This time I actually remembered! Go me. :D

Title: Flight from Chandrila
Author: senatorsfan_ink
Previous Chapters: Can be read here.
Characters/Pairings: Obi-Wan/Padmé, Luke, Leia, others
Word Count: 5,670
Rating: PG
Summary: Now they stood in the interminable line, his wife leaning against him and the twins bickering. It was an utter nightmare.
Author's Notes: As big as the cliffhangers of the last few chapters have been, this one is bigger. Heh. I can only say that there will be a resolution to all of this. Might not be a resolution you guys necessarily like, but I'll try not to leave folks hanging for too much longer. Promise. :) There's also some fluff in here, which may or may not have been inspired by a cracky late-night IMing session between myself and my beta. ;) 'Twas an absolute joy to write. :D

Read it here @ jedionpaper

Thank you, lealynnkenobi, for reminding me! I really am an epic pile of Faily McFailerson sometimes. *headdesk*

Title: Intrusion
Author: senatorsfan_ink
Previous Chapters: Can be read here.
Characters/Pairings: Obi-Wan/Padmé, Luke, Leia, Mon Mothma
Word Count: 3,594
Rating: PG
Summary: The Empire’s envoy would find them, and surely they would imprison her family … Luke and Leia, as Force-sensitives, would be taken to Vader, and perhaps to Palpatine himself, with her unborn child sharing that fate as soon as he or she arrived … and Obi-Wan — oh, what would they do to her husband?
Author's Notes: Another short-ish chapter - or, at least, shorter than what you guys are spoiled by accustomed to - and another cliffhanger, heh. Don't shoot me, as there will eventually be a resolution to all this. Promise. ;) I meant to put this up earlier today, as I also meant to answer comments on the last post, but my personal life has sort of gone 'splodey over the past weekend or so and I didn't get a chance until just now. Chapter 50 is almost done, and should follow within the next few days, as will replies to your awesome reviews. :)

Read it here @ jedionpaper

So'm, I haven't posted much over the last few days because there hasn't been much going on in my life worth posting about, other than that I have a slight cold, and I don't think it's necessary for you guys to know the details of that. Heh. ;) My big focus this week, and much of last, has been writing To Ignite the Stars, and trying to push through a pretty major plot arc therein. I seem to have rediscovered my motivation, at least where TIS is concerned, but at the rate I'm writing I'll probably reach the A New Hope part of the fic by the time I'm, oh, 90 or so. *facepalm* I don't know what it is about this particular arc that's causing so much difficulty, especially since I've been visualizing it in my mind for months now.

But, as ever, I am valiantly carrying on. Chapter 49 is basically ready to post; it just needs one last editing go-over with Katie via IM, which we'll probably do in a couple hours or so. I've written 3,472 words of Chapter 50 but haven't yet reached said chapter's "Big Reveal," as it were, so I also need to do that today. I haven't even looked at the Drabble Request Post lately, though I do have a few of those ideas written down and some plans percolating in the old brain. However, as I said, my primary focus is TIS right now and I probably won't turn my attention to the drabbles (or those poor old birthday fics I owe some of you guys) until I'm finished this particular plot arc. I also really need to make a decision about bsg_bigbang, since said decision will affect what I do with Insanity Underrated and when.

Believe it or not, though, writing is actually not the main point of this post! Well, it is and it isn't, really. A couple of plotbunnies have been distracting me from writing over the last little while and I figure the best way to keep them from doing that is to put them in an LJ post and blab and ramble about them a bit. So, here goes.

( Attack of the Plotbunnies! RUN! )

All things being equal, I'll post Chapter 49 of To Ignite the Stars likely tonight or tomorrow, depending on when I can get it edited. The WS fic ... well, I'm hoping to finish it once and for all, and if I do, that'll also be put up asap.

I was going to blather about stillness community stuff too, but I think that's a topic for another, friends locked, post. So I shall leave you folks with this, and head back to writing and watching the hockey game.

