persephone_kore | Ten-Request Meme

Snagged from

labellementeuse

The first 10 people to comment on this post get to request a drabble (or ficlet, if I feel like it) on a subject/character of their choosing from me. In return, they have to post this in their journal (not that I'd enforce it if I could, but that's how it supposedly goes). Post all fandoms you're willing to write(/draw) for.

Fandoms:
X-Men (and satellites) (may include X-Project)
Harry Potter
Young Wizards
Neopets
Abhorsen (warning: I don't have the books with me)
Star Wars (warning: limited knowledge of EU and obscure movie details)
Enchanted Forest Chronicles
Winnie the Pooh
Vor (...maybe?)
write-ins may be considered, especially since I suspect I'm forgetting something

Special Rules: If I'm not able or willing to do your request in good faith due to cluelessness, differences in interpretation, or sheer defeat (such as discovering I can't do a decent Miles-voice; I have no idea), I will ask if you want something else or reinterpret wildly. Though I suppose I could probably do a hundred words of almost anything; whether they'd be any good or just embarrass us both is another question.

Edit: First ten people to comment requesting a ficlet! There are considerably more comments than requests, as I've filled the first few in the comments and some people have responded further. I'm currently at 6 requests, 6 completed. (Maybe I should give them their own posts?)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I don't think it's unfair to expect more from a young adult novel. There are plenty of stories, both YA and intended for younger children, that do a really good job. It's mostly the odd tone and what looks like deliberate flattening efforts that make me think the whole idea felt unnatural to Watson.

A friend who really enjoys her work despite some of the flaws did remark that every planet Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan visited seemed to be having some sort of kids-vs-adults generational conflict. I was immediately seized with the urge to write a crossover with Peter Pan. ("Second star to the right and straight on till morning? These are the worst navigation instructions ever.") Perhaps fortunately, I was stymied by the absence of a plot.

Scout's age actually is in line with Watson's limit of thirteen, though. She turned thirteen right about three months before Attack of the Clones and was chosen (after despairing about the prospect) on her birthday. Unfortunately, her first master went to Geonosis and got killed in the first battle of the Clone War.

(There actually is a discrepancy about her age, though it's not internal to the book. Stewart seems to have thought he was writing about a year after AotC, and thus says Scout is fourteen; the official Clone Wars timeline on StarWars.com plants Dark Rendezvous two and a half years after AotC, in which case she'd have to be younger as of Geonosis or older in the book. I usually write her as being older in the book, since the anguish about not being chosen actually seems to be more critical to her character than being fourteen vs. fifteen.)

Well, that's what I tend to think, but I'm disappointed enough by the supposed adult books, much less young adult books, that I've tried (usually unsuccessfully) to become less picky . . .

*Lol!* Now there's an idea! Peter and co. and the JA crew.

And your friend's right - those books have lots of generational conflict in those books, lots of Qui-Gon not understanding Obi-Wan and not trusting him while Obi-Wan empathizes with the locals and actually tries to accomplish the missions, lots of Obi-Wan saving Qui-Gon's butt and getting little notice for it, and lots of repetitive "forbidden/unrealised love" motifs over and over and bloody well over again.

Hold up - I was under the impression that Chankar Kim wasn't her official Master, just a mentor, because she old enough to be chosen yet. I thought the reason that Yoda had to trick Jai Maruk into taking her on as a Padawan was because she was of age and hadn't been chosen by anyone yet. I could swear that's what is says in the book . . . Drat, now I'm going to have to hunt the blasted thing up and look . . . *Sighs and goes to find book*

Mm. I'm actually a relatively uncritical reader most of the time, for some reason. More so when I'm first getting into something, perhaps... although even during my first EU binge back in high school, I was kind of iffy on some things.

*wince* Ah, yes, the forbidden/unrealized love. Not that Watson was the only one doing that. I suppose it's pretty common in literature generally, and her non-SW stuff is romance (how this got her a Star Wars gig I have no idea), but... sigh. I got really fed up at one point when I'd run into some otherwise good Star Wars fics with irritating levels of Forbidden Jedi Romance and then hit a similar story involving the Catholic Church in a comic strip. Of all things.

You know, it makes sense for Anakin; he was raised for several years with (probably) the idea that marriage and family were desirable things even if he might or might not get the chance at them. But there seems to be this assumption among a lot of people that similar grand passions and rebellions ought to be common throughout the Jedi, that hormones and the desire for a "normal romance" would be so strong that being raised with the assumption you wouldn't enter into romantic commitments shouldn't make any real difference to what you want. I thought that was something Stewart handled well, really; he had hormones and crushes as things that were assumed to happen, but not taken as reason for Grand Drama. (Well, perhaps by the people involved, especially when young, but that's kind of standard. *pats Whie*)

I'm pretty sure Chankar was her official master -- it's spelled out that Scout was thirteen that day and expecting to be sent away, and Yoda told her Chankar had asked for her as Padawan. And then three months later Chankar was dead, and Scout's been driving herself, not entirely healthily, for either a year or two years and a half.

I have a hard time sometimes trying to find a balance for just reading things to enjoy them. Too many years training for critical analysis, as an English major, is to blame for that. It's what makes me so picky about some things in the EU while, on the other hand, I tend to be more forgiving about (and to even enjoy) some things that I think other readers often don't like, because they just want to be entertained and not have to worry about things like politics or philosophy. *Shrugs* I figure the gain from the one usually balance out what I lose to the other, buet sometimes I wish I could just flick a switch somewhere and read without the background voice nitpicking over lack of character development or consistency in characterization from book to book, etc. *Sighs*

Jude Watson wrote actual romance novels before SW? I . . . did not know that. And that actually explains a lot, now that I think about it . . . *Is tempted to sigh, because it certainly explains where the fascination with the whole tragic unrequited love trope came from*

*Snickers* Yeah, I think if I came across the same blasted story from a SW fic in a comic about the Catholic Church, I'd be just a wee bit upset, too!

For Anakin, it makes sense. Anyone else but Anakin, someone who might've been raised outside the Temple longer, like Anakin, or for some reason ended up living among a nonJedi population for a while (because of being stranded during a mission, amnesia, whatever), somebody who's survived Order 66 and is trying to blend in and keep on surviving, or someone like Whie and Scout, who're thrown together at fairly young ages under really awful circumstances, though, and I reserve the right to cry foul over what's probably an inappropriate plot device.

I'm probably remembering the book wrong - I read it concurrently with two other SW books while I was working the nightshift doing data entry at Bank of America, and those were 11-hour shifts, so it's entirely possible.

Ten-Request Meme

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject