Okay. So I’m mostly just confused/baffled by the novelization Karen Traviss wrote for the silly Clone Wars animated film that came out this year. Granted, I honestly wasn’t expecting a whole lot from a book based on that movie, given that most of the reviews I’ve heard/read about it ( Read more... ) However, when I found out that Karen Traviss was writing it, I was hoping that the apparent hideousness of the movie and its jarringly out-of-synchedness with the rest of the canon saga and EU might in some way be alleviated or smoothed over to the extent where the story would at least start to make a little bit of sense as something that might have indeed been crammed in alongside all of the other things we already know about what went on in between AotC and RotS, in the saga, and during or around events already documented in the EU by other Clone Wars era stories.

Oddly enough, while I can honestly say that the book is most likely better written/more coherent and more entertaining than the movie likely is (I’ll watch it some time or another when it comes out on DVD, just to be sure, for comparison’s sake), I also have to admit that I am pretty much thoroughly underwhelmed by both the consistency of the characterization of both such major saga figures as Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi and such major EU characters as Asajj Ventress, not to mention somewhat baffled by the inconsistency of the apparent timeframe ( Read more... )

Current Mood: not sure how to react to this

The weather was nice - it had been cold for this time of year and kind of gloomy earlier in the week, but it decided to be sunny and warm without being too warm - and everything went off without a hitch and a fine ol' time was had by all! I'm so thrilled for her! It was an early evening wedding with a sit-down meal afterwards - we left here around four-thirty to get there around five-thirty, and I think we got back around ten. So. Yeah. Wonderful time. Wonderful party. Loads and loads of family and friends and people who're friends of the bride's and groom's immediate families.

And, on a more selfish note, now that the last of the apples and late tomatoes are being picked, we're basically done with everything from the garden! YAY! I'll have time to write more again! And I've got my trust little exterior hard-drive thingie next to the computer at all times, so it'll hopefully be next to impossible for anything to mysteriously be sucked into an information black hole and eaten! *Dances happily*

If only I didn't have this blasted cold (turned out to be a cold, not a sinus infection. I'm still not sure that's better, to be honest), things would be just about perfect right now.

Current Mood: happy but a bit tired

Ogod.

OmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigodOmigod

*This would be the closest thing possible to keening via computer, folks*

I got to within the last fifty or so pages of this EU novel (hardback version, 1st edition), and I literally puked my guts up.

Congratulations, Karen Traviss. You've managed to pen a second SW book capable of making me have that particular reaction, on a first reading. Matthew Stover was the first. I'd prefer it if no one tried for a third.

( Read more... )

*Must go plot things for the AU series, in reaction to all of this, now*

Current Mood: and sick to my stomach

It was one of my Star Wars documents. I don't know what the hell happened. In between telling the computer to "stand by" while I went to clean up a mess in the kitchen and returning to the computer to turn it back on about twenty minutes later, the file vanished. VANISHED. Gone. A file I'd saved multiple times today, including right before I told the computer to "stand by." It no longer exists at all, according to my computer, despite the fact that the computer is set to save everything I open in WordPerfect and work on automatically every five minutes whether I tell it to save that often or not and should have at least made a temporary backup file of the damn thing. This is a file that I've worked in for upwards of two years. It's an old file with multiple stories in it. I cannot comprehend where it went or how the fuck this happened. It hasn't even been erased. It's just - not there. Like it never fucking existed at all. And I know I have old copies saved elsewhere, but I also know I just lost about fifty pages of my rewrite of AotC that I've been working on this week, a complete character sketch for Yoda, and a character sketch 29 and a half points in to a 50-point sketch for Kyp Durron. I've lost about seven completely irretrievable names and profiles for characters not to mention the whole fucking story for Kyp which I was making up in my head as I typed, not going off notes or anything. Fuckall knows how I'm going to ever recreate all of that.

I am going to go crawl into a dark place and cry some more.

I think I may be forced to give the damned AotC story up as a bad deal. I don't know if I can possibly fix something that's lost that much information.

Current Mood: crying

In fact, I think I may be getting a sinus infection.

Oh, freaking joy.

I’ve been trying to ignore the increasing congestion for the past couple of days, hoping it will go away, but I'm afraid that if my head doesn’t stop feeling like someone broke it open and packed it too full of used gauze from an operating theatre after several surgical procedures by this coming Wednesday, it’s to the doctor I will be going.

Oh, freaking joy.

Bleah! *Sigh* I hate being sick. I never know how coherent I’m being, when I’m sick. If I ramble at anyone more than usual and its less easily followed than normal, folks, just ignore me or ask for clarification later. My brain doesn’t process much of anything so well through excessive sinus pressure.