Yep, this is the chapter with the cliffhanger. Don't say I didn't warn you! ;)

Title: Triggers
Author: senatorsfan_ink
Previous Chapters: Can be read here.
Characters/Pairings: Obi-Wan/Padmé, Mon Mothma (briefly)
Word Count: 4,618
Rating: NC-17 - yep, there's more smut, heh
Summary: “Oh, good, Lily gave you the message. I have some rather bad news.”
Author's Notes: So, here's the next chapter, as promised. :) Katie has convinced me to post this particular plot arc chapter-by-chapter even though that will mean some craaaazy cliffhangers, and I agreed mostly because at the rate that I'm writing right now, the entire arc might not be finished until roughly 2020. *headdesk* In any case, I hope to pick it up soon - just be aware that there might be a few days' gap between chapters as I try to bully my muse into giving me more than just dribs and drabs. Heh. And also, this is the chapter in which Obi-Wan and Padmé have an argument about bubble bath. Yes, bubble bath. *eyes her subconscious* I kind of scare myself sometimes. LOL.

Read it here @ jedionpaper

Here you go, Lynda. ;) (And other TIS readers, of course!) I lied - no cliffhanger this chapter, but there will most definitely be one in the update I have in store for tomorrow. Heh.

Title: Satisfaction
Author: senatorsfan_ink
Previous Chapters: Can be read here.
Characters/Pairings: Obi-Wan/Padmé, others mentioned
Word Count: 4,494
Rating: NC-17 - married people doing married things
Summary: But if she had not been his anchor, he knew he would not have survived.
Author's Notes: Okay, so I was going to wait until I'd finished the latest plot arc to post, but since some of you (read: Lynda and Gen, LOL) have been bugging me for updates and I'm writing quite slowly at the moment for whatever reason, I knuckled under and decided to put up the stuff that's edited and ready and all pretty-like. This chapter is fluff at its absolute fluffiest - and, uh, smuttiest, too. ;) Given the emotional impacts of the upcoming plot arcs, both myself and the characters needed an interlude like this to prepare ourselves. No cliffhanger here, though it's coming in the chapter I'll post tomorrow. (Yes, I actually have two to post rather than one. Apparently I fail at keeping track of my own damn fic?) Those who are familiar with the Expanded Universe may note one minor inconsistency with regards to the Rebel Alliance and who named it, but I hope that for the sake of this particular narrative, you'll be willing to forgive that. :)

Read it here @ jedionpaper

Happy Star Wars Day, f-list! In truth I have no idea why precisely today is referred to as such - probably due to the date when A New Hope was released, but I'm currently too lazy to look it up. Heh.

I spent the first half of the day ranting about Prequel bashers, triggered mainly by reading the following tweet on Twitter: "Talk to your kids about the Star Wars Prequels, because if you don't, somebody else will." Cue Liz's back immediately getting up, and me bristling as I typed this reply: "Talk to your kids about SW Prequel bashers, because if you don't, somebody else will. ;)"

( Why I dislike Prequel-bashing, and why I think we should celebrate, well, just being SW fans! )

Look, folks, I'm not disputing your personal right to prefer the Original Trilogy, not at all. That's your opinion and you are perfectly entitled to it. But, all I'm asking for is a bit of simple courtesy. You wouldn't like someone to constantly demean and insult you for prefering the Originals, would you? Well, PT-lovers don't enjoy it much either when it's done to us. The bottom line is that ALL OF US, whether we like the PT or the OT, love Star Wars. And in my humble opinion, that's all we need.

