Tag: star wars

Writing Fantasy: The Problem of Lineage

“I have encountered a vergence in the Force . . . a boy. His cells have the highest concentration of midi-chlorians I have seen in a life-form. It was possible he was conceived by the midi-chlorian.” -Qui-Gon Jinn, The Phantom Menace

“The Force is strong in my family.”  -Luke Skywalker, Return of the Jedi

“His cells have the highest concentration of midi-chlorians I’ve ever seen in a life form. It’s possible he was conceived by the midi-chlorians.” -Qui-Gon Jinn, The Phantom Menace

“For my ally is the Force. And a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. It’s energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you. Here, between you…me…the tree…the rock…everywhere! Yes, even between this land and that ship.” -Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back

The examples of the problem are countless, though that hasn’t stopped us from trying to count them anyway. Whether it comes from destiny or something about who your dad was, we know this much; in fantasy fiction, it really fucking matters who your parents were. Your real parents, at least. Your powers are something you are born with. Sure, maybe you need training, maybe you need an eccentric mentor type to help you hone your talent, but that all comes later, typically after you inherit your ancestor’s cool weapon.

We could be talking about Star Wars, like with the above quotes. Or maybe we’re talking about Aragorn and the Lord of the Rings. Or with a bit of stretching, we could include any superhero whose powers are the result of their inborn biology as opposed to what they might have constructed in a cave, with a box of scraps.

In fact, because there are so many examples and variations on this theme, we’re going to narrow it down to Star Wars, not simply because Star Wars (and more specifically, the prequels) are the most egregious offender, but because there is such a clearly defined timeline that explains the problem. Even though I’m talking specifically about the Force and the Jedi here, these are themes that can be found in almost any fantasy story that has some kind of magical power and a specific group of people that can wield that power. So you could substitute “magic” and “mages” here, if you really wanted.

We begin with the original trilogy. Despite all the references to Luke’s destiny as a Jedi, because his father was a Jedi, by the time we get to Yoda, we see someone who doesn’t seem to give a shit who your dad was. If you want to be a Jedi, get off your ass and work on it. You better have the deepest commitment and the most serious mind if you want to make it through Jedi training, or your ass isn’t levitating anything.

Sure, there’s still privilege here in the story as presented. Not everyone gets to be a Jedi. But why not? Maybe you don’t have the natural patience to sit still long enough to let a green elf lecture you while inhaling swamp gas. Or maybe you couldn’t afford to take a top-of-the-line military starship and fly off to some random swamp planet to meet the right teacher because you have to ride the space-bus every day. Maybe you don’t believe in hokey religions and ancient weapons, so the whole thing is just a waste of time.

Regardless of the barriers that might keep you from Jedi training that exist mentally, physically, or practically, at this point, the metaphor is still clear; if you really want to become a space wizard, you can. It’s going to be hard as hell. You could fail and die, or turn into an evil tyrant instead. But you can still try. It doesn’t matter what your blood type is. It doesn’t matter who your dad is. The Force is everything, even in the trees and rocks.

And then it turns out that none of that is accurate, because while it is true that the Force is super-cool and it’s all things and we’re all luminous beings, it’s also true that you won’t have a chance in hell at graduating from Jedi school unless you won the genetic lottery the moment you were born. A single check of your blood type (so to speak) determines whether you can be a space wizard . . . or, you know, something else. Maybe a queen, if you’re lucky enough to live on a planet with a democratically elected monarchy system.

Sorry, the Force isn’t for you. You don’t have the right blood for it. Even though the number of little organisms in your blood isn’t actually the source of the power, it’s still the bridge, the gateway, but ff you don’t have it, you never will. If you do have it, you can start working hard on developing it.

The parallels to fantasy fiction’s love of the aristocracy should become apparent here, if they aren’t already. The special people get all the best perks because they were born special. Again, and again, we see this theme.

You could argue that this accurately reflects real life and I’d agree with you. Unfortunately, the circumstances of your birth determine a lot about what opportunities are open to you and which ones are closed. Even before we consider anything else about me, the fact that I was born straight, white, and male meant that I had fewer barriers starting out than other people.

But my feeling is that it’s not the role of fantasy fiction to tell us how the world is, but how it should be. We don’t live in a world where good always triumphs over evil . . . but we should. Our fantasies tell us a lot about what we value, what we consider to be important. And so we come to the actual core problem: our Jedi fantasy started telling us that we believed anyone could become a hero, but shifted into telling us that only special people can be heroes.

We learn from stories. In particular, we learn about what’s important because we intuit what people want to tell stories about. Overcoming evil is more important than making breakfast in the grand scheme of things, so we usually focus our grand narratives there. And at one point in time, Star Wars knew this.

REVENGE OF THE JEDI STORY CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT, JULY 13 to JULY 17, 1981—SUMMARY
Participants: George Lucas, Richard Marquand, Lawrence Kasdan, and Howard Kazanjian
Location: Park Way House
Note: Many of the ideas here are conceptual only and should not be considered canon in the Star Wars saga.
[…]
THE STORY OF ANAKIN
Lawrence Kasadan: The Force was available to anyone who could hook into it?
George Lucas: Yes, everyone can do it.
Kasadan: Not just the Jedi?
Lucas: It’s just the Jedi who take the time to do it.
Marquand: They use it as a technique.
Lucas: Like yoga. If you want to take the time to do it, you can do it; but the ones that really want to do it are the ones who are into that kind of thing. Also like karate.

That’s the solution. It’s the direction that I went with in my books, although I hadn’t read this transcript at the time. If you make the magic powers a skill that someone can learn, you reinforce the idea that what you do matters more than who your parents are.

In Dinomancer, I intentionally keep it vague on whether or not I think of the ability to wield the Geas is a supernatural power or not. Where does it come from? What powers it? Right now, I’m not saying (gotta save material for future world building).

What I do explore is the relatively egalitarian nature of the skill itself; it really is true that anyone can learn it, just like anyone can learn French. But just like learning French, just because anyone can learn it doesn’t mean the deck isn’t still stacked in some people’s favor more than others.

Obviously, the easiest way to learn French is to be French. Barring that, going to France and living there for a while probably works. Barring that, taking a class or having a French teacher. Barring that? Maybe a book or something; at this point, you have fewer advantages working for you, so most people don’t really try. Sure, there’s the occasional self-starter who really manages to pull it off, but most of us don’t.

Anyone can train to be a dinomancer, which is my current working title and term for the protagonists until I can come up with something better. As discussed in the aristocracy post, this creates a form of social mobility, in that anyone can learn the skills needed to become a dinomancer, and the skills are so valuable that you’re guaranteed adoption into a noble House if you can master it. In theory, anyone can raise his or her station. All it takes is a bit of hard work, can-do attitude, and know-how . . .

