#add in tekka and my heart is complete

[aion-rsa]

Star Wars: Out of the Shadows Questions What We Know About Hyperspace

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The young adult books in the The High Republic series continue to shine. Justina Ireland deepens a character who appeared in her middle grade installment, precocious Jedi Vernestra Rwoh, and adds a new hero with a strong, compelling connection to the underpinnings of the era in Wave 2’s Out of the Shadows.

Set about 200 years before The Phantom Menace, the High Republic is the Golden Age of the Jedi…but there are still some pesky threats. The pirate Nihil can create their own gravity wells and manipulate hyperspace, threatening any galactic travelers. Onto this scene comes Sylvestri Yarrow, a cargo hauler who discovers what she thought she knew about her mother was just a fraction of the truth. A classic Star Wars family clash, a deep dive into the workings of hyperspace, and the developing relationships between Jedi make this an entertaining book, even if the first half goes a lot slower than the second.

This book posits some absolutely fascinating ideas about what hyperspace is. It sounds hyperbolic to say this book is the one that really changed the way I look at Star Wars the most. But one conversation in particular, as well as some quirks in Vern’s abilities, suggest hyperspace and the Force might be connected. There’s even a possible connection to the Thrawn: Ascendancy series in here, suggested but just mysterious enough to remain fascinating after closing the book. Out of the Shadows lives up to the potential of the hyperspace incident that kicked off the whole series, and then goes beyond it to question some of the unexplored fantastical science of the saga.

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Vern’s first appearance in A Test of Courage was also entertaining, but left me wondering whether the young Jedi’s untouchable self-reliance was meant to be taken at face value or not. Out of the Shadows has more time, space, and interest in making her a bit more complicated. She gets along well with her apprentice, Imri, but is also uncertain of her decisions as a teacher, or wonders whether their friendship makes their mentorship weird. A lot of this occurs off-screen, but Vern’s willingness to understand that Imri learns in his own way instantly endeared me to both of them more.

People react to Vern’s youth in different ways, and not all of them like how early she was promoted. The prose acknowledges she can be “dismissive.” She shows her youth, especially when trying to control Imri’s powers. (It takes someone else entirely to mellow out his debilitating sense of empathy, and it’s nice to see Jedi having a functional support system.) Nevertheless, Vern is a strong hero who I ended up much more attached to by the end of Out of the Shadows.

Syl’s role is a bit ambiguous at first as she’s roped into a business magnate’s plan, but in the end she became one of my favorite characters. First, she gives a glimpse into the world of hyperspace prospectors, with their own codes and superstitions. Second, her turbulent romance side plot is more a matter of a misunderstanding during a sweet summer romance than any bad actions: it’s easy to root for her and her girlfriend Jordanna.

Jordanna adds to the world-building too, and asks a question that sums up the series: “I want to know what it means to be good” in a world where you can try to save people and fail. Some of the non-Jedi characters lead meaty conversations about the moral shape of a world where the Force is real.

The villains’ side takes even longer to get going, but once it does the Nihil finally start to feel like an established sect. The jockeying between two villains is really fun, playing in the same sphere as many other Star Wars frenemy pairs (from Darth Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin to Kylo Ren and General Hux or the bickering Yuuzhan Vong in The New Jedi Order). The fact that the rivals are an amoral scientist and a vengeful teenage girl in this one just makes it better.

Ireland’s dialogue and prose are a bit more stilted in Out of the Shadows than in her middle grade books. I always enjoy her humor and energetic characters, but that just isn’t what this book is about. The change is appropriate for the older age group, though. It also shows the aesthetic difference between ordinary people and Jedi. Especially when Vern and Syl are talking, the relative formality of the Jedi’s dialogue looks intentional.

There are fun snippets of world-building here, and a Jedi Temple that feels as complete and bustling as it ever has in this era. There are even Jedi therapists! Jedi talk about how they’re getting more and more involved with the Senate, and how the Force pushes and pulls decisions around that. And Sequel trilogy fans will find out more about the San Tekka family’s business operations, too.

The book still has some of the weaknesses of the series: a lot of exposition, a few too many characters. The villain POV in particular features too much heavy exposition and teasing for other parts of the series. The book really picked up for me at the halfway mark, after it became clear what Syl had to do with the larger plot. Perhaps this tendency for all the books in the series to get most interesting at the very end is an attempt to replicate the structure of a movie. Reath’s role in the beginning is also unclear, leaving him mostly a weak link. Syl’s story seems to start at least five thousand words early, a common problem for The High Republic. Another common problem is that while the younger Jedi are ostensibly cool, they don’t actually save the day much.

But by the time the book gets going, it really goes. The dynamics between the women at the center result in a mostly-satisfying showdown. This book was both fun and explored great hyperspace pseudoscience and nuanced conversations that get the time they need. Ireland deftly balanced characters and lore, adventure and heart…especially in the back half.

Star Wars: The High Republic: Out of the Shadows is out now.

The post Star Wars: Out of the Shadows Questions What We Know About Hyperspace appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[oldadastra]

The Broken Saga

Author note: Like legions of other fans, I’m grieving the death of Carrie Fisher. My heart breaks for her daughter Billie and her and brother Todd, and I recognize that the silencing of Fisher’s unique voice is more important than the loss of the character she played. 

This essay was difficult to write. Parts of it are a grief-filled rant. Parts of it explore my own thoughts about how the new saga can be concluded in a way which fulfills the storytellers’ intent while acknowledging the reality of Fisher’s death, and honoring the legacy she created in the iconic character of General Leia Organa.

Parts of this essay are angry. Because make no mistake, I’m angry.

 The intentional and unintentional breaking of the saga

Return of the Jedi ended on a high note; Vader redeemed, the Empire defeated, the bright promise of the future in Luke’s Jedi and Leia and Han’s love for each other.  In The Force Awakens, the creators chose to break the saga to provide the central conflict of the new trilogy. Lucasfilm and the Story Group took a risk in destroying all the ‘happily ever afters’ of the original trilogy when they began the new stories, and now, in a way they surely never intended, Carrie Fisher’s death has broken the saga in a manner that is irretrievable.

The Hollywood Reporter and other outlets recently published news that