ETA: As several astute f-listers have mentioned (well, more astute than I, anyway!), the 4th thing is probably just because it fits into "May the Fourth be with you!" But I liked my explanation better. ;)

Title: Moments of Peace and Remembrance
Author: senatorsfan_ink
Previous Chapters: Can be read here.
Characters/Pairings: Obi-Wan/Padmé
Word Count: 3,741
Rating: Light R (mentions of past torture and general ickiness connected with same)
Summary: His eyes jerked open and he did his best to suppress a small sigh. It was going to be a long three months.
Author's Notes: Okay, so, I haven't yet responded to the reviews on the last chapter, but I promise I'll get to those as soon as this post goes up. I just figured that since I promised this to you guys like ... a week ago, I might want to, you know, perhaps put it up? Maybe? Yeah. Hehehe. The good news is that since I am now officially DONE with university (yay Liz!), updates will hopefully come a LOT more frequently. I'm already halfway done with Chapter 48, and Chapter 47 is ready, but I've been putting off posting them because, as xkatie_kittenx can attest, a cliffhanger would be a VERY BAD THING right now. Heh. But the whole arc should go up relatively soon. This particular chapter is mostly fluff, though it does contain allusions to past torture, bodily harm and undignified behaviour, so be on your guard if you are in any way squicked by that kind of thing.

Read it here @ jedionpaper

My apologies for the lateness on this, TIS readers! As you may know, this past week and today was ... well, not exactly conducive to me coding and posting fic. Heh.

Title: The Brave One
Author: senatorsfan_ink
Previous Chapters: Can be read here.
Characters/Pairings: Obi-Wan/Padmé, Vader
Word Count: 4,116
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Vader could not take on Sidious alone, but it would be possible — just possible — if he had the help of two able-bodied youngsters.
Author's Notes: This is being posted a little later than I'd hoped, but last week was a busy one for me real life-wise - yay exams, or actually NOT - and so fanfiction was not foremost in my mind. Heh. But anyway, we get a little more of Vader in this chapter (expect him and his influence to show up more and more frequently throughout this plot arc), which I as a writer was happy with because I simply adore writing him. But there's also some Obi-Wan/Padmé fluff, so those of you who came for that will hopefully not be disappointed. :) If all goes well for me, Chapter 46 should post tomorrow.

Read it here @ jedionpaper

Your eyes do not deceive you. This is Liz finally - finally - posting fic!

Titles: The Threat and Chandrila
Author: senatorsfan_ink
Previous Chapters: Can be read here.
Characters/Pairings: Obi-Wan/Padmé, others
Word Counts: 4,801 and 3,476 respectively
Ratings: PG for both chapters
Summaries: Please see the individual chapter posts.
Author's Notes: Please see the individual chapter posts.

Chapter 43 - The Threat
Chapter 44 - Chandrila

Title: A Change of Plans
Author: senatorsfan_ink
Previous Chapters: Can be read here.
Characters/Pairings: Obi-Wan/Padmé, Bail/Breha, Luke, Leia
Word Count: 5,350
Rating: PG for mature themes and a bit of language
Summary: “Is Mommy gonna die?” Luke asked in a tiny voice, his tone belying the fright he felt.
Author's Notes: I really hesitated about posting the material in the next few chapters, mainly because parts of it closely parallel some difficult things I've experienced in my real life. I rarely, if ever, do this, but I think in the end it helped me to write it, and it has a very real purpose in the fic itself. You guys can judge for yourself, I guess. I don't believe I could do any more revision on it short of cutting it from the fic entirely, and that's not really an option at this point. On the non-angsty side of things, I get really excited whenever I can write minor characters and bring a bit of depth to them, and that's what I've endeavoured to do with Bail and Breha. The comlink procedure, by the way, is taken from a passage in Karen Miller's novel Wild Space, and I felt comfortable enough with its canonicity that I decided to include it here. :) (And yeah, I know, evil summary. Heh. Sorry! Oh yeah, and pancakes = flatcakes in the GFFA. Just in case anyone was wondering.)

Read it here @ jedionpaper

One of these days I'll, you know, post some actual content. Heh.