Oh, and you need to be willing to stand in front of a bull tyrannosaurus as it charges toward you while all you do is hold out your hand and think really hard to make it not want to eat you and somehow believe that this will work even while your instincts are screaming at you to run away.

And the mortality rate for learning the skill is about 50%, but this risk isn’t evenly distributed. It’s lower if you’re a highborn, considerably higher if you’re lowborn.

Highborn will train for this challenge their entire lives. You can’t take your title or be considered a true member of your noble family unless you’re a trained dinomancer. Those highborn kids that don’t or can’t learn might remain comfortable all their lives as their parents care for them, but they won’t inherit any land, titles, or power ever, so if they don’t want to end up out in the cold one day, they best get to work.

Fortunately, there are plenty of trainers available for these highborn kids to help them prepare. Most families specialize in breeding one particularly powerful species, such as a Tyrannosaurus or Spinosaurus, but many smaller, less dangerous dinosaurs are common enough to be used for early training. From the time they can walk, these kids will grow up around dinosaurs, learning to interact with them, care for them, and everything else they’ll need once it’s time to learn the skill. They’re given every possible advantage to help them succeed.

The lowborn kids . . . are not. Any lowborn can send a child for dinomancer training to the noble family that rules over them. In point of fact, anyone of any age can go to learn, but culturally, it’s just better economic sense to send your little tykes off when they’re young so that if/when they fail, you’ve only invested six years into raising them instead of sixteen. You’re playing a numbers game when you’re lowborn; all you need is one kid to survive long enough to graduate, then they’ll have enough resources to care for you. You don’t get to become noble yourself, obviously, but most former lowborn provide enough for their families to lift them into a pseudo-middle class. Not all do, but it’s common enough.

Unlike the highborn, lowborn don’t have to send kids for training. There are plenty who don’t, since there’s no social expectation for them to do so. Lowborn kids can grow up and live lowborn lives. But the rewards are great enough that for most lowborn families, it’s worth risking a few sons or daughters.

The system isn’t fair. The powerful hoard their resources to ensure their own progeny retain their grip on power. We’re not creating a perfect world here, after all; we still need enough problems so there are things for our heroes to overcome. But the important distinction is that the core philosophy of the world itself is coded as “anyone can learn” instead of “you must have the right blood to learn.”

The elite of this world twisted things to serve their own interests. If someone more enlightened came along and wanted to open a dinomancer public school, there’s nothing inherent in the setting that would stop them. In contract, you don’t get to be a public school Jedi if you’re not born for it. Don’t even try.

How we construct our pretend worlds says a lot about us. My hope is that we’ll continue to see fantasy settings that trend in this direction. You can still make magic and magical powers rare and special without making them restricted to the genetically gifted. I still love magic and hidden places and lost arts. I just hope we see more things like the Jedi as envisioned in 1981 (“it’s like yoga”), instead of 1999 (“microscopic organisms living in your blood”).

Writing Fantasy: The Glorification of Aristocracy

Last time, I talked about two of the things in the fantasy genre that I wanted to change while working on my novel. Today, we’ll look at the first one: the Glorification of Aristocracy.

In The Lord of the Rings, we needed the rightful king to resume the throne after centuries of Gondor’s misrule by the Stewards, whose line famously flamed out (ha!). In Game of Thrones, even though the excesses and brutality of the ruling class are thoroughly on display (Joffrey, the Lannisters, most of the Targaryens), chances are pretty good your favorite characters in the series all came from the noble class. Good and evil are well represented in the upper classes; the working class, not so much. Off the top of my head, the only Point of View character who is working class is Davos Seaworth.

You can argue that the lives of peasant farmers aren’t terribly interesting, since most of them live and die on the same plot of land and don’t really get to go on crazy adventures most of the time. That’s fair, and for fantasy series that go low-magic (like Game of Thrones), that makes sense. But not all fantasy settings try to recreate the Middle Ages in all their dung-strewn glory. The High Fantasy genre certainly does not; you have magical broomsticks sweeping the streets and everyone is literate, except for D&D 3rd Edition barbarian characters and even they can suddenly read if they multiclass.

In these instances, you have enough science and technology in the form of magic, which is often understood in a scientific fashion rather than a supernatural or faith-based source. You likely have characters who have walked on different worlds due to teleportation. And you have timelines with civilization that dwarf our own, yet no where in any of these scenarios do you see someone point out that maybe hereditary monarchy or feudalism should be replaced. And I think the reason why that happens is because of how we view social classes.

I think it’s safe to say that most Americans don’t really get the idea of class. We think we do, in that we understand that if you’re upper class, you’re wealthy. But that’s not quite accurate:

Class is what you are born and raised in; getting a windfall of money during adulthood doesn’t make a person who grew up working class into an aristocrat, it makes them working class with a pile of money. Trust me, this one is a subject I actually know something about. –Rich Burlew, creator of the Order of the Stick

Although the modern fantasy genre’s common ancestor is English by way of Tolkien, our more recent influences like Gygax and Martin are decidedly American. Which is why I think we’ve arrived at this weird fascination the genre has with aristocracy. Aristocracy is great if you’re an aristocrat and we all have this American Dream-esque notion that if we were to wind back the clock, we’d be aristocrats, too. Seriously, raise your hand if you go to the Renaissance Faire and imagine your past life as a peasant. The most humble “if I lived back then, I’d be…” musing I’ve ever encountered are the people who think they would be priests, and even that is still winning the social lottery compared to most people. We all imagine we’d be lords and ladies, but just by running the numbers, that isn’t the case. Unless you’re upper class right now, odds are pretty good your ancestors were commoners, just like the rest of us.

And so we arrive at the class problem in the fantasy genre. Either your most interesting people are nobleborn, because the aristocrats have all the education, wealth, and power to actually do something other than farm, or your commoner is a chosen one or bearer of some secret legacy, like Luke Skywalker at the beginning of Star Wars. The Chosen One and the Secret Legacy are related to this issue, but separate enough that I’ll discuss them in a later post.

Since the modern fantasy genre is the pop culture version of older mythology, you could say it’s fair that everyone important is a noble, since most myths are about the same groups of people: kings, king-like people, or chosen by/descended from gods, which is also incidentally how kings presented themselves much of the time. People tend to tell stories that are interesting, and kings and kingly people tend to be the most interesting, therefore those are the stories.

