#I also have an idea of someone taking magnets to the Lars home and bringing the lightsabers out of the sand that Rey buried

[oneinathousand]

I’m incredibly sick of seeing Tatooine all the time in Star Wars, BUT I have an idea for a way they could take it in a different direction in the future… it becomes gentrified by tourism.

If they ever make new stories set many decades in the future like the now-Legends Legacy series, let’s imagine that the biographies of the Skywalkers become more well known over the years and eventually become part of the galaxy’s cultural consciousness like the Founding Fathers are to the U.S. and the various royal families are to the English, and some people realize, “Hey, these homes of a couple of the galaxy’s greatest heroes/enemies (the husk of the Lars home and Watto’s slave house) are still on this planet, we could make some money off of this!”

And so, entrepreneurs build up a whole tourist trap town around Luke and Anakin’s homes (you can’t show anyone Leia’s home anymore, Han didn’t seem to really have a steady home on Corellia, and Rey lived under junk, so these are the only options to make tourist traps from) , much like how the homes of many U.S. presidents have been preserved.

You could leave it like that, that the homes of Shmi and the Lars have been surrounded by pretty tacky gift shops and hotels, or you could go even further and have Tatooine be made into Las Vegas in space, that these tourist attractions spark even more business people across the planet to transform the biggest cities on the planet into desirable vacation destinations for the rest of the galaxy using the adage, “Come for the history, stay for the entertainment!”

It wouldn’t just be Luke and Anakin’s homes that become landmarks, but a few other places where they had shenanigans like the Mos Eisley Cantina or Jabba’s palace.

Pod racing really blows up in popularity, albeit with way more safety regulations than when Anakin participated so that the races can be broadcasted galaxy-wide, though like with NASCAR races there’s still a chance death could occur.

Huge zoos are built holding all the dangerous fauna both native to Tatooine and brought in from outside.

The Hutts finally agree to join the new Republic, and they’re less outwardly evil than before, following the formal abolishing of slavery, although many are still involved with criminal dealings.

Mos Eisley is the hub of all this, being the city closest to the historical landmarks, although several other cities are able to get some pieces of the pie by providing cheaper alternatives to much of the entertainment found in Mos Eisley.

Many Jawas are able to transition pretty smoothly into this new era, but the Tuskens… not so much, the cities hog pretty much all the resources and they encroach on their land.

Otherwise, I never want to see a desert planet ever again in Star Wars unless it looks completely different from any that have come before.

[howaminotinthestrokesyet]

Behind The Album: Death Magnetic

Metallica‘s ninth studio album was released in September 2008 through Warner Bros. Records as the previous deal with Elektra had run out with St. Anger. The album would be produced by Rick Rubin, which marked the first time any producer besides Bob Rock had worked with the band since 1988. This also marked the first album to feature new bassist Robert Trujillo, who would share songwriting credit on the record. Death Magnetic would signal a return by the band to their thrash metal origins during the 1980’s. This meant that the arrangements became complex once again, guitar solos returned, standard mixing, and no bizarre tunings. The group began jamming in early 2004 coming up with possible new riffs for a potential new release. By October, they had more than 50 hours of sessions on tape to comb through in order to find music for a new record. They had hoped to start the album sometime in 2005, but they did not actually start writing it until early 2006. Lars Ulrich said that year the progress was going well as the band did not have anything close to the same issues as in St. Anger. As far as the music goes, he assured everyone that this would not be a sequel to that album. Three recording studios were used to make death Magnetic including Sound City in Los Angeles, Shangri-La in Malibu, and HQ in San Rafael. Please note that Shangri-La is Rubin’s home studio, which had been previously used by The Band to make their self titled classic. In interviews, band members commented on the fact that they were making this album much differently in that everything would be completely written before they even entered the studio. One of the issues with St. Anger was that everything had been created there right on the spot, which helps to explain some of the messiness. Lars would say in an interview, "Rubin didn't want them to start the recording process until every song that they were going to record was as close to 100 percent as possible." He would also go on to say that, “His whole analogy is, the recording process becomes more like a gig — just going in and playing and leaving all the thinking at the door.”