Current Mood: headachey and kind of bleahish

Oy! I think I've finally put my grubby little hands on the reason why I just have never gotten the same kind of romantic Kyp/Jania vibe that so many SW fans seem to get from the NJO series (and which has led some fans to wish Jaina were with Kyp instead of torn between Zekk and Jagged Fel, in the DN trio and the LotF series), and it's not just because I see their major interactions in the NJO series as being extremely mercenary (i.e., turnabout is fair play: you use me, then I'll use you). No. In keeping with the huge theme of repetitiveness of basic plot points and plotlines from the prequel-era/Clone Wars era of the saga and EU in the EU from the NJO onwards, when looked at through a certain lens, contextually, Kyp Durron and Jaina Solo are esentially the potential Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala of the GFFA during and after the Yuuzhan Vong War.

What, not convinced? Let me explain, then. And allow me to start by first of all reminding folks that Han Solo (born ~29 BBY) is ten years older than Leia and Luke (born ~19 BBY), who are in turn about twelve years older than Kyp (born ~7 BBY), and then by pointing out that Kyp Durron, as originally written in the pre-Del Rey EU, is, in essence, Han Solo's informally adopted son. ( Read more... )

In retrospect, I don't know why I didn't see it before (though I suspect it's probably because it took me so gorram long to finally read the NJO series at all and reading it and the chronologically following two SW series was essentially like an exercise in pulling teeth without an anesthetic). ( Read more... )

There's something vaguely amusing about the fact that there's apparently even more implied/contextual incest in the EU than there is in the canon, considering that so many folks seem to think that SW is all nice and bright and squeaky clean . . .

Current Mood: startled and slightly bemused!

I never thought I should have to post something like this to my personal LJ - my own LJ, wherein it is constantly made perfectly clear that I am a huge bookworm and a sci-fi fan and a SW geek - but bedamned if I'll let the brainless dolts take over my own LJ!

If your idea of having a good laugh involves making a complete and utter arse of yourself by seeking out random LJs on which to make total non sequitur replies to posts addressing various sci-fi/SW/book issues, the contents of which comments essentially amount to such things as "you're fat and spotty, right?" then in the name of all that's holy, shut the fuck up, fuck the hell off, and feel absolutely free to go fuck yourself until your brain actually begins to fire its neurons in sequence again and you are capable of forming and expressing a single intelligent (and grammatically correct!) thought.

asshatdeflector, this gorram well means you and all others of your infantile ilk. Your puerile comments are neither wanted nor welcome here. Nor are you.

You will be blocked from this LJ if you continue to make a nuisance of yourself and reported if you continue to harass me or attempt to harass any of the intelligent, coherent, serious commentators for the posts on this LJ.

Is that perfectly clear, now, dare I hope, or do I need to use smaller, less thoroughly punctuated and properly capitalized words?

Current Mood: I really don't get some people

How freakin' hard is it to offer something in a nice neat freakin' normal PDF file instead of some gorram exotic kind of damned spreadsheet? Every freakin' body and their neighbor can open PDF files - Acrobat is the easiest gorram thing in the world to get - not all computers come configured with office-y type programs like whatever the hell kind of spreadsheet this file for the full dictionary/ lexicon of Mando'a at http://www.karentraviss.com/html/newmando.htm apparently requires to open! Goddamnit! The Mandalorians are the most interesting development in SW in, like, ten freakin' years, and I can't even look at the gorram language files because the creator of said files is too gorram lazy to post them in a file format our computer - like most other computers in the world, in all probablility - can read and her suggestion to download a free Microsoft Office-type suite from OpenOffice is so much shite because I can assure you fine folks that the site doesn't freakin' work - twelve attempts in two days all ending in a "incomplete and/or corrupted file" to me translates into the site being frakked up, dammit! And none of the gorram links to any of the StarWars.com pages that should have PDF files of Mando'a over at the Wookiepedia or even the regular old Wikipedia work any gorram longer! *Has an absolute fit* WHY does it have to be so gorram hard to track down the only things in the whole freakin' EU that are of any gorram interest anymore?! This is precisely the same kind of thing I was griping about as the damned short stories and/or novellas/novelettes that are published no where except in certain editions of other EU novels or magazines that not all fans have access to or buy because some of us prefer hardbacks that will last longer and the rule seems to be to wait for the cheapest trade paperback version for any such extras! How gorram hard would it be to collect all the various short stories and novelettes up through novellas into another book like those Tales of . . . books they used to put out all the time? How gorram hard would it be to publish an actual book with a guide to all things Mandalorian, including the gorram language, instead of only having things available for download for people who own computers with certain gorram types of apparently exotic reader programs?! WHY do I even freakin' BOTHER with ANY of the gorram EU anymore?! *Goes outside to scream in frustration*