But here’s the question that really got me thinking: why aren’t there more settings that twist this around? Our brethren in the science fiction genre seem to delight in twisting the conventions of the genre, so that the sparkling clean and technology advanced society is the protagonist in one story (Star Trek) and the villains in others (FarScape, Firefly). One setting’s tech utopia is the next’s hellish nightmare concealed behind a shiny facade. The good Federation (Star Trek, again) has the same aesthetic as the evil Institute (Fallout 4).

But over here in the fantasy world, we’re still working for kings, or aspiring to be kings, or killing kings . . . and then replacing them with other kings. We desperately hope that the Game of Thrones will resolve in a good king or queen taking the throne and replacing the bad ones that have existed so far. The show has flirted with the idea that Daenerys wants to destroy the system (“I’m going to break the wheel”) but thus far, she hasn’t indicated that she’s going to usher in a representative democracy

So when I started to work on the setting for Dinomancer, this was very much on my mind. And while my during my first draft, it seemed like an easy thing to address (just have my protagonist espouse some democratic leanings!), I realized I had more to say.

The world of Dinomancer is fundamentally about power. Humans like us find ourselves in a scenario with medieval levels of technology (swords, armor, longbows, etc) having to content with dinosaurs roaming the countryside at every turn. No guns, no cars, no planes. We’re completely outclassed.

Fortunately, humans do have a weapon they can use to fight back, which is called the Geas (prounced “gesh” instead of “gee-ahs” if you’re like me and learned this word from a fantasy book). The Geas lets a person take control of a dinosaur and direct it psychically. It’s a huge advantage.

And because it’s such an advantage, it’s something that’s hoarded by a small number of people. In fact, it’s so useful that if you have the power of the Geas, you are automatically part of the noble class. The noble families will fight to adopt you into their ranks and make you one of them. It’s a pretty sweet deal.

How does someone get the ability to wield the Geas? We’ll talk about that later. The main thing is, if you have it, you’re noble. Your social class is noble. But how does that square with the earlier quote, about how class is what you’re born into? The truth is, it doesn’t. Your class is always your class, regardless of whether you earn a pile of money or develop a super power.

If the nobles are honest (with themselves and with the general people of this world), they would be forced to admit that this entire social structure exists to benefit them. Rather than using the Geas to keep people safe, nobles use it to capture and train dinosaurs to use as weapons. Commoners huddle together beneath the umbrella of safety their nobles offer, but it’s all to further the grip of power. This should sound familiar, because it’s basically how most of human history has progressed.

But just like with actual history, few people ever want to come out and say this. Instead, you get these remarkable contortions that people go through to justify themselves, such as the divine right of kings or similar ideas that the ruling class is the best and the most worthy, instead of just being the most privileged and powerful. The nobles in this world do something similar; if you’re adopted as a noble, it applies retroactively to your entire life. You were always a noble if you become a noble, because they’re trying to preserve this idea that it’s something you were born into, that you can’t change, in a world where you can.

With this in mind, it’s important to note that the protagonist of the story doesn’t think about any of this. He’s noble himself and just thinks that this is the way that makes sense. Other characters don’t, and realizing his own privilege is part of his own development as a character, which, not coincidentally, is a story that I feel qualified to write about as a straight, white male in the current age.

The difference, then, is the direction of the text itself, the “truth of the setting.” In Return of the King, the reestablishment of the monarchy is unambiguously a good thing. In most fantasy settings, it’s the existence of the evil wizard or the demon lord that’s the bad thing to be overcome. But for me, as I’m writing, this is the world state I’m keeping in mind: this social system sucks for most of the people that live in it. We should not glorify this idea of noble houses and titled lords. This is the problem. We should do better.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not writing a philosophical book here. It’s still a fantasy novel with dinosaurs and people getting killed by dinosaurs. I’m not creating high literature here. But even the pulpiest of fantasy stories have something to say, even if it’s just “man, it would be so cool to be a knight” and that’s what I’m keeping in mind with my work. Will it pay off? Will those ideas be communicated? Hard to say. We’ll see what happens when I finish it.

Next, I’ll talk about the Bloodline Legacy issue, also known as the Midichlorian Problem that turned Jedi into the bad guys . . . from a certain point of view.

Thoughts on Writing Fantasy

I really like the fantasy genre. Out of all the interests in my life, I think it’s my love for fantasy that’s had the biggest influence. My mom reading me the Hobbit is one of my earliest and most influential memories. It was a fantasy video game that got me into writing stories of my own, which set me on the path where writing became a thing I wanted to do. It’s even how I ended up meeting my wife; I mentioned that I was running a Dungeons & Dragons game, she asked to join and that was how it all started for us.

I’ll note that every time I say fantasy here, I really mean the entire fantasy genre, not just the idea of thinking about pretend stuff, but “fantasy genre” is tiresome to type out.

Anyway, fantasy is important to me. It’s something I look forward to sharing with my son when he’s older, even though I’m emotionally preparing myself for the possibility that someday he’ll want a football and a pair of skis instead of a Crown Royal bag filled with dice.

My first major writing project was a novel I started when I was about fourteen(ish). It mostly stands as a testament to how much I was enthralled with R. A. Salvatore at the time; you’ve got fifteen page long swordfights, for example. There’s also a romance plotline that reflects how the largest influence on my understanding of romance was the Star Wars movies, and not in a good way.

After that book, I sketched out some ideas for a sequel and a prequel. The sequel actually ended up getting pretty far in a first draft (I think around 60,000 words) but eventually I lost steam and the years started to pile up without much progress. In 2008, I learned about NaNoWriMo and in 2009, I wrote my first successful NaNo project, 50,000 words which eventually became the novel Unrepentant, which you can read right here on this very website if you so desire. In fact, I had so much energy going through November 2008 that I kept writing every day even after the month was over and eventually ended up with a 120,000 word first draft.

Unfortunately, after that first shot of adrenaline, I think NaNoWriMo started to become more of a distraction than a help. I spent 2010 writing and rewriting Unrepentant and I was making pretty good progress, but then November rolled around and it was time to start another NaNo novel. The rules strongly encourage you to start a new novel instead of working on an existing project to give yourself the creative freedom to write quickly, so I started a prequel called the Fey Queen. I worked on that long enough to win the month, then it was back to Unrepentant. That was 2010. In 2011, I started a sequel to Unrepentant called Angel’s Descent. For some reason, perhaps a holdover from my first ventures into writing, I really had a thing for the writing pattern of novel > prequel > sequel.

You can see the pattern that started to emerge. I would spend most of the year working off and on, only to start a new project each November. After my three forays in an urban fantasy-esque romance, I tried cyberpunk, then a frankly bizarre attempt at a murder mystery, then back to cyberpunk for a sequel. Each of these hit 50,000 words for the NaNo goal, but then I would shelve them because each one would require extensive work to go from a NaNo draft to something resembling an actual draft. I think I planned to build up this pile of half-done jobs, pick the ones I liked best, then finish and polish those up.

