beyond the wide world's end

This is why I shouldn't be left to my own devices. I write stuff like this. ”Oh, hey, I’m a historian,” I say to myself. “Maybe I should try plotting out the big stuff in Gambit like I’m writing a history paper, then once I’ve figured out where the chess pieces need to go I can write the rest.”

Yeah, apparently I forgot how I actually write history papers. I didn’t even get past the first major event, but hey, at least I got some backstory and world-building done. (This technically describes an event that takes place after the most recent chapter of Gambit; it’s mentioned in Gambit 10 and will probably actually occur on or offscreen in Gambit 11, but I don’t really consider it spoilery because it doesn’t involve any of the main characters. There is some interesting stuff about Naboo during the Occupation.)

There's a fair amount of outside media in Gambit, but this probably won't be part of it. But, you know, fun times, and fictional history is the sort of thing I love writing. (Also, straight up, with the exception of the names, this is essentially original fiction since it's really, really AU from actual canon. What's that, Bedlam has been reading a lot of military sci-fi lately? You don't say.)

Originally posted on Tumblr.

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( excerpt from Asunder: A History of the Clone Wars, Volume II )

So I managed to get stung by a bee or bitten by a spider or something without realizing it, and as a result my left foot is swollen and itchy and red and I've spent the weekend limping around the house. So that's fun.

(My mom: "Why didn't you tell me you were in pain yesterday?" Me: "Because I'm used to being in pain and I just assumed it would eventually go away.")

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I've been throwing myself at Gambit 9 for a couple of weeks now, partially because I broke my cardinal rule for Wake and Gambit and posted Gambit 8 before I had a complete draft of the next chapter. I've broke it down and built it up and broke it down again about half a dozen times so far, thrown in plot threads, pulled them out, started assassinations, stopped them mid-stream, put Chekhov's gun on the table, took it off, put a different Checkhov's gun on the table, left it there, wrote a flashback that won't go in this scene, wrote some more backstory, wrote some porn, wrote some action, killed a character, resurrected a character who's dead in canon, wrote a scene I like but can't use because it screws with the timeline, and so on and so forth.

Right now I'm trying what's usually my last-ditch attempt to get things in order, which is writing each scene in its own individual word doc so I don't get overwhelmed by everything on the page. I don't actually like doing this, because it's bulky and unwieldy and I can lose track of the big picture, but since I was getting lost in the big picture... *shrug* If I can get enough individual scenes down, I can start sorting it out again and go back to working in chapter docs. I do this with academic papers too, but then I break it down by paragraph. It does work (especially for editing), it's just...annoying.

(Technical stuff: I write in Word, I usually put each chapter in its own doc, sometimes I have a master doc for the entire story but sometimes not. For Gambit they've just been titled things like "Queen's Gambit 1", "Queen's Gambit 2"; for Wake I went back and added in the chapter titles; for Dust they've got the aka's -- "dust 35 a.k.a. please gods let us finally get off the damn island", "dust 29 a.k.a. run away run away and tell someone." For the individual scenes, they're just titled "dooku 1", "padme 1", "ani 1" at the moment.)

I actually write a lot of backstory that never makes it onto the page, and which would probably be interesting to read if I could ever figure out how to post it properly, because most of my SW readers are on AO3 now (I assume) and would probably never see it, but it doesn't really feel...organized enough? to go on AO3.

I've also been posting some context for my Star Wars fic over on Tumblr. So far just for Wake, but it might come up for some of my other fic too. Part of my ongoing attempt to treat Tumblr as an actual blogging platform instead of just a more fannish Pinterest. (On actual Pinterest, I do have boards for Gambit, Wake, Naboo in general, and Oxygen & Rust. I have a board solely for O&R hair inspiration. I love Pinterest. I'm always weirded out when I see people interacting fannishly on it, though.)

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Anyway, here's a Rex POV scene from Gambit that probably won't make it into Gambit because it doesn't work with the current timeline.

( Reprisal was the word on everybody's lips. )

So I tried to write a post about how realizing that the QK 'verse might be a mirrorverse, but it is, specifically, Padme's mirrorverse made something in my brain go click, but I couldn't actually figure out how to phrase it.

When I was first coming up with this 'verse, I did a little bit of concept writing to work on characterization while I was extrapolating from canon. I don't always do concept writing -- I didn't do any for Wake, since the first thing I wrote for Wake was the first chapter -- but I do it when I'm playing with an idea or trying to build on characterization or just want to get a scene out of my head. I don't generally post a lot of it because I like working with plot when I can, but I like reading this sort of thing when other writers post it, so here is some of the concept writing + cut scenes I've written in the past few months.

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( QK 'verse backstory, Padme and Obi-Wan during the Occupation of Naboo )

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( Oxygen & Rust 'verse, Anakin and Obi-Wan at some undetermined point during the war )

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( Oxygen & Rust 'verse, how Obi-Wan Kenobi got turned into the public face of the Jedi, near the beginning of the war )

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( Cut scene from Wake the Storm 6, Anakin and Obi-Wan's fight )

What the fuck, iTunes, why is all my music in FUCKING PICTURES?

...well, at least I know where it is after I opened up iTunes and everything was gone for the second time in three days, but WHAT. WHAT. I DON'T EVEN.

I honestly don't have the energy to deal with this at very nearly midnight on a Monday, so I will fix it in the morning, but WHAT THE FUCK. (I don't know how it got there, but I guess that makes sense because of the album artwork? I don't even know.)