Current Mood: in the mood to break something

Y'all know what? It occurred to me, yesterday (when we were finishing up with the last of our six bushels of apples that needed peeled and sliced and cored and packed away for freezing), that, of the literally 50-some-odd Star Wars EU books (as in, the novels written for adults, so not including the probably 50-some-odd young adult EU novels I've also read or re-read in that same time) that I've read in the past three years or so (ever since I decided that I needed to catch up with the EU, including from the NJO onwards, if I was seriously considering ever taking my prequel-era AUs forward into the intra-trio timeline and afterwards, through the OT and post-RotJ), there are really only three novels that I've come across that were published after the switch over to Del Rey that weren't set during the prequel-era timeline that I've actually genuinely just flat-out enjoyed. Wanna take a guess as to which three they were? I'll give y'all a hint. All three were stand-alones. All three took place either in the intra-trio timeframe just prior to and/or concurrent to A New Hope or else during the OT timeframe. Oh, and all three in some way involved Vader and/or at least major reference to the first fully finished and functional Death Star. And one was written by Timothy Zahn. ( Read more... )

From now on, the only SW books I'm reading any longer strictly as a fan looking for something to enjoy are going to pretty much be prequel-era (and maybe some intra-trio and/or set concurrently with the OT era) books, like Karen Traviss' Republic Commando books and Clone Wars era novels like Matthew Stover's Shatterpoint. And to the lowest level of hell with the rest! If I ever read them, it will be purely to find out what to avoid ever having happen in the GFFA!

( Read more... )

Current Mood: Honestly I've reached my limit

Hot damn!

I've just been proven right about three different things in the basic plotline of Heroes that I never thought would really prove to be true! Namely: one, Sylar (or Gabriel) is related to the Petrellis (I've always told my mom it'd make more sense for him to be related to Peter, given the similarity in their gifts); Angela Petrelli has a power and it is related to Peter's empathy (she has a mind gift. She dreams the future. I always thought that one of their parents should have a talent exactly like this and figured it would be Angela, especially given how certain she seemed to be that Peter would not die when he blew up New York, damnit!); and three, if the Company could create a virus that shuts people's talents off, then they must, logically, also be working on a way to give other people talents and/or to breed individuals with specific talents (as the potentially perfect soldiers/weapons). Yatta!!! I am vindicated!!!!!!!!! (Plus, the whole thing with Mohinder is hilariously reminiscent of The Fly and omigod I laughed until I thought I'd die!) This is so freakin' AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Current Mood: thoroughly wired and pumped!!!

I am a freakin' idiot.

About a year and a half ago (maybe two?) I accidentally stumbled on a SW AU WiP http://www.boyfromkessel.net/BAON%20texts/By%20Any%20Other%20Name%20-%20title%20page.htm that centered around Kyp Durron http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kyp_Durron and was set near the start of the Yuuzhan Vong War. It was one of the most brilliant things I'd ever read in my life, and I was heartbroken to get to the end of what'd been written and to know that, though it was still in progress, it was also, at that time, somewhat on hiatus while the author was working on another, unrelated SW AU story that also focused largely on Kyp. ( Read more... )I loved this story, and then I lost the link to the main webpage for it during some round or another of computer troubles and for some reason or another never got around to hunting it back down again (I think, like an idiot, I figured I'd re-find it later, when the author had perhaps had more time to work on it, and then I just forgot about it because of real-life goings ons that distracted me). The author had a note at the start of the story, though, about the person she pictured when she saw the adult Kyp. For some reason, I got it in my head that this person was Billy Zane and that this was a notion wildly held to among EU fans. So when I was making my "casting list" for my own SW AU 'verse, I automatically cast Zane as Kyp, even though I'd had Raoul Bova in mind for him originally (and even though my later discovery of Adrian Grenier made me wish I could recast Kyp) and even toyed with the notion of Clive Owen (who I later cast as someone else). Imagine my chagrin now to discover that the actor in qeustion was actually Billy Crudup, and that the author apparently chose Crudup randomly, not because EU fans had basically agreed he'd be the perfect Kyp.