By the time Unrepentant was in a draft I considered decent, I realized it had been almost eight years since I’d started working on it and frankly, I didn’t really know why I still was. The religious nature of a story about fallen angels, the devil, the Apocalypse; that’s interesting, but it’s also not really me. I don’t have much to say on religious themes much these days. I was just working on the story because that’s what I’d put so much time into working on.

And man, if I didn’t think I had much to say about a religious-themed urban fantasy, I don’t know what the hell I was doing trying cyberpunk or murder mystery, even if it was “murder mystery, but with snakes!”

I think that’s what made me realize it was time to come back home to writing fantasy. It’s what I spend the most time thinking about and frankly, it’s where I have the most to say in terms of story and world. And that’s how we got to Dinomancer, which is as you might have guessed, “fantasy, but with dinosaurs.” Because I love dinosaurs and I know a lot about them, and when I started this one, I didn’t know the late Victor Milan was going to do his own dinosaur fantasy series (I’ve avoided reading it to avoid cross pollination of ideas). But even after learning about it, I figured dinosaur fantasy is large enough to have more than one (or two, or five, or whatever) novels about it.

One thing that was great about working on a fantasy world for my novel was that I could talk to my wife about my ideas in a way that I couldn’t when it came to our D&D campaign, since she was a player in that campaign and I didn’t want to spoil the stories. A lot of those discussions got me thinking about some Big Concept ideas that ended up going into the framework of my dinosaur story, and some of which I think are pretty interesting.

One of the most influential blog posts I ever read was also the one I wanted more than anything to refute. In 2011, author David Brin wrote a post called Pining for Feudalism that basically set my mind on fire. Brin presents an argument against many of the classic fantasy tropes; really, more of a denunciation against all of Romanticism, which of course is where the modern fantasy genre is firmly situated. Chief among his complaints are the tropes of “hidden knowledge” as represented by wizards and elves, and the glorification of aristocracy.

And damn it, you know . . . Brin’s right. There’s a lot in the fantasy genre that’s, well . . . problematic. Try explaining to someone who’s even the tiniest bit woke why the drow mythos isn’t horribly racist; to wit, the evil elves are banished beneath the earth and cursed with dark skin, to reflect their dark hearts (even though living in a lightless world should have made them lily-white albinos). You can still tell great stories with these tropes and dark elves remain some of my favorite stories to this day . . . but there’s baggage there.

And while it’s tempting to just say, eh, fuck it, the whole genre’s busted, toss it out, science fiction is better anyway, I’m not willing to go that far. For me, this felt like an opportunity, even though it would take a while for the seeds to germinate. When I came back to the idea that I wanted to do a fantasy novel, I thought a lot about some of Brin’s objections and what I wanted to say about the issues.

Eventually, I settled on two “Big Concepts” that I wanted to explore, and while there are many others (such as the aforementioned racism), these were two that inspired me to realize I had something to say.

The “Glorification of Aristocracy” Problem: fantasy is filled with kings and lords and knights and other people who derive their power from their lineage. The restoration of the monarchy is typically seen as a good thing, or even the only way to bring about a golden age. Basically, the idea is that lineage is what makes heroes heroic and feudalism is awesome.

There are precious few democracies in fantasy fiction, but plenty of “rightful kings” who should rule, who deserve to rule, and often them not ruling leads to widespread disaster. But even if the story isn’t a “Return of the King” scenario, the nobles are frequently the best, brightest, and most interesting people.

Most of us like to pretend we’d be part of this group; we fantasize (hah) about which House we’d be in Game of Thrones. There are very few stories that glorify the struggle of the commoner, or even talk about it most of the time.

The “Magical Inheritance” Problem: The Jedi and their midichlorians, which are “the tiny microscopic organisms living in your blood that communicate the will of the Force.” Or how about “Yer a wizard, Harry.”

Most protagonists in fantasy are born with some special attribute derived from who their parents were. The Jedi and the wizards of Harry Potter are the most obvious examples, but there are many, and while this isn’t limited to the fantasy genre, I think fantasy is the most brazen about celebrating it.

Basically, even though your special powers might require study or effort to develop, you were fundamentally born with traits that others don’t have and if you didn’t inherit whatever “the gift” is, there’s nothing you can do about it. In Star Wars, you can’t just study the Force to become a Jedi, you have to be born “Force Sensitive.” It doesn’t matter how much of a heroic journey Han Solo had, he’s never going to pick up a lightsaber.

In Harry Potter, although children born to normal parents can learn magic, you can also be a squib, which is someone who was born to wizards but cannot use magic no matter how much they study.

In my next post, I’ll talk about how I approached the first problem, “Glorification of Aristocracy” in writing the world of Dinomancer.

Review: The Princess Diarist

The Princess DiaristThe Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It’s hard to know what to write, with Carrie Fisher’s death still so recent in my memory. I didn’t like “Wishful Drinking,” one of her earlier books, though know my scathing feelings towards the book feel sour and wrong somehow, and I have to resist the urge to go back and revise that old opinion. And I know that instinct is wrong, because it goes against my core belief that all books should exist independently of their authors and that, even for a memoir, it’s nothing personal. It’s just the book.

Fortunately, I’m happy to say that I enjoyed “Princess Diarist” much more. It’s a trim little volume at just over 200 pages (and several of those pages are diary excerpts, so it’s even shorter than you might think), but it broaches on a subject that I’ve been eager to read about and was, in my opinion, conspicuously absent in “Wishful Drinking,” which is how Fisher felt/feels about Star Wars. This is a book largely dedicated to that question.

It also has the benefit of having been written post-Episode VII, which saw a return of Leia as a character . . . one that I think Fisher, had she lived, would have been even more proud of. General Organa is an evolution of Princess Leia, an older, wiser, grizzled veteran who’s been fighting wars her entire life, who matured away from the metal bikini sex symbol eye candy role into a tough, capable leader. It’s a good evolution of the character and it’s a profound loss that we’ll never get a follow-up book to hear about that evolution in Fisher’s own writing voice.

So, if you’re wondering, should you read this book? Yes, you should. It’ll give you a lot to think about with Star Wars, character, and fandom, and it was already a great book even before Fisher’s death. Now, it’s a chance to hear her voice one more time and appreciate the insight she’s gleaned over her life and the perspective that she had.

View all my reviews

Review: Star Wars: Aftermath: Life Debt

Aftermath - Life DebtAftermath – Life Debt by Chuck Wendig
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Looking over other reviews of this book, it seems folks are very hot or cold on “Life Debt.” As the second book in the new Aftermath trilogy, “Life Debt” has a lot to prove. We’re past the point of being able to say “well, this is an introduction to a brand new expanded universe, so give it some time.” At this point, we need to start seeing some payoff. The question is; do we?

