This badfic was written by Melissa (radegund@yahoo.com) and involves the characters of "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace." The author's explanation of the badfic elements of this story is given at the end of the page. Click here to skip directly to the Notes. Or, click any footnote.

The Arc of Stars Across Infinity:1
Part 29 2 3

Qui-gon4 leaned against the ship's bulkhead, pressing his face to the cool window. //Oh Obi-wan my love, if only you were here!// he thought to himself. //I never realized how much I needed you until this desperate galactic crisis forced us apart!5 How can I go on without you?// 6

Qui-gon placed a hand on the growing bulge in his belly, feeling the new live7 quickening within. //And how will I ever explain this to you?// 8

Obi-wan strode onto the bridge of the spaceship.9 "I received your message, Captain."

Captain Xophilij Fedecvebenez10 turned to him. "General, Command has another mission for you. The raider's11 have attacked the Tureel Outpost."

"Not again!" Obi-wan exclaimed.12 ///Now I won't be able to surprise Qui-gon by visiting him!/// He took a deep breath. "I'll go investigate immediately."

"Be careful, General. It's very dangerous out there."13

"I will. I'll let you know what I find." Obi-wan turned and

headed for the landing bay.14

To be continued...15

Notes

¹ The grand but meaningless name -- "Infinity" being the amount of time the author's going to make us wait for this series to finish.
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² For the record, I would like to state that I have read fanfic series that I have enjoyed. Being a series is not a bad thing as long as progress is being made.
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³ What if I haven't read parts 1-28? Note the lack of a summary or a link to a place where I might find the earlier episodes.
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⁴ How hard is it to double-check how character names are spelled? Capitalize "Gon" and "Wan."
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⁵ Ah, there's the summary. I'd rather have the characters advance the plot instead of review it.
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⁶ OK, maybe parts 1-28 would explain this behavior, but the Qui-Gon Jinn I saw in the movie did not strike me as the type to mope and feel sorry for himself. Ten point penalty for out-of-character behavior!
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⁷ Spellchecking is not enough. Spellcheckers don't tell you when you've used the wrong (but correctly spelled) word. Some word processors can check grammar too, but a good beta reader is your best bet.
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⁸ Pregnancy? How the heck will you explain it to US?
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⁹ Did you notice that we just changed scenes, and that Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are in fact light years apart? Use a hard rule or some asterisks to indicate a complete change of scene, or at least say "Meanwhile, many light years away, Obi-Wan strode onto the bridge of a spaceship."
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¹⁰ Xophilij Fedecvebenez was a name a role-playing friend of mine invented using a d20 die to represent all the consonants (in this case, Y counts as a vowel). She rolled up a bunch of consonants and then stuck vowels in between them. Heck, it's as good a way to generate names as anyway, plus it led to this immortal exchange: "What's your name?" "Xophilij Fedecvebenez." "Gesundheit."
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¹¹ Warning! There's an "s" approaching! Better put in an apostrophe!
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¹² Not this plot device again! Get a new plot device to keep them apart!
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¹³ No shit, really?
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¹⁴ Poor formatting -- an extra paragraph break where it wasn't needed. This happens a lot!
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¹⁵ OK, did we just advance the plot, or drag it out?
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