persephone_kore | Ten-Request Meme

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Ten-Request Meme

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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?)

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I'm kind of choking on my soda in laughter at the pppiglet one.

Kind of a lot. Oh my gosh. :D

Only *you* could have pulled that off so well! *shakes head* *still laughing* "Do you have an explanation for this?"

...but now that you've done a Star Wars one, can I not request a Dook one? Or, I guess I'm still first ten! Mwah! Okay, so Star Wars, I choose you. :D As far as subject, if you dont want to write Dooku again, you can write anyone you'd like.

But Dooku is the best. ^^

Glad to have made you laugh. Please don't drown. *g*

And of course you can request Dooku.

*****

This had been intended as a simple, if uncomfortable, mission.

Dooku had spent much of his life as a Jedi, had become a renowned Jedi Master, had left the Order at a late age to take up his hereditary title as Count of Serenno and become even more renowned in that guise as a political agitator and the leader of the CIS, and had caused a considerable stir by returning to the Jedi. Despite being a Sith in the interim, he had been reinstated, even entrusted with the training of a Padawan.

So, naturally, a few years later, he was periodically sent on missions where the main purpose to be goggled at.

This had been one of them right up until the lovely underground building he and Scout had been about to enter suffered a malfunction of all its doors.

The first order of business had been for their hosts to run around panicking. The second had been to try remote access. The third had been to hand Dooku a set of blueprints and stand around looking hopeful while he deciphered them and found out whether he could trigger remote access using the Force. (He was fairly sure he'd hit the switch, but to no effect. He flatly refused to attempt any more complicated repairs.)

The fourth was for the Jedi to carve their way in with lightsabers and release everyone who'd been trapped inside before they were overcome by panic. This was delicate work, particularly since people kept mobbing the doors.

Dooku sighed, banged on one of the last doors in the possibly futile hope of getting everyone out of the way, and made a triangular opening with two smooth strokes. The metal fell away.

"Agh!" There was a dual yelp, and Dooku took a step back, his blade coming up to guard in one hand, the other putting Scout behind him.

Dooku did not yelp often, and wasn't very happy about having done it now. But then, he didn't often run into someone he distinctly remembered skewering with a lightsaber some years back, either. "Lorian Nod," he said flatly. "Aren't you dead?"

"Dooku," Lorian returned in a similar tone. His dress sense evidently hadn't improved since his stint as a space pirate; he was wearing a colorful shirt with no fastenings, which he pulled open in the front to display a neat round scar over his stomach. "Didn't you do this with a red blade? But you were a little too neat about it. And you missed my spine."

"Too bad. You were one of the few kills from my Sith years that I hadn't come to regret." Dooku grimaced and flicked on his commlink. "Excuse me. Do you have a Lorian Nod on your guest-list? --On purpose? --Oh, very well. Thank you." He flicked it off. "Evidently you're supposed to be here."

Lorian shrugged. "I could have told you that."

"Yes, but I wouldn't have believed you. Scout--" Dooku looked around at her and broke off to look back at Lorian, unnerved. Like his own, Lorian's hair had faded to gray in the intervening years -- considerably earlier than Dooku's, actually. But the eyes were the same. And green eyes weren't that rare, but the exact shade, and the shape.... He thought suddenly of asking if Lorian had ever been to Vorzyd V, but decided that he didn't want to know. "Stay here and keep an eye on this man," he finished. "He was in training to be a Jedi once but has since had a very erratic and frequently criminal career. I'm not sure what he's plotting now."

Scout moved forward, hiding nerves, as Dooku stalked past her. He wasn't worried about the nervousness. She'd be fine in action.

Lorian raised his eyebrows. "Why, Dooku. You'd leave your impressionable young padawan alone here with me?"

Dooku turned. "I would leave you in her charge, yes," he said coolly. "She is capable of taking care of herself in a fight and of thinking sideways around you if necessary, although I warn you that I will find out if you try anything."

"I could tell her stories," Lorian said pleasantly. "To pass the time."

Dooku's back was to them again. "Do that, if you like," he said, without pausing in his stride. "If the truth she knows hasn't set her against me, your lies aren't likely to manage it." And he kept going, around the next corner, for doorways without dead men behind them.

Ooooh, that's interesting. I rather like his parting response.

Thank you! (I do too, actually.)

Ah, Lorian. I felt rather sorry for him, probably as some sort of carryover from Scout's difficulties, but she would despise his tactics for being both dishonorable and stupid. (Also, poor Dooku. I know Watson said something about his mistake being pride, but to me it seemed his main problem was that Lorian could talk him into nearly anything.) He's kind of fun to play with sometimes, all the same. I suspect he really did think Dooku could take the fall for the Sith Holocron without suffering in any way that mattered -- sort of in the same way that some people sneer at an A student for stressing over a B.