Yes. And no. Man, this book is all over the place.

First, I have to say; I really can’t stand reading fiction in the present tense. I’m sure this isn’t the first book I’ve read in the present (pretty sure Aftermath was like that too, though I listened to that one on audio, so it wasn’t as distracting), but man, it was a problem here. My attention kept sliding off the text; I likened it to the feeling of stepping on a slick rock in a stream. I just could not stay on the page. Present tense. Not a fan. Let’s move on.

There are some amazingly good things here, even so. Let’s talk about Han Solo. I’m not sure whether author Chuck Wendig (who seems like a really cool guy, I follow him on Twitter and usually like his content there) watched Harrison Ford’s entire body of work on DVD repeatedly or if Disney let him follow Ford around for a month with a tape recorder or what; but when it comes to Han Solo’s dialogue, Wending FUCKING NAILS IT. And he nails it so well that it’s made me realize just how much previous authors struggled with Han’s voice. Wendig’s Han sounds like movie Han. It’s incredible. It makes me wish I’d listened to this on audio. I still might anyway.

Wendig’s original characters are back and I like them, especially Sinjir, who adds a good amount of snark every time he shows up. But here’s where “Life Debt” runs into a rather strange problem and I’m not sure it’s one anybody could have predicted or could do anything to fix.

I read my first Star Wars novel in 1994 (I think). It was only a few years into this idea of there being such as thing as an “Expanded Universe.” The prequels had yet to be announced, ditto the “Special Edition” of the original trilogy and the feeling at the time was that the novels were going to be Star Wars going forward. And I read them all and devoured them, and I promise you, this is not going in the direction that you most likely think it is.

This is not nostalgia for the old EU. I still have all my old Star Wars books. I’ve gone back and paged through them as an adult. You know what? A lot of them are fucking terrible. Absolutely awful. There are gems there, but they are few and far between (no surprise, Timothy Zahn’s work stands out as a solid gem). So it’s not as though I’m nostalgic for the old EU.

But there’s this weird feeling that results; the fact that the old EU is there and that it formed at a more impressionable age for me, and the fact that there’s just so damn much of it, all that contributes to a feeling that it’s “what’s real.” And that makes a lot of Aftermath feel like, well, fan fiction, for lack of a better term. I keep having this feeling that “Rae Sloane” can’t be the person who tries to pull the Empire together, because that role was supposed to go to Thrawn or Daala (even though I hated Daala). I know that Disney owns Star Wars now, I know that “canon” (which is a term I don’t like anyway) is whatever the creative director of the IP says that it is, I know that all of this will tie into the new movies eventually, I know, I know, I know. And yet. I feel like I’m reading fan fiction. Fan fiction written by a professional, mind you, and even with the annoying present tense, Wendig on his worst day is better than the atrocity that was the last original EU novel “Crucible.” Even so, the feeling persists.

We’re talking about fictional universes and yet, my mind wants to draw a distinction between the “real fiction” and the “pretend fiction.” Even being aware of it isn’t enough to stop the feeling. It’s very odd.

It might be that the new stuff will continue to accrue and eventually supplant the old EU. Maybe it’s just a question of time and the amount of content. I’ll be interested in seeing where it all goes.

So, should you read “Life Debt?” I’d say yes. It’s a good book, with great moments, and a few problems. But this is Star Wars now and there’s a lot more to come. I think it’s worth sticking around to see how it goes.

View all my reviews

Star Wars: The Force Awakens and My Thoughts Which Might Be Spoilers If You Haven’t Seen It Yet

I saw The Force Awakens for my birthday (December 24) and now that I’ve had a few days to digest and think about it, I’m ready to render a poorly organized list containing my thoughts in no particular order. I’m not planning on revealing any major details or plot twists, but the rest of the post will be hidden by a jump, just in case, as I will be talking about the characters and their personalities.

If you haven’t seen it yet, probably best to move along and come back when you have.

Spoiler warning.

With that said . . .

Continue reading “Star Wars: The Force Awakens and My Thoughts Which Might Be Spoilers If You Haven’t Seen It Yet” →

Welcome To December

Another NaNoWriMo has come and gone. My winning streak is safe for another year. This year it seemed particularly difficult to keep my momentum going on the story, even though I ended up finishing two days early due to a nice sprint on the 28th. It’s possible that I say this every year; I haven’t looked back at any of my previous blog posts or Twitter updates to see how 2014 compared to 2013 or 2012. Regardless, the month is over and I have another 50,000 words of novel that I’ll now need to do something with. I have the next 11 months to sort it all out. Perhaps I’ll write another follow-up post about the experience, but right now, the idea of writing much of anything is just tiring. It’s time for a break.

It seems that quite a bit happened in November and perhaps you’ve been stopping by expecting my commentary. I apologize for letting you down. There’s certainly a lot of negative things in the world deserving of scorn and well-honed verbal barrages, but you know, I spent a lot of time thinking this past month, when I wasn’t writing and I’ve felt the urge to shy away from posting about the shitty stuff in the world. This blog started out as a way for me to vent my anger, which is really obvious if you look back at the first few months of posts. Well, actually, if I’m being honest, first this blog was just my squatting on my domain name, then I decided to write a blog to vent my anger.

It’s easier to be angry and pissed off and writing about it doesn’t it any better, at least for me. I stopped seeking out things that intentionally pissed me off just so I have fuel to write about. It probably doesn’t make the world any better but I also can’t imagine that it doesn’t make it any worse. And it certainly makes me feel better to not be as angry. So there’s that.

Movie trailers! The Jurassic World trailer and the Star Wars: Episode VII trailer were both released in the same month! 2015 looks like it will be a very good year for movies for my personal demographic (that demographic being “people who are me.” It’s an admittedly small niche) in a way that 2014 was very much a lackluster year. Did I actually go to the movies this year? I can’t recall. But 2015 has me excited. I don’t care what anyone else in the world says; a scene involving motorcycles and velociraptors fulfills one of my dreams. And yes, I do often daydream about riding my motorcycle alongside a pack of velociraptors, usually on my way to work. It’s just a thing that I want to do, because it’s awesome. The Episode VII trailer has me excited for Star Wars once again, although it’s still a cautious excitement; I remember how exciting the trailer was for Episode I. Trailers cannot always be trusted.