Well. I'm planning on re-reading the story at some point (it was bloody brilliant, folks, and about Kyp, for pity's sake! How many brilliant stories are there actually in existence about Kyp?), but now I find myself in the troublesome position of having chosen the wrong person to be Kyp due to my own faulty memory. So I thought I'd post here and see if anybody has an opinion on whether any of the four actors (Adrian Grenier, Raoul Bova, Billy Zane, and Billy Crudup) named above would be better as Kyp or if someone else altogether would be an even better choice. Kyp has dark hair (it changes from brown to black and back again in the EU, but I usually picture him as having dark brown hair that might be mistaken for black in low lighting) and green eyes (well, actually they go from black to brown to green, depending on the EU source, but it's a point made specifically at one point in the EU that Jaina has too many green-eyed, dark-haired men in her life - Kyp, Jagged Fel, and Zekk - and it's a pattern I like too much to willfully break) and is generally portrayed in the EU as quite handsome.

Current Mood: I'm such an idiot!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've been thinking that, in my spare time (ha! Yeah, I know, like I actually have any of that!), I should dust off this old entry http://polgarawolf.livejournal.com/85359.html ("Sexism/misogyny in the Star Wars franchise, esp. in the Del Rey-published Expanded Universe") and see what else has occured to me since writing it. (Possibly this is a reaction to my feeling strangely guilty for having enjoyed reading a fairly new EU book, when I've gotten used to either disliking them intensely for their failures of plot or being disgusted with them utterly for their failures of logic/consistency/characterization.)

The gist of the original post was essentially this: the Star Wars franchise, especially the later EU (Expanded Universe), and the question of the growing prevalence of sexism/misogyny in said EU, particularly in the novels, as I am personally more up-to-date and familiar with the novels than the comics and games and etc.

( Read more... )


PS: Y'all should probably note the following important contextual notes regarding my attitude towards all this:
( Read more... )

I'm still curious as to whether folks think there are many other major or supporting female characters in the EU I might be leaving out here. At some point, barring a disaster, I'll probably take an evening to read through this and make some more corrections for the additional material published in the EU since I originally wrote this and see if there are other characters I should be adding in to the mix somewhere.

Current Mood: yet pissed off

Looks like we should be done with the vast majority of the canning and such from the garden (and even with dealing with most of the apples, etc.) by the end of next week - just in time for the wedding! *Lol!* On my various breaks and whenever my fingers don't hurt too much at night to actually type and/or write, I've been doing some minor editing of various stories and files full of notes and cast lists and story ideas, pursuiant to various attempts to organize my notes for other planned stories (especially in the You Became to Me AU SW series), so I'll be able to plunge straight back in to writing when all of the garden-related chores and such are done. I promised to write that AotC rewrite, though, and got about a fourth of the way into it, so it'll probably have to come first on the list. And then it'll be NaNo time. But at least my notes and such will be nice and neat and organized by then (hopefully)!

Random thoughts of the month: There are specific names for series, based on how many works are in them. A duology has two works. A trilogy three. A tetralogy four. And a decology ten. I suppose for works with between five and nine works, you could call them either pentalogies or quintologies, hexologies, heptalogies (despite sounding vaguely like a disease), octologies, and either nonalogies or ennealogies (despite sounding vaguely like a medical procedure), but bedamned if I'm sure what you'd call a work with nineteen things in it (like the NJO series), though I'm guessing ( Read more... )
Speaking of geekery and SW and names for this, some folks created an LJ community/forum by the name of neu_beginning (A NEU Beginning: Star Wars New Expanded Universe) devoted to what they're calling a NEU (because, as they put it, the EU that currently exists for SW "sucks"). I stumbled upon it last night ( Read more... )I know I've been saying the EU is broken for years, so it's kind of nice to see that others have noticed and are at least trying to organize discussion of ways to "fix" that brokenness, even if they seem oddly focused on what they refer to as "minor" characters from the films . . .

Current Mood: but hurried - lunch is over!!!