Title: Warnings
Author: senatorsfan_ink
Previous Chapters: Can be read here.
Characters/Pairings: Obi-Wan/Padmé, Vader, Palpatine, Luke
Word Count: 5,064
Rating: NC-17 - married people doing married things, bucketloads of angst, mature themes
Summary: There was important work to be done, and Vader needed to begin without delay.
Author's Notes: I didn't expect to have this one ready so soon, but I got some good work on it done tonight and hey presto! All of a sudden it was set to be posted. I think you'll see why I didn't include this one with the batch of chapters I put up last week, though, because it's set quite apart from them by several different factors. First of course is the renewed focus on Vader. My emphasis on the physical and emotional details may bore and/or put off some readers, but I assure you there's a point to it - besides me just being insanely interested in the guy, heh. The plot is definitely beginning to move forward, although some of that won't be immediately evident from this particular chapter. Just keep in mind ... every action has a consequence. ;)

Read it here @ jedionpaper

Had a loooong emotastic post planned for tonight about various issues I'm having right now (most related to a certain decision I've made and a date that happens to be approaching) but in the end I chickened out of making it. Maybe later. In the meantime I'm editing TIS and reading some delicious Obi-Wan porn - alternating between Anakin/Obi-Wan and Obi-Wan/Padmé, by the way - and realizing that I'd forgotten to do a links roundup post for the latest TIS chapters. So, here is said post.

(Also, random question: why do so many people who write Obi-Wan porn seem to think he's sexier without the beard? Not that I have anything against unbearded Ewan, but slap some facial hair on that guy - especially à la Episode III - and GUH, in my opinion. Ah well, different strokes for different folks. XD I reject your reality and substitute my own, mwahahahaha.)

Titles: The Boy I'm Going to Marry and Sweet Heart, Bitter Heart
Author: senatorsfan_ink
Previous Chapters: Can be read here.
Characters/Pairings: Obi-Wan/Padmé, others
Word Counts: 5,538 and 6,041 respectively
Ratings: PG and NC-17 respectively
Summaries: Please see the individual chapter posts.
Author's Notes: Please see the individual chapter posts.

Chapter 39: The Boy I'm Going to Marry
Chapter 40: Sweet Heart, Bitter Heart

Some random notes:

1. I may be the first person in the history of the world to burst into tears over their own fic. *FACEPALM* Just for fun today I decided to go on YouTube and find a certain scene in the OT that will be extremely important for TIS. I muted the volume and coordinated it with a certain song from the playlist, and ... yeah. GEEZ. Yes, I am apparently really that pathetic, move along now.

2. It is really, really fun to stay home during a snowstorm and laugh at all the poor souls struggling to get around on the sidewalk below your apartment. I actually had no idea that said storm was supposed to hit when I booked my sick day for today, so this turned out to be just an added bonus. Evidently, in addition to being pathetic, I'm also a sadistic bitch. Heh.

3. Sorry, gals ... Hayden Christensen is officially engaged. Katie's reaction to hearing the news? "It was as if millions of fangirls suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced." XD! (I know how y'all feel ... Ewan's been married for years. >.>)

4. I get to see Obama tomorrow!!!! *squee* Well, maybe. He's coming to Ottawa, anyway, and although all the officials are saying ordinary folk probably won't be able to see anything except his motorcade speeding past, I DON'T CARE. I'm going down to Parliament Hill and if that's all I see, then I'LL SEE HIS FUCKING MOTORCADE, DAMMIT. I just want to be able to say I was there, period, and anything else is pretty much a bonus. Hehe.

5. I pretty much fail at posting things when I say I'm going to - which should be news to absolutely no one, by the way - but I'm going to make a supreme effort to get both the remaining TIS chapters and that association meme up tomorrow. Which means poor Wendy will have to deal with my spam, unfortunately. :( Ah well, I can't possibly be as bad as those Anakin/Dormé shippers who crosspost their shit to five million communities ... can I?