I’ve been learning to cook over the past few months and I’m getting pretty good at it. One of those little things about being a vegetarian means that most of your cooking efforts also involve chopping. And slicing. And dicing. And cutting. And whatever other words exist for cutting things in the culinary world. I bought a new knife a few months ago to begin this new journey into adulthood and it was getting really, really dull, so dull that I had trouble with a tomato. I’d learned how to sharpen knives on a whetstone when I was a kid and I was curious to see if I’d still remember how to do it, so I went out today and bought a whetstone and used my dull kitchen knife for practice.

There is nothing more pleasing than taking a practice cut with a newly sharpened knife. It’s liking taking a lightsaber to your vegetables. I promptly went crazy and sharpened all of our knives. I can’t wait to use them back into dullness so I can sharpen them again. I don’t know what this new feeling is; it’s either self-reliance, adulthood, or some combination thereof. I don’t have a word for it, but I think I like it.

How To Make The Phantom Menace Not Suck

The Observation Deck blog on IO9 is asking a thought provoking question: what would it take to make Star Wars: Episode I not suck? I have a few thoughts on how one of the most anticipated movies in cinematic history could have ended up being one of the most beloved.

First, if you have the time and you don’t mind the NSFW language, the Mr. Plinkett review for The Phantom Menace actually delivers some really good commentary on why the film does not succeed from the perspective of a filmmaker. The video is worth watching, but the points are boiled down thus:

  • Too much exposition/not enough explanation: A lot of exposition comes from dialogue and characters talking about important things rather than showing them, such as was done in the original trilogy. Even with this over reliance on talking heads, core concepts like what the Trade Federation is are never explained. The blockade of Naboo is over vague “trade disputes.” Darth Maul has zero depth as an antagonist. We don’t really know why any of the events are happening.
  • No Every-Man Character: it’s important for the audience to have a character that is a surrogate for the audience’s own lack of knowledge and can ask questions like “what are the Jedi” and “what is the Force?”
  • No central protagonist: who’s the main character of Episode I? It’s not Anakin, considering how late he appears in the movie and his inability to control events around him. Things just happen to him.
  • Too much reliance on special effects.
  • Dissolution of tension: scenes that should be exciting aren’t, because the audience doesn’t know what’s going on or they don’t care. Compare the lightsaber duel with Darth Maul to the ones in Episodes 5 and 6 against Darth Vader.

It’s too late now, of course, but how could it have been done differently? Let’s assume that we need to keep the core movie the same, so we can’t just throw out the entire script and start fresh. Is the Phantom Menace salvageable under those conditions?

I think so. I think we could fix Episode I (and the prequels in general) in just two steps.

Step 1: Make the main character likable (and figure out who the main character is).

If the prequels are supposed to be Anakin’s story, it’s sort of problematic that he’s a nine year old kid in this one. It really limits his ability to have any sort of agency. If the idea is supposed to establish his callow youth and relative innocence to contrast his dark fall later, that can be done with an older Anakin. You’ll notice that Luke Skywalker is a naive, somewhat whiny wet-behind-the-ears kid in Episode 4, but still has the age and agency to be the protagonist.

Since that deviates too much from the established script, I think the protagonist lens needs to shift to Obi-Wan.  We’ll keep Kid Anakin, but focus on Obi-Wan. He’s the protagonist for this movie. What does that mean?

Qui-Gon Jinn needs to go. Let’s set aside the fact that I liked Liam Neeson as a Jedi Master. Dropping Qui-Gon removes a lot of the problems with Obi-Wan’s narrative arc in this movie. It eliminates the inconsistency from the original trilogy, in that Obi-Wan was supposed to be trained by Yoda and failed to mention the man that actually taught him how to be a Jedi.

For the purposes of the prequel, we don’t need to see Obi-Wan as a padawan, let’s just say he’s already a Jedi Knight. If we need a supporting character for him to play off, we can give him an apprentice of his own. That would do a lot for Obi-Wan’s narrative. It would fill the need for a supporting character.

We wouldn’t worry about why Obi-Wan might not have mentioned to Luke that Anakin wasn’t his only apprentice since that apprentice will end up getting killed by Darth Maul. We already know that Obi-Wan is a big fan of the “certain point of view” style of neglecting to mention relevant details when it comes to his own failures. It doesn’t make sense that he’d neglect to ever mention to Luke the name of the man who “really” trained him, but would would he cover up an apprentice that he failed to protect from the Sith? Yeah, I think so.

We need to do this for Obi-Wan because in the current version, it’s Qui-Gon who ultimately ends up getting all of the character development that would have made Obi-Wan more likable. It’s Qui-Gon who believes in the young Skywalker, it’s Qui-Gon who effectively tells the council to “eff off” when it comes to training the boy, and it’s Qui-Gon who takes action and gets things done throughout the movie.

Obi-Wan, in contrast, is the by-the-book guy who does what the council says and stays with the ship.

Hmm, imagine this; the maverick Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi trains an apprentice against the wishes of the council and that apprentice grows up to be reckless, headstrong, and ultimately falls, because although Skywalker makes his own choices down the road, the man who trained him had many of those same flaws.

We also need Obi-Wan to actually like Anakin so that when they duel to the death two movies from now, it’s heartbreaking rather than unsurprising. We need the Obi-Wan that doesn’t scoff at Anakin Skywalker and quip that they’ve picked up “another pathetic life form.” Imagine an Obi-Wan who believes in Anakin so strongly he’ll do anything to make the boy a Jedi. It’s an Obi-Wan who is a surrogate father figure to the boy who never had a father of his own. It’s an Obi-Wan who actually loves Anakin like a son, rather than just some unfortunate burden that he’s stuck with and has to train, ’cause my dead Master was gonna, so why not.

Qui-Gon ultimately serves to muddle the narrative arc for Obi-Wan’s own character. He gets the best developmental moments (such as they are) which are then wastefully spent upon his demise because he never matters to the narrative again.

What if it was Obi-Wan the Jedi Master who watched his first apprentice die to Darth Maul? Couldn’t you imagine how that would drive him to not fail with Anakin? Wouldn’t that create exactly the kind of passion and fear that leads to the dark side?

Remember, when we see Obi-Wan later in Episode 4, he might be the wise old mentor figure, but he’s also having to deal with the fact that he failed Luke’s father and created the monster that is Darth Vader. He done fucked up. 

It would fit his arc to show that Anakin wasn’t his first failure and it would make him that much more tragic as a result, but also that much more vindicated when Luke (his final apprentice) turns out okay.

Step 2: Create a compelling villain

Boba Fett might get away with being a fan favorite despite having only four lines of dialogue, but he’s not the main antagonist of his films. Your antagonist has to have a presence that fills the movie in a classic “good vs. evil” struggle like Star Wars. Episode 1’s dependency on the “ominous figure lurking in the background” means that we have no real idea who he is or why he’s scary. He’s never developed. Thus, he’s boring from a narrative perspective, even if he looks cool.