Okay. I am officially pissed off. How many people out there knew Karen Traviss published another NJO book somewhere in between her Legacy of the Force books and her other normal Mando/Clone Wars books? Okay, so technically, it's a novella and an e-book, but still! It's set before the whole rest of the blamed NJO series and I rather imagine it's important! I only found out about it because I was trying to double-check something for my list of plot points for the Tahiri story and I saw an extra title listed for the NJO series books. And to make matters worse, I can't get a copy of the blamed thing! Amazon, from which I purchased the other NJO novellas as PDF downloads years ago, now only sells such e-books as "Kindle" files or some such nonesense and bedamned if I'm going to buy some stupid electronic gizmo for something I should be able to read on my computer, blast it all! So now there's this e-book floating out there and I'm never going to be able to read it and yes, dammit, I'm pissed! I'm pissed that I didn't know it was published, I'm pissed that the Science Fiction Book Club hasn't carried any of Karen's last Clone Wars/Mando books (which are way better than that LotF shite and actually interesting, from a culture point of view and in a sort of war is hell kind of way) when it's always carried those damned LotF books, I'm pissed that most of the recent EU books are so crappy that I'd trade the whole lot of them for a chance to read this novella, I'm pissed that the new Clone Wars movie sounds painfully, hideously awful and that Traviss is supposed to be writing a series of books based on the tv series meant to follow that film, I'm pissed that LucasBooks and Del Rey are supposedly slated to publish ANOTHER 45 Star Wars titles from 2009 through the end of 2013 (including 35 novels and 10 nonfiction books. That's roughly 11 and a little books a year, folks!) when the EU is already so bloody awful, I'm pissed that those books are supposed to include Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi a multi-book, multi-author story arc following directly in the footsteps of the Legacy of the Force series (another blasted nine-book, three-author series, with that idiot Aaron Allston, somebody named Christie Golden, and that hack Troy Denning), and I am thoroughly pissed that Star Wars has, as my mom so bluntly puts it, essentially become an extremely bad joke.

In other words, I am, mostly, just plain PISSED OFF at the state of things, folks.

Current Mood: and pretty darn furious, too!!

So the Science Fiction Book Club sent me a copy of Sean Williams' The Force Unleashed - the tie-in for some kind of new SW game, from what I can tell, though since I don't play games I'm a bit fuzzy on the details of it - and, since I'm not allowed to run any of the various power tools used in the efforts to clean up the yard and such and I managed to finish breaking and hulling the rest of the beans that'd been picked earlier in the week from the garden, I sat myself down and cracked open the book, to see what it was about. I surfaced about half a dozen hours later, slightly disappointed by the ending and a bit confused as to whether I was supposed to consider the EU stance on both the timeline regarding the creation of the first fully functional version of the Death Star and the origins behind the creation of the Alliance to Restore the Republic to have changed yet again, but mostly just terribly amused by the way that the call-sign of "Starkiller" harkened back to the earliest drafts of Lucas' The Star Wars scripts and pleased with the continuity established between Galen's thoughts on the Force and the thoughts of other characters on the Force in the EU. (And y'all, tell me if I call him Garen at any point, please! The similarities of those namess and the scarcity of times he's actually called Galen in the book make it very likely I'm going to screw up and call him the wrong thing at some point.) The notion that it is not the Force that has limits but rather that it is individuals who limit the Force is one that dovetails nicely with my own understanding of the way the Force should work and reminds me somehow of arguments put forth by Matthew Stover's Traitor (which, despite its focus on Darth Dumbarse Jacen Prufrock and the Squawking Sith Chicken, is probably the most interesting/well-written of all the NJO books, in my not so very humble opinion).

It seems a bit strange for me to be essentially praising an EU book when I've made it pretty darn clear that I'm one of those fans who's not overly pleased with the EU, ( Read more... )

Current Mood: and vaguely contemplative

Our electricity went out yesterday at around a quarter to one o'clock (pm) and was out (so far as I know) until approximately 6:30 (am) this morning. Ever try to hull beans or break beans by candlelight with nothing to do but yak and/or listen to a battery-powered radio for entertainment? It's . . . interesting, to say to least. The thing is, we didn't even have a storm. Well, we had a bit of a wind storm, but no rain, no lightning, no nothing like that. We were told, when we called our electricity company, that the folks they got their power from was completely down and it might be two days until anyone got any power again. Folks over in Louisville, KY, who suffered from the same kind of problem, are, I'm told, still out, but we got our power back. I've yet to hear any coherent explanation as to why all of a sudden everybody's power seems to've gone out in like a fify-mile radius, but it looks like we'll be cleaning up downed leaves and tree branches and etc. outside for the next day or so. *Sigh*

In somewhat good news, after a while my mom decided that hulling beans in the dark might not be such a good idea, and I probably got a good solid five hours in last night (mostly by candlelight) going through some of my old handwritten notes and sketching out possibilities for more of my SW stories. One of these days I swear I'm going to rewrite Star by Star so that Tahiri used a variant of Darth Dumbarse's Jacen's flow-walking to go back and fix things so that Anakin lives . . . I've decided I have too many notes on the subject to just let them lie for forever, whether I write the story for NaNo this year or not!