Watson kind of irritates me, to tell the truth. She simplifies these things just a little bit too much. Things are just a little too black and white in her books. She has some great ideas and characters, but she doesn't do as much with them as she should. Lorian Nodd's a great example of this. I mean, there he is, someone with enough charisma and personal presence to be able to talk Dooku into doing something like this, and yet what does the Order do? Chuck him out on his ear. They don't try to help him or turn him back or convince him of his wrong. They just get rid of him. And there's not enough there to really explain why Dooku was friends with him or why Lorian felt the need to have the Sith Holocron in the first place. It's all just a little bit too cut and dry. Which I suppose actually leaves a lot of wriggle room for others wanting to write about the same characters, but still - ! *Frowns slightly* It mostly all just left me wanting to know more about Lorian as a person and his motivations, and about just how deeply that betrayal scarred Dooku, as it seems to me he was rather more distant from most of the other Jedi afterwards than he might otherwise have been.

I get the impression, somehow, that Jude Watson wasn't entirely comfortable writing for young readers. I haven't read a lot of her stuff, but the voice in Legacy of the Jedi seemed a little... talking-down. And the really odd thing, to me, was getting the impression that she had written 3D characterization with interesting wrinkles and then, in the little summing-up sections, ironed it.

I'm not really all that surprised at their dropping Lorian, given context. One of the things I think was well done is that Oppo Rancisis, as far as I can tell, knew darned well that Lorian was lying when he put the blame on Dooku, and that the Council was basically giving both kids enough rope to hang themselves, which may or may not be a good idea but does strike me as plausible Jedi behavior. And I have serious doubts about her "thirteenth birthday and you're out" deal, which I suspect she invented arbitrarily as a source of angst for Obi-Wan, but Lorian was (I believe) very close to the deadline.

I got the general impression that the friendship was largely because Lorian was adventurous and fun, and that probably had appeal even if Dooku felt he went too far at times, but I can see feeling it was presented without grounding. I think Lorian's deciding the Sith Holocron would somehow help him impress a master was outright idiotic, but I get the impression he was kind of grasping at straws at that point and panic is not a great source of rationality, so that one makes me want to shake him more than it makes me want to shake Watson. *G* I actually did rather like the bit where Dooku tried to reassure him and he blew up about it.

But on the other hand, I sometimes suspect I'm reading too much into it.

Hmmm . . . the impression I always got was that she just couldn't be bothered to flesh anything or anyone out properly because she was writing for pre-teens and teens, but then, I started reading the Jedi Apprentice series and the resemblances between the Jedi Order and a rather clique-ridden exclusive prep school were such that I had a very hard time taking anything she wrote seriously, especially after she made that ridiculous mistake about insisting that Obi-Wan (and others) would've been allowed to visit their families while still children in the creche, which is absolutely ridiculous as it would totally defeat the purpose of removing potential Jedi initiates from their families at an age too young to remember being raised in such an environment to begin with. *Head-desk* Her characters have never struck me as being properly fleshed out, which is why I dislike the books. They all read as variants of the same four or five basic archetypes or stereotypes, with nothing but names and a few features switched around. (She also managed to make Qui-Gon such an insensitive, unfeeling, unsympathetic ass that I'd probably distrust him even if TPM hadn't already made me dislike him for his hypocrisy.) *Sighs*

I think the reason I dislike the way they drop him is based largely on the fact that it's not only wasteful but self-destructive of them to send people who are proven to be prone to the "Dark Side" out into the galaxy to wreck whatever havoc they please. It's like . . . okay, not only are we going to create our own worst enemies, we're going to create them and then pitch them out, basically throwing him into the AgriCorps flat broke and with no where else to go (though it didn't keep him from running), instead of trying to help rehabilitate them (because apparently everyone but our own can be rehabilitated), so they'll be free to wreck the greatest amount of havoc possible. All I can think is, could y'all be any more short-sighted?!?!

*Sigh* The thirteenth-birthday thing is weird because it's arbitrary and would only work for those who mature exactly like humans do. While it seems to've been sorta adopted into the rest of the prequel-era EU, it's not always held to, as Scout is supposed to a year older than Whie and yet Whie is only thirteen and has been a Padawan a bit while Scout is only just chosen as a Padawan (and seems to be fourteen or almost fourteen) during the book about Yoda and Dooku.

It's entirely possible that I just want more out of my characters (more inner thoughts, more on their motivations, just more, plain period) than it's fair to expect, especially from a young adult novel. Still. Lorian and Dooku are supposed to be best friends, and it would've been nice to know more about why, in my admittedly rather less than humble opinion.

Sometimes I think I'm reading too much, and sometimes I think I'm reading too little into things. Somehow, I never seem to reach a happy medium, when it comes to EU novels anymore . . . *Sigh*

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.

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