Vader goes through several stages of development. In the first boarding scene, he picks up a Rebel by the neck and chokes him, thus establishing his raw physical power. Later on, when he demonstrates the Force, we see that he’s also some kind of sorcerer and more than just a big brute. And so it goes. Scene by scene, Vader is constructed as a character. We see that he’s physically dominating and he also has magic. He takes care of matters personally. He kills people on his own side. And so on.

The entire prequel trilogy seems to be searching for its antagonist by creating one character and then disposing of him before he can really do anything meaningful. We go from Darth Maul to Count Dooku to General Grievous, with each character getting introduced and dispatched before they can develop into a meaningful threat.

The argument could be that it’s Darth Sidious who is the real antagonist all along, but he’s in the background for too long to fill that role. He’s the man behind the man, not the primary antagonist in terms of narrative structure. Which, you’ll notice, is exactly what he did in the original trilogy. He was the man holding Darth Vader’s leash. He’s the Emperor, but we don’t see him (aside from one brief discussion) until the last movie. But rather than search vaguely for a threat to fill the void created by the Emperor’s absence from the action, we have Darth Vader stomping around, choking dudes and scary-breathing and just generally being badass and terrifying.

Our antagonist has to be a Sith Lord, of course, so let’s go back to Darth Maul. Let’s rebuild the character like we did for Obi-Wan. We’ll keep his insane lightsaber skills and lethal agility as well as the scary appearance. Those things are good; they make him a physical and visual threat.

Let’s remove the borderline-mute characteristic. Sure, it worked for making Boba Fett cool, but it won’t work here for our antagonist. Instead, let’s give Darth Maul the charismatic presence that Count Dooku was supposed to project. What? You can’t imagine a guy with yellow teeth and scary face tattoos being charismatic? This is Star Wars! There are weird looking aliens all over the place. I’m willing to believe that in a universe filled with so many strange aliens that obese, immobile slugs can rule criminal empires, no one would look askance at a guy with tattoos and horns.

In fact, let’s not even worry about the physical appearance, because we already know it doesn’t contribute to a character’s charisma on the screen. We know this because Darth Vader wears a mask for almost the entire trilogy and his presence still dominates every scene he’s in.

I should note that I’m using charisma to define one’s force of personality, rather than just how likable the character is. Vader isn’t kind, he isn’t charming, and he isn’t likable, but he has a presence on the screen. He fills a scene both visually and vocally. Maul . . . doesn’t.

Hell, if Ray Park can’t deliver the lines with a forceful presence, just overdub him with someone who can. Let Park be Maul’s physical presence and a skilled voice actor be his vocal one. Once again, it worked for Vader.

Let’s give Maul all the scenes where he’s the one working the angles, driving the Trade Federation into conflict, terrorizing the Viceroy with what will happen if they fail. We will show Maul to be the driving force rather than the silent enforcer. Let him demonstrate his own power as a Sith Lord somewhere along the lines.

We won’t establish that he’s working for someone else yet. Let us speculate that he’s the true Sith Lord. We know that Palpatine is eventually going to be the Emperor, but let us wonder about how that will happen. We won’t reveal a “Darth Sidious” who just happens to wear a creepy hood just like the Emperor does/will. We’ll  make it a mystery. We know it’s eventually Palplatine who will become the Emperor and command the dark side, not Darth Maul, but how? How does Palpatine fit into this? Does he learn from Maul?

Let’s imagine the lightsaber duel with our rewritten characters Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi and Sith Lord Darth Maul. They have their first duel and Qui-Gon (the young apprentice version, not the older Jedi Master version) is killed. Obi-Wan is heartbroken that he failed his first apprentice.  Obi-Wan wins the duel, but Maul escapes.

The Jedi are spooked by the emergence of a new Sith Lord. Where did he come from? Clearly, he has to be hunted, setting up the next movie.

Obi-Wan vows to train Anakin in defiance of the council, partly motivated by his own failure to prepare his first apprentice for the fight against Maul. His own need to absolve himself as well as bring Maul down gives him a drive that causes him to overlook the flaws in Anakin’s training later on. From Obi-Wan, Anakin will eventually learn to pursue the greater good at all costs.

This creates a narrative structure that will pay off dividends across the next two films. Eventually, when Darth Maul is killed in Episode III, we learn the horrifying truth: that he wasn’t the Sith Lord at all, but the Sith Apprentice. Oh shit.

Episode I tried to dangle this tantalizing thought at us during the funeral scene when the Jedi speculate whether it was the master or the apprentice that was destroyed. The mystery is wasted, though because the audience already knows that Maul was just the apprentice, just like we know that Sidious is the Emperor.

But what if we thought Maul was the true Sith Lord? It would fulfill the premise of there being a “phantom menace” since everybody would be focused on Maul even though he’s really still working for Sidious. It would fix the problem of escalation that occurs in the prequels, when you try to go from Maul to Dooku to Grievous. After the double-bladed lightsaber and the scary face, Dooku is almost disappointing as a visual threat, even with the dark side lightning. And then you have Grievous and his four lightsabers and you can just see they’re trying to top themselves from what Maul did, and not really succeeding at it.

The prequels need an antagonist with as much power and lethality as Vader, but isn’t a carbon-copy of Vader. Maul could have been that. He was agile rather than hulking. Vader might have been able to strangle dudes with both his hands and his Force power, but Maul is practically a ninja with his movements. Vader was strength; Maul is speed. In this way, we create a character that establishes himself while still playing to the archetype created by his predecessor.

Maul already has a lot going for him. He has a unique visual appearance. His double-bladed lightsaber is exciting. All he needs is a voice and an actual presence within the narrative the way Vader has and you have a solid character.

Would this fix everything? Of course not. But it’s important to remember that there are a lot of flaws with the original trilogy as well. From silly lines like “scruffy nerfherder” to Luke and Leia kissing, not everything about the original trilogy is perfect. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t need to be perfect, so long as the characters are fun and interesting to watch. That’s how I’d go about fixing Episode I.

Open Source Universes

Will Harry Potter ever eclipse Luke Skywalker as a cultural icon? That’s the question being asked over at a post on IO9 and it sparked my interest enough that I wanted to weigh in with my own thoughts.

It’s trendy in nerd circles to hate on George Lucas. You decry the plastic acting, overly video game-y appearance of the prequels while pointing out the purity of the original trilogy and sign off with a flourish by declaring solemnly that your favorite film of the original trilogy was Empire. This statement earns you massive nerd cred, as your fellow nerds nod approvingly and also voice their support for Empire‘s obvious superiority. This is all a testament to the sadly fallen state of the once-beloved creator who lost his artistic drive and his vision as success blinded him.