Current Mood: slightly cranky about the mess

I’m updating this list mostly for my own reference/peace of mind, folks. I don’t think it’s all that likely to ruin much of anything for anybody (whenever I finally get around to writing this), but I suppose this could fall under the category of spoilerish things, seeing as how it’s basically a mental checklist of plot threads for a novel-sized work I plan on writing one of these days . . .

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Major Plot Points/Story Arcs for the *Projected AU Rewrite of TPM* for the You Became to Me Series:

**Of all the various projected works for the You Became to Me AU SW series, the AU version of TPM is likely to be the one that most closely follows the unfolding path of the canon (or EU) version.

1.) The events of TPM, retold from new perspectives and with some surprising twists and new additions . . . Or, this is how TPM should have gone, by all rights!
A.), B.), C.), D.), E.), F.), & G.)

2.) If a Gungan trips while swimming in the water, does the Force laugh at or with him? Or, why it actually happened to be that Jar Jar just happened to be right where he’d run into Qui-Gon Jinn.
G.)

3.) Padmé’s background and grooming for politics by her grandmother (Winama Naberrie). Or, they call this kind of thing nepotism on some worlds, you know . . .
A.), B.), & C.)
( Read more... )
THEMATICS: OR, CATEGORIES FOR THE ABOVE:
A.) Family (by blood or otherwise)
B.) The handmaidens and their sworn Lady
C.) Politics
D.) Bad guys
E.) Superweapons and other Sithly machinations
F.) Unbalanced Jedi
G.) Allies

Current Mood: Ooh, too much caffeine!!!!!!!!

Okay, so this is a list of handmaidens by classes that I worked out that's basically meant to show the various training classes that handmaidens were in. It's mostly for my own use, but anyone curious about the handmaidens is welcome to take a gander. I created this list to help me keep track of which of the handmaidens would still be alive during the AotC timeline when I was in the planning stages of my AU work Becoming Love: I, In You: The Rise of the Clone Wars (no, actually, I haven't forgotten about this story. I've just unfortunately been too busy to work on it for awhile - something I hope will change, after we've done canning all the beans from the garden!); however, it should be noted that the handmaidens and classes are the same for my AU series You Became to Me and such works as my Thwarting the Revenge of the Sith trio.

Handmaiden names are all in bold type, with the name of the real life person each handmaiden is modelled on listed next to that handmaiden's name in normal type. If a handmaiden's name is also italicized for any of the classes listed from class four-and-one-half through class six, then it is safe to assume that, of those specific classes, that handmaiden is alive at and active during the time of Becoming Love: I, In You: The Rise of the Clone Wars, following the explosion at the landing pad. It is also safe to assume that all handmaidens in classes seven and onwards do not become handmaidens until well after the start of the Clone Wars (and so will not feature in Becoming Love: I, In You: The Rise of the Clone Wars). Handmaidens should, as always, be pictured as being within a few years of age to either side of the actual age of the Lady they are sworn to serve. (In other words, if a handmaiden begins serves Padmé when Padmé is fifteen, that handmaiden should be ~13-17ish. If a handmaiden begins to serve Padmé when Padmé is twenty-four, then that handmaiden should be ~22-26.)

THE HANDMAIDEN LIST FOR PADMÉ:
( Read more... )

At some point, I'll probably also do a list like this of handmaiden classes for the handmaidens of Jamillia and Apailana.

Current Mood: I stayed up too late last nght

I frakking well hate technology. The one gorram day of the week I’m supposed to be able to kick back and take it easy to do whatever the hell I want to, and of course my gorram internet service is going to be experiencing “connectivity issues” (whatever the frak that means) all gorram day long. Hrumph! Well. Needless to say, I’ve swapped out my plans for the days this week ( Read more... )
Here’s hoping folks are having a better day than I am!

PS: I'm not too sure about Fringe. It's not bad, but it mostly just makes me miss the days when The X-Files was on tv. *Sigh* I'll give it three episodes and see how it goes. I get the feeling it's too early to tell after just this one show (though I will admit flat out that I really enjoyed the odd comedic moments, like the whole cow thing. Also, the kid from Dawson's Creek - and omigod, but doesn't that bring back horrible memories! I used to quite literally hide from a girl at my undergrad who was determined to bring me along to some kind of Dawson's Creek/Felicity marathon watchings - calling the blonde freckled girl "sweetheart" made me snort tea up my nose). *Shrugs* ( Read more... )

Current Mood: in a hurry

After spending roughly seven hours out of the house on Saturday because of a cousin's bridal shower, I was surprised to receive a phone call from a friend I hadn't seen in years. ( Read more... )Needless to say, I had a blast, but between the bridal shower and running all over creation (well, that's what it felt like, by the end of the day, anyway) with Katie I'm pretty darn sure that I got absolutely nothing accomplished this weekend. *Grins* Ah, well. I guess I'll just have to work harder this week, to make up for the lost day and a half when I honestly should have been doing slightly more useful/constructive things. *Shrugs and sighs* It was nice to catch up with her, though. I don't see too many of the people I went to school with anymore. I feel it was a fair trade, even if I'm probably going to wish I'd had that extra day to get things done in before the week's probably up . . .

