crazy.

* I need to get Netflix Instant again (we dropped it when I went to England and I haven't reupped because I have Amazon Prime) because STAR WARS THE CLONE WARS IS COMING BACK AND I'M SO EXCITED.

"Star Wars: The Clone Wars -- The Lost Missions: Trailer" (Watch on YouTube)

(I have a lot of feelings about Star Wars -- movies, books, comics, Clone Wars, and Rebels -- and I will talk about them at the drop of a hat, but I try and restrain myself except for the 75K time travel alternate universe fanfic I just wrote.)