It’s like Harvey said: “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

It’s also like Bane said: “Peace has cost you your strength! Victory has defeated you!”

It’s amazing to me how many times I can quote Batman characters to make a point.

Here’s the thing about George Lucas, though, and something that almost nobody gives him respect for: he was one of the very, very, very few creators who not only allowed people to play in his universe, he encouraged it. Do you think it’s a coincidence that there’s a huge body of “Expanded Universe” material for Star Wars? Or that it just so happens that some Expanded Universe material ends up finding its way back into the movies, like blue hottie Jedi Knight Aayla Secura?

George let people write novels in his universe. He let a whole slew of other authors take his playground and define it in new ways. Things that we take for granted as Star Wars fans, like “Coruscant” were created and imported into the canon. There aren’t many creators with the courage to do this. I’m a creative-type myself and the idea of letting control of my story slip out of my hands is something that fills me with terror. And I’m just talking about some little novel I’ve been plugging away at, not a multi-million dollar franchise.

There are a lot of creators that don’t allow this level of freedom. Ann McAffrey didn’t. J.K. Rowling doesn’t. You’re either not allowed to play in the universe at all (seriously, McAffrey hated fan fiction) or you are allowed to play, but only under strict supervision (which is the current state of things for Harry Potter fan fiction).

My point is not to be an apologist for George Lucas, although I think he gets a very unfair rap these days from overly vehement fans (seriously, some of the dialogue in Empire is pretty terrible, you guys). The comparison between Luke Skywalker and Harry Potter shows the importance of allowing fans to play with your work. Rather than dilute or diminish your copyright (the usual argument against this sort of thing), unimpeded fan-love is what takes your intellectual property and turns it from a franchise into a cultural touchstone, a part of our modern mythology.

Is Harry Potter big? Absolutely; I’m sure, all things added up, it’s made more money than Star Wars. Harry Potter is a phenomenon. Or at least it was. With no inkling of new books on the horizon, how long will the fan base sustain its love? How many times can you revisit the universe you love without injections of new life from the creator?

Star Wars fans know what this is like: it was roughly fifteen years between Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menanace. What kept the torch burning for all those fans when it looked like the movies were done? It was the Expanded Universe. It was the novels. It was the culture that was allowed and even encouraged to grow around the love of this thing.

I’m not saying creators don’t have a right to control their work. They absolutely do. But I think any creative person should look very closely at George Lucas and Star Wars and keep in mind what happens when you allow the fans free access. They won’t fuck you over. Fans will protect you. They will take your baby and love it and cherish it and help it grow into something so far beyond your wildest dreams. That’s the lesson to be learned from Star Wars.

Star Wars first appeared in 1977. It’s 36 years old as I write this. Harry Potter is roughly half its age, having debuted in 1997. Will Harry be as iconic as Luke Skywalker in another fifteen years?

I’m not so sure. I’d like to think so, but if nobody is ever allowed to return to Harry’s world and tell stories around Harry and beyond Harry, if Rowling never allows another scribe to dip his or her pen in the Hogwarts ink . . . I don’t see how it will be allowed to grow. Certainly, we’ll still remember it, just like we remember the Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia and all those many other beloved stories. But will they grow with us? Will they persist through the generations? I’m not so sure.

For all his other mistakes he might have made as a creator, I think George Lucas knocked this one out of the park and in the end, this might just be the only decision that ever really mattered.

May the Fourth – Recap

Last night did not end up with my ascension to notoriety as “geeky Star Wars arbiter.” Due to some miscommunication, the trivia contest was not in the “8-10pm” window as I had been led to believe, but actually happened during the day, around 2pm. Which, you know, was when I was working at my job, so that was a pretty good reason to miss out, I think.

No matter; I was told that the trivia questions were well received and the highest score was 21 out of 30. I feel pretty good about that! The tricky part about doing a trivia contest is you really want to find the right balance. If every single question is a brain-buster, you’ll discourage even the most hardcore fan. If every question is a softball, though, things will be boring.

Since the contest is over now, I decided to post the questions here. Feel free to give them a try and let me know how you scored. I’ll include the answers in a comment attached to this post, so I suppose you could cheat if you really wanted to, but what would be the point? I’d know, and you’d know, and more importantly, Yoda would know.

Anyway, here are the questions:

Jedi Padawan: (Basic Questions)

  1. Who trained Obi-Wan Kenobi?
  2. What are midichlorians?
  3. What is Queen Amidala’s first name?
  4. Which Sith took the name Darth Tyranus?
  5. What is the first thing Admiral Ackbar want to do as soon as the battle starts in Return of the Jedi?
  6. Why is it logically impossible that Han Solo claimed his ship made the Kessel Run in “under twelve parsecs?”
  7. Which planet is covered entirely by a single, sprawling city?
  8. What is a Wilhelm Scream?
  9. Which of the six films has the lowest on-screen body count?
  10. Who really shot first? If you get this question wrong, you have to leave.

Jedi Knight: (Intermediate Questions)

  1. Who was Anakin’s main rival during the Podrace?
  2. True or False: the word “Ewok” is never mentioned in Return of the Jedi.
  3. In the Expanded Universe, who is the first prominent Original Trilogy character to be killed off?
  4. What is the Millenium Falcon’s original model designation?
  5. What was the name of the Star Destroyer that captured Princess Leia in the opening scene of Episode IV?
  6. Who is the only human character to directly fight in and survive both Death Star space battles?
  7. In the first draft of the script, this Original Trilogy character was described as “a huge green-skinned monster with no nose and gills.”
  8. How was the effect for Darth Vader’s distinctive breathing made?
  9. Of the six films, which was the only movie to be nominated for a Best Picture academy award?
  10. What was Boba Fett’s first appearance as a character?

Jedi Master: (Advanced)

  1. What mundane item was used to create the prop for Luke’s lightsaber hilt in Episode IV?
  2. Who was Malakili?
  3. On which planet does Jedi General Aayla Secura meet her demise?
  4. What is Blue Harvest?
  5. What does TIE stand for in the term TIE Fighter?
  6. What product does Cloud City harvest from the planet Bespin in The Empire Strikes Back?
  7. Before being retconned by the Prequel Trilogy, according to the Expanded Universe, what was Boba Fett’s real name?
  8. Due to the uncomfortable fit of his boots, this otherwise imposing character wore a pair of fuzzy slippers in every scene that did not show his feet.
  9. What was the title of the first Star Wars novel ever published?
  10. What is the name of the written alphabet in the Star Wars universe?

So how did you do? Post your score in the comments below!