Current Mood: Busy, though. Lots to do!!!!!!

So the bridal shower for the cousin's upcoming wedding was today. Left at about 11 to get there by 12 and just got in (it's almost 6), so things ran later than I thought they would, but the house was full and everybody had a fine ol' time, so it's all good. The blushing bride-to-be received beaucoup loot, which is good for her, and we even got to tease her about having a proper trousseau now, since several individuals bought various clothing items. *Grins*

In other news, I think my brain is playing tricks on me. I keep waking up with theme songs in my head. Today it was the opener/closer for BSG (with the drums). Yesterday, it was the season two music for Witchblade. Day before, it was the Firefly theme song. Day before that, it was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And the day before that, I'm pretty sure I woke up to old X-File music. I can't decide if my brain's trying to tell me something (maybe about what I should choose to watch, when I settle in for all the bean breaking I'm probably going to be doing in the coming weeks) or what, but I'm beginning to wonder if there's a pattern or if I'm going to start channeling movie music or something next . . .

Current Mood: It's been a fairly good day!!!

This is going to be another one of those whiney/rantish posts. I'm once again tired and sore and I feel like I STILL have sugar-y/starch-y residue in my hair from the blasted corn. Bleah! Large gardens really aren't all they've crack up to be, y'all. Does it make sense to say something is kicking your arse when in reality it's more like it's crippling your hands? Urgh. I'm getting my arse kicked by vegetables.

*Heaves long-suffering sigh and winces over already kinda sore hands/wrists*

Okay. So, we live out in the country. We aren't farmers, per se, and we certainly aren't "live off the land" survivalist type folks or anything. But we ( Read more... )

Current Mood: whiney. My wrists HURT dangit!

*Sigh* I have liked Bones ever since I saw the first episode. Between the sheer joy of the unimaginably wondrous geekiness of the squints, the rather Mulder/Scully-type chemistry between Agent Seeley Booth and Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan, and the rather sly sense of humor so often exhibited by the ensemble cast, it was probably inevitable I'd be hooked pretty much from the get-go. However, ( Read more... )after such a promising beginning and two (and about a half) perfectly wonderful seasons, this show has so thoroughly managed to let me down that I am so disgusted that I'm fairly certain I won't be watching any more of it. Ever. Again.

Pity. The show had SUCH potential and I do so like David Boreanaz's rather brash Agent Booth . . . *Sigh*

Current Mood: Grumpy & feeling very let down

*Grumps* So. The Harry Potter movie's been moved back to the summer sometime. The latest/last batch of Battlestar Galactica shows isn't even going to start showing until January (which means goodness only knows when they'll be available for me to rent/buy, to actually watch) and there's no definite word yet on when the Caprica pilot will air or even if the show is being picked up for sure and certain. And I freakin' HATE tomatoes. I think I may be crippled for life by the time there aren't any more tomatoes left in the garden to be peeled and/or run through the thingie that makes juice so the blasted stuff can be canned one way or the other. *Whines piteously* I don't even like tomatoes. I eat some tomato products, of course, but I have never in my life eaten an actual tomato. I think they look like malformed alien fetuses when you cut one of those suckers open. There is something particularly unfair about the fact that my hands hurt almost too blasted much to type even this little post because I've been helping to deal with all the blasted tomatoes all bloody week . . .

Hrumph.

In other news, I now have three distinct possibilities for NaNo this year. Anyone want to weigh in on which to do? The choice are, as follows:

A different kind of SW AU rewrite( Read more... )
The second "book" of my attempt at a Harry Potter rewrite. ( Read more... )
A rewrite of Serenity ( Read more... )

My problem here is that I keep changing my mind about what to write. I was going to write Tahiri (because Star by Star and most everything in the EU after it just infuriates/offends me that much), since it was what I was planning on doing last NaNo, before work and broken bones and, well, it kinda became impossible for me to actually physically write/type. Then I was going to write more of the HP, since the sixth movie was coming out at the end of November and I thought it would be appropriate. But my brain's been juggling SW/BSG/F-S stuff ever since I discoverd the "reimagined" BSG and that the Firefly-class transport ship of my favourite Joss Whedon 'verse actually shows up in all three 'verses and O but I want River Tam and Asajj Ventress to meet! *Whines piteously some more* Why can't NaNo happen three times a year, instead of just one? Does anyone know of something like NaNo that happens in, say, January or February or March? (No, not even I am crazy enough to want to commit to writing at least 50,000 words in the month of December! I'm insane, not crazy!)

Current Mood: and my hands bloody HURT!!!!!!

Remember the cousin I said was getting married? ( Read more... )Well, her grandma (most everybody in my generation or after calls her Nanna) had a nasty asthma attack trying to help her daughter rake mulch at her house to get ready for the bridal shower (which is this weekend after this coming weekend), so for the past two weekends I've been drafted to babysit another older cousin's step-daughter while everybody else who was available to help was out working in the gardens. I've spent my past two weekends reading most of the later half of Cornelia Funke's Inkspell to an eight-and-a-third-year-old, arguing that eight-and-a-third is too young still to watch Peter Jackson's LotR trio ( Read more... ), being roped into watching the first five Harry Potter movies instead because I'm a sap and an idiot and by the time I remembered that the latter two of those might not be entirely appropriate for an eight-and-a-third-year-old either we'd already watched the first three and it wouldn't be "fair" to only watch them if there were five out already with a sixth due in November, and being wheedled into staying up far, far, far too late to help "break in" the first four discs of a new DVD set of some tv show I'd never heard of before called Witchblade by the younger sister of the bride-to-be. *Head-desk* Because I am a sucker and was suffering from sleep deprivation from staying up WAY too late to watch Witchblade, I also got to try to explain the rest of the HP book series in three hours or less and ended up having to try to explain to said eight-and-a-third-year-old why certain, erhm, historical realities involving England and Ireland and certain, ah, regional and religious tensions in Eastern Europe could have helped hide Death Eater activity from the Muggles in the 70s-90s and giving a crash course in WWII (which required a crash course in WWI) to said eight-and-a-third-year-old, which involved a trip to the local library to search for age-appropriate reading material on the Holocaust. *Head-desk* ( Read more... ) Hrumph. I suppose the moral of this story should be to never trust a cousin who says, "On, come on! It'll be fun!" and to never try to explain a fantasy series in terms of an historical background. Now I've got an urge to go re-read those blasted HP books again . . . and I don't even particularly like the actual books!

*Heaves a heavy, long-suffering sigh*

PS: Can someone who knows something about these books and more about age-appropriate reading levels than I obviously do (sorry, but I learned how to read when my two-and-a-half-years-older sister did and grew up reading my mom's books. I don't think I ever read at the right age level, as a kid) tell me if it would make more sense to buy a very smart girl who will be nearly nine by Christmas something by Tamora Pierce, one of the So You Want to Be a Wizard or Book of Night with Moon books by Diane Duane, or maybe something like one of the Lloyd Alexander Taran books for a gift? I'd like to encourage the step-cousin (?) to keep reading, if the whole Holocaust thing hasn't ended up making her hate me by then . . .

Current Mood: cranky

Okay. So who out there who's actually seen this new Star Wars: The Clone Wars movie can explain to me what the official explanation is for why the hell a canon character (Anakin Skywalker) established as not being Knighted in AotC and only recently Knighted and still paired up with his former Master (Obi-Wan Kenobi) in RotS has been retroactively given what appears to be a full-fledged Padawan learner (Ahsoka Tano) - or at least an apprentice far too old to still be attached to the Jedi Order according to information implied in the canon and specifically laid out in the EU unless she has an official and singular Master - of his own even though he's apparently still either only a Padawan himself or at least still assigned to his former Master? Because I'd like to know, for the record, even though I think the whole thing is FUBAR. Thanks!

Current Mood: confused and in a hurry

Well. Seems I've belatedly been told a cousin is getting married. Feeing a wee bit harried, trying to juggle things to help with the arrangements and such. Will probably not be online much for the next month and a little. Guess SW, BSG, and HP speculation will just have to wait. *Sigh* There's shopping to do, and help with the bridal party, and help with flowers, and more shopping, and travel, and hair probably needs cut, and argh, must look through dresses for a suitable dress! *Hates dresses with a vengeance*

I loved my dragon book, though. Peter Jackson is supposed to make movies off of the dragon books! *Squees with glee* I wonder who's going to get cast as Temeraire's voice? Hmmm . . .

Current Mood: need a thingie for frazzled!!!