Recently I was fortunate enough to have a second "What's the Story?" submission chosen: this time it was a partial on Diva Shaliqua, one of Jabba's slave girls from The Phantom Menace.

In case anyone was wondering, the first three paragraphs were not mine and evidently belong to nelwyn53100. The remainder is about 80% mine, with alterations--some elements expanded, some condensed or deleted. I'm particularly proud of the way I tied it into Romeo Treblanc from WTS Round 2. I'm always looking for ways to include connections to previous WTSes in my submissions, if possible. And seeing that the Diva appears in shots with Rob's first cameo (briefly visible behind Gardulla and Jabba the Hutts), I saw a perfect opportunity for a link. I know the "twist" is kind of contrived, but I like it anyway, because of the tie-ins (showing him getting deeper in debt, etc.).

This time, my submission was altered a little more extensively than the one I did for General Yavid. You can read the text of my original submission here.

I-- Basically the biggest change was the removal of the romantic angle in my story.

II-- In the WTS discussion thread in the Hyperspace forum, there was a big debate over Shaliqua's species--basically trying to iron out some existing continuity inconsistencies. I chickened out on the species and just sidestepped the whole thing. Sure, it's the cheap and easy way out, but even if I'd been able to hammer out an all-encompassing origin story, there wouldn't have been any room for the meaty part of the tale. Fortunately, "they" seamlessly combined my entry with the species origin story from nelwyn53100.

III-- Since there was a similar character in the same scene called Diva Funquita, there was also some debate over whether "Diva" was a given name, species name, title/honorific, or something else. I'd made "Diva" a title and gave her an additional first name (Diva Eo Shaliqua).

IV-- "Ingoda the Hutt" was more or less my original creation, although the bit about him "collecting" Theelins was obviously based on nelwyn53100's section. Originally I'd named him "Inagadda the Hutt" ... and yes, it's an Iron Butterfly reference.... On a whim, in roundabout homage to the relatively lengthy discussion about "Diva", I named my Hutt after the Iron Butterfly song "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida". ......See what it is, is "Da-Vida" sounds a little bit like "Diva". .....Well I thought it was clever.