6. I have comments and junk to get to, which I will also do tomorrow.

So, here's the first batch of the five million TIS chapters I mentioned earlier today. ;) There's six in total to be posted but I'm putting up three today and three tomorrow, as I don't want to eat your f-lists. *grin* I'll try not to let it go this long between updates again!

Titles: Connections, The Resumption of Duty, and Into the Future
Author: senatorsfan_ink
Previous Chapters: Can be read here.
Characters/Pairings: Obi-Wan/Padmé, others
Word Counts: 5,009, 4,214 and 6,262 respectively
Ratings: PG, PG-13 and PG-13 respectively
Summaries: Please see the individual chapter posts.
Author's Notes: Please see the individual chapter posts.

Chapter 36: Connections
Chapter 37: The Resumption of Duty
Chapter 38: Into the Future

- BSG peeps: if you don't already know, there be a Galactica friending meme over this way! Great chance to add some new folks to your list - I know I'm always glad to have more BSG people to squee with!

- Talking of which, if you're new 'round these parts, welcome! I've added and been added by several people of late, both from the friending meme and elsewhere, and I'm most glad to make your acquaintances! Hopefully you'll be able to stand the insanity, hehe. ;)

- Assignment from hell is finally DONE, which is a huge relief. It was for Women's History and involved reading a supremely boring book and writing a supremely boring response to a supremely boring set of questions. I zoned out through much of the first and second periods of the hockey game to finish it, so those of you who read Bleed Black & Red (all ... 1.5 of you, maybe? LOL) will have to forgive me if my game review's a bit scanty. They played well tonight though, which is one of the reasons I felt justified in only giving it half my attention. So glad to get the assignment off my back, too, so I can hack through the rest of the items on my to-do list. Next up: STUFF FOR OVOC!!!!!!!!! Holy shit, I am so behind on dealing with OVOC. Heh. *facepalm*

- TIS is yet another concern. Despite having at LEAST two or three chapters sitting around on my hard drive, I haven't made Katie's corrections and have certainly neglected to post them. To those of you following the fic, I can only offer my sincere apologies and promises that I'll catch up probably this weekend at the latest. The Assignment from Hell has been eating my brain the past number of days, and my body hasn't really helped either, but I did get some good work done on TIS today, and in all likelihood will probably end up posting five or six chapters at once. Heh.

- I've got a whoooooole buncha links I've been meaning to spam you guys with, but as it's almost ten-thirty and I have to start on Wednesday night's crop of fandom newsletters, I don't think I'll have time tonight. Yet another thing to put off until tomorrow, sigh.

- I'm really impressed with how well you guys did on the Music Meme! When I did it before on my other journal I was used to more blanks than guesses, but as of this posting all but seven songs were guessed correctly! That means there's still a few left, though, so if any of you want to take a second look, feel free. Internet cookies to the first person to guess #12, hehe.

THINGS I LOVE

Star Wars
Battlestar Galactica
The Sens (ESPECIALLY THE WAY THEY ARE PLAYING TONIGHT OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!!!!)
My Girlfriends
xkatie_kittenx
Obidala
Kara/Lee
Kara/Sam
ADAMA/ROSLIN, BITCHES
The TIS playlist
Obi-Wan Kenobi (even when he's over-guilting)
Lee Adama (even when he's emo)
The icon I'm using for this post (*gigglesnort*)
The Obidala Fan Forum (and all my friends there! *hugs you guys*)
The Oath

THINGS I HATE

Palpatine
The Toronto Maple Leafs
REFEREES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Anakin/Dormé ship. For any reason. At any time. Period. Do not bother to comment and argue.
SHIP-BASHERS. ESPECIALLY THOSE WHO TREAT MY FRIENDS LIKE SHIT. I AM COMING FOR ALL OF YOU! /Laura
Asswipes who talk shit about my friends, PERIOD
Fandom drama
Sidney Crosby
Darth Real Life
My body
TSN
The people at LucasFilm who can't be arsed to put out one, just ONE, book all about Padmé
Being behind on replies to comments and reviews, AGAIN

Wow, I hate a lot of stuff. Heh.