Metallica would record 14 songs for Death Magnetic, but only 10 would make it on the official release as most of the tracks were quite long in duration. Three years later in 2011 they would release the unreleased songs on an EP entitled Beyond Magnetic. Compared to the last album, the recording sessions for the most part seemed exceedingly brief from mid-March 2007 to late May 2007. Kirk Hammett had a part in inspiring a major theme of the album that became the brain child of James Hetfield. He had once brought in a photograph of Layne Staley from Alice In Chains that Hetfield became almost obsessed with over the years. The singer would later make this comment on the origin of the title. “Death Magnetic, at least the title, to me started out as kind of a tribute to people that have fallen in our business, like Layne Staley and a lot of the people that have died, basically — rock and roll martyrs of sorts. And then it kind of grew from there, thinking about death… some people are drawn towards it, and just like a magnet, and other people are afraid of it and push. Also the concept that we're all gonna die sometimes is over-talked about and then a lot of times never talked about — no one wants to bring it up; it's the big white elephant in the living room. But we all have to deal with it at some point.” The other title that had been considered along with a couple of others was Songs of Suicide and Forgiveness, but for the most part it was decided that Death Magnetic had a better ring to it. The album title would be referenced in the song “My Apocalypse.” The song sounded so heavy to Hetfield that during live performances he even recorded an introduction to the song to get fans in the mood for what they were about to hear. The entire record would take a look at this theme of death. The one track that could almost be considered their usual ballad is represented by “The Day That Should Never Be.” They also created another sequel to the track “Unforgiven” making it number III.

The album would be released 10 days ahead of its worldwide date in France. This led to another early release date in the United Kingdom. The incredible thing came in the fact that Lars Ulrich was not all that upset about the early releases, which had led to peer to peer networks getting a hold of the album early. This emerged as a stark contrast to just a few years earlier when he waged a personal battle against Napster. “We're ten days from release. I mean, from here, we're golden. If this thing leaks all over the world today or tomorrow, happy days. Happy days. Trust me. Ten days out and it hasn't fallen off the truck yet? Everybody's happy. It's 2008 and it's part of how it is these days, so it's fine. We're happy.” An agency that worked with Lars Ulrich would design the cover because he wanted someone who really did not have anything to do with the music industry. The firm came up with the idea for a white coffin, a white grave, and a magnet keeping it relatively simple. The album was also released as part of a download package for the game Guitar Hero. This became a very important issue as the mixing of the album came under heavy scrutiny. Upon its release, Death Magnetic was heavily criticized from many fans for its poor sound quality as it possessed massively compressed dynamic ranges, which in turn created distortion when listening to it. The group had turned over all mixing duties to Rubin, which really created this issue. The distortion came about because at the time audio companies were waging a loudness war with each other, so the reason for the compression came in that it made an album louder on your headphones. Some fans said that the downloads on the Guitar Hero game did not have this compression, so those tracks sounded as they should. In 2015, iTunes re-released the album fixing the noise distortion qualities from the original release. Metallica‘s site also currently uses the same version on their website for any downloads purchased, which begs the question why they did not do this much earlier. Lars Ulrich would comment that he was satisfied with the mix at that time. They had given up all creative control on that end to Rubin and trusted him.

The critics for this album were incredibly positive in part because there existed a lot of hype leading up to its release, as well as the fact that improving upon St. Anger would not be all that difficult. In 2007, Matt Sorum of Guns N’ Roses talked about the demos that he had heard while spending time with Ulrich. “Lars is a good friend of mine. He played me the demos from San Francisco, and I turned and looked at him and I said, 'Master that shit and put it out.' It's ridiculous. The demos were sick. Eight-minute songs, all these tempo changes, crazy fast.” BBC Music likened “ The Day That Never Comes” to sounding like Thin Lizzy, but having a complex arrangement to it that reminded him of And Justice For All. Drummer Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater would call it Metallica’s best album in 20 years. He also praised the fact that the group included their first instrumental in a very long time. Stephen Erlywine of All Music would write that it was nice to hear Metallica sound like Metallica again. The Observer said "...It’s a joy to have these gnarled veterans back to reinforce the sheer visceral thrill of timeless heavy metal." The album sold 490,000 copies in its first week helping it to rise to number one on the Billboard 200 charts. Death Magnetic would go on to be certified two times platinum when everything was said and done. Metallica would be nominated for six Grammys for the record and take home three the following year.