(For reference, and in case this happens to everyone else: after some frantic googling, I did what someone suggested and just did a search on my computer for "mp3" which, thank fuck, got me all the music that was no longer present, and I chased it back to...Pictures. I. Don't. Even. Know.)

But I am now afraid of, on top of actually shutting my computer down, closing iTunes, SO THANKS FOR THAT, UNIVERSE.

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My mood is almost such to rec another BotFA art set, but if I don't have the energy to fuck around with iTunes again I don't have the energy to chase down links. I expect to see a lot more Thorin/Thranduil fanart over the next few months, though, after last night's Desolation of Smaug sneak peek. (I didn't see it, but I've seen clips. MY BABIES. And now I shall go back to my pre-AUJ freaking out that OH MY GOD WHAT IF IT'S TERRIBLE.)

I have, however, come to the conclusion that the Mirkwood elves are clearly the redneck hillbilly elves of Middle Earth. (Actually, I think I was already of that opinion due to an old, old fic from the LotR days; IDK if the canon actually backs that up or not.)

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I am in a weird mood where I just want to post stuff, so in conclusion, have a dwarf backstory snippet. Actually, I shouldn't say "backstory" here, since this scene is concurrent with the present chapters of Dust and I'm probably going to end up reworking it-slash-rewriting it from a different POV (we'll see) to actually fit it in, since it works in nicely with some of the stuff planned for Dust III.

(I keep thinking we've seen these two before -- well, we have, but very very briefly -- because I wrote about half a chapter of a Jill POV that keeps getting pushed back because of the Murder Island subplot, and they feature prominently there. Sometimes I forget what I've written v. what I've posted.)

Slang definition from earlier in this scene: "Folly” was slang for a member of one of the more outré Circle cults, though usually the only the way you could tell was if they happened to be a divine. This bloke clearly was, given the four-source chain he had around his neck.

( the other two Ironstones )

I have no idea why I start out with the same (or very similar) trope in almost every fandom I write in, whether that's Narnia, Star Wars (and looking back, I also realize that something similar was one of the first things I played with in the fandom, back in 2007), BSG (I didn't write it, but I thought about it!), or Avengers, and (sort of) HP, except that it's becoming rapidly clear that I have a Thing for a certain type of fandom. *facepalm* To be fair, I knew that already, and to also be fair, I knew that I had a Thing for playing with that trope beforehand, and also that ninety-nine percent of the time, it never ends up going anywhere because I'm more interested in the lulz than the long-term repercussions.

Er, anyway. I like seeing what fannish authors I like are playing with, even if it's never going to be finished, plus (as just happened) five years later I can dig back and go, "oh my god, I wrote what?" (Don't ask me how much time I just lost to the realization that I apparently wrote a fair bit of HP smut back in the day. Well, to be fair, who didn't?) At least at this point I can happily state that even if I'm still not sure what it is (thought experiment? random writing? character stuff? brain clearage?), I will admit that it exists (in a doc titled 'random hobbit fic').

Straight on from here.

( yeah, I still don't know )

Guys, I think I accidentally created a pair of OCs who I'd be happy to write an original novel about. Which is not in itself a bad thing, and has actually happened before in Dust -- this is for Dust, not like I'm working on anything else right now, uh, I mean, except my essays...theoretically -- but is...kind of surprising? IDK, at the risk of sounding conceited, I think most of my OCs could stand on their own in an original novel, though some would probably work better than others. And some would probably work better in an original than in Dust, because their parts are so minimal. (I suspect that the Queen of Anvard and her spouses are going to end up criminally underused, considering, you know, Queen of Thieves and her spouses, one of whom is the Narnian refugee son of a former judge and the other of whom is an escaped Calormene ex-slave.) And Border Wars was partially conceived so that I could sit around and figure out how a lot of my MCs would function if they weren't secondary or tertiary to the main plots in Dust. (Marcia Bracken is a fucking badass, for the record.)

BUT THESE TWO, UGH. Female dwarf odd couple solving crime in their occupied city! I LOVE THEM.

Uh, to back up a step: I'm writing backstory for the aggravation (the reason I keep calling them the aggravation will become clear eventually; I'm sure Bilbo Baggins would agree that the proper term for a group of dwarves is an 'aggravation', ehehehe), because the heart wants what the heart wants and sometimes just writing is better than not writing at all, whatever, character-building, world-building, I DO WHAT I WANT THOR and so on. So I'm writing backstory for a couple of the dwarves that haven't shown up yet, Hnaki and Icelo, with a couple other members of the aggravation in the background. (If you've read Dust 32, Hnaki is Orth's older sister and Icelo is Brofi's younger sister.) I will probably post the whole thing later, but here is an introductory snippet:

( do you miss it? being able to talk to people? )

Follow-up to this. (I am not writing this! It does not have a plot! It does not exist! Or something.)

( just stay here and try not to be the ultimate evil )

If I was writing this fic, which I'm clearly not, it would start a lot like this. But I'm not writing it, obviously. But if I was it would look like this.

( I've got a bad feeling about this )

Previous parts here, here, and here. I guess at some point I'll turn this into actual fic? Since I appear to have, like, a plot and stuff.

( we are Jedi )

More genderswapped time-traveling Jedi, in no particular order.

( vanity, not sentiment )