Also, hockey peeps, this one's for you: I've started a hockey blog! It's called Bleed Black and Red: News & Views From An Eternal Sens Optimist, and while I'm still tweaking the design and making a banner and such, y'all are welcome to check it out! I figured since I've been participating in OBC liveblogging of games recently, I should probably make a blog to go with it. That and I need somewhere to talk totally hockey, heh. Here's hoping I can keep up with it!

Also also, I changed my mood theme! Whee! *loves on animated!BSG*

This made me crack the FUCK up, I won't lie. ;) And yes, tampering with road signs is a very serious thing, but how can you not get the giggles when you're driving down the road and see this:




Yeah. Seriously. And then, to cap it off, when the highway patrol tried to log in to the system to change it back to whatever it was supposed to say, they found they couldn't because the hackers had reset all the passwords! Officials had to go to the manufacturer to gain access, by which time I'm betting a ton of traffic jams had been caused by people slowing down to take pics. Hehehe.

Elsewhere on the web, there was an interesting article in the New York Times about the politics of defriending on Facebook (which they refer to as "unfriending," but I personally have always preferred the former term). Apparently Burger King offered a promotion where if a person removed ten of their Facebook friends, they'd get a free sandwich, after which point BK would send the spurned friends a message saying something to the effect of, "LULZ, YOU'VE JUST BEEN DUMPED FOR A SANDWICH!!!" They had to eventually end the promotion because it turned out to be a violation of Facebook's terms of service, though. I don't frequent Facebook, as most of you probably know, but I don't think I'd go around removing people just to get a free burger. No worries, guys, y'all are safe. ;)

I will in all probability be posting fic tomorrow, but in the meantime I wanted to point my SW- and A/O-inclined friends to this lovely little Anakin/Obi-Wan vignette by jedi_em. Beautiful writing, great characterization, and it is HAWT. Mmmmmm. And for the BSG crowd, there's a delightful Adama/Roslin crack!fic by the name of "Stranger Than Fiction" which I had a good giggle over earlier today. It's written by mondavis and proceeds on the premise that everyone on Galactica starts shipping A/R when prompted by a fic written by an anonymous author, and eventually even Bill and Laura read it and end up shipping themselves! *grins* Well worth a look-see, if you haven't run across it already. And if you have, hey, read it again!

Aaaand I think that's about it. G'night, f-list!

So, I survived this week, go me! Tomorrow I will in all probability have to put in some overtime at work, but things definitely won't be as crazy as they were on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The special issue is almost done, which makes things a lot easier.

I'm rewarding myself tonight by playing with Kara!pup a bit, and also by putting in some heavy work on TIS. I'm about to write a scene that is ... well, quite pivotal in the fic, and in the lives of Obi-Wan and Padmé themselves, and this got me thinking again about the TIS playlist, which follows the overall arc of my baby quite closely. If you looked at some of the song lyrics and thought about them, you could probably gain some insights into exactly where things are going, although matters are of course fluid and subject to change without notice (hell, sometimes this thing doesn't even notify me, the author, before deciding to make changes!). There are definitely some very broad plot points that will follow canon and are therefore pretty much set in stone. My brain is starting to think a lot about the Original Trilogy right now, since the fic will be reaching that point in the not-too-distant future (well, okay, probably not for another couple months' worth of writing, but still) and what will change and what won't given how things are setting up. Some plot points will certainly be made a bit clearer, that's for sure.

Anyway, awhile back I made a post about the TIS playlist, as it was on November 8th. Since then it's gone through some revisions, to say the very least. All of the original songs are still on there, but I've begun adding some stuff that will apply more to the OT, as well as songs that examine the Obi-Wan/Padmé TIS relationship in different ways. I recently discovered the band Within Temptation, whose album The Silent Force (HEH) could practically have been written about TIS, so a metric ton of their songs are on there. I've only included the songs added most recently in this post - for the others, the ones that haven't changed, feel free to check out the above post. :)

As always there are some notes explaining the inclusion of the songs, although some contain more details than others. This is for spoiler reasons, obviously. XD In most cases I've included only partial lyrics, but each song title is a link to the full lyrics if you want them.

( The TIS playlist, v. 2.0 )

Addendum to last night's Wild Space squeefest: I didn't think I could possibly love Karen Miller more. She understands the characters, she writes them as I would have, her book is shippy, yadda yadda. But then. THEN. I get to THIS passage, on page 152-153, Bail Organa's POV, speaking with Padmé after another apartment meeting with Obi-Wan. It is as follows, AND I QUOTE:

"And you can trust Obi-Wan. You really can."

Master Kenobi. "He's quite intimidating, isn't he? Even for a Jedi."

"Just a little bit," she agreed, and pulled a face.

""You two seem ... close."

Startled, she stared at him. Then she shook her head. "No. Not really. At least - sort of -" She tugged at her loosely bound hair. "It's complicated."

Was she in love with Kenobi? he wondered. If so, complicated didn't begin to describe the situation. She trusted the man, that much was obvious. Kenobi trusted her, too, and that was interesting. It might not be love, but there was definitely something between them, something beyond a polite acquaintanceship or the mere political give-and-take between the Senate and the Jedi.

YES. YOU READ THAT RIGHT. LET ME JUST REPEAT IT IN CASE YOU DIDN'T CATCH IT THE FIRST TIME. WAS SHE IN LOVE WITH KENOBI? AND THEN A WHOLE FRAKKING PARAGRAPH OF SPECULATORY TEXT.

This, I do believe, is as close to canonical sanctioning as the Obi-Wan/Padmé ship has ever received. It's at the very least equal to what we saw in Stover's Revenge of the Sith novelization. And frankly, I'm still stunned that it's in there. But it is.

This post brought to you by the letters S and Q, the letters U, E and E, and the exclamation point. XD

*crossposts to the Obidala Fan Forum*

GUYS!!! GUYS GUYS GUYS, RUN, DON'T WALK, TO YOUR NEAREST BOOKSTORE AND BUY Wild Space. RIGHT FRAKKING NOW.

Most of you probably know that, in general, I tend to eschew the EU. I'm only vaguely current with its canon, and in fact most of the time I pretend that aside from Leia and Han's marriage and the birth of their kids, the stuff that comes after RotJ did not actually occur. It may be that those books are well-written and their plots compelling and all the rest of it, but I have issues with the direction the EU has taken and its emphasis on depressing plots that really make you wonder why they fought so hard to defeat the Empire if things would just continue to go to hell in a handbasket afterwards. EU books that take place during the Prequel Trilogy are a little better, and there are some OT exceptions to my dislike - most notably The Courtship of Princess Leia, Tatooine Ghost and the novelizations, plus the little biographies that have been written about Obi-Wan and Anakin. I was okay with the TCW movie novelization, okay but not blown away.

Turns out the "blown away" label was being held in reserve for another book, a book I'd heard about but had no intention of reading, until today.

I had a couple gift certificates for Chapters burning a hole in my pocket, so Andrew and I went down there in the course of our normal Saturday errands. I checked out the Star Wars section and, on a whim, picked up Wild Space. I read a page. Hmm, seemed interesting. Read another page, and another, and before I knew it, I was hooked. As in, line and sinker.

( In which I wax poetic on Wild Space, squee over shipping and turn into Ramble McRambleypants about Obi-Wan's characterization; possible spoilers may slip in beyond this point - I've tried to keep it mostly vague, but spoilerphobes should probably steer clear )

I haven't quite finished reading the whole book - I'm about 100 pages in as of this writing - so I expect I'll have a more coherent, book-ish review once I finish. Call these some ... very happy preliminary thoughts.

And go buy the book, or get it out of the library. DU EET. You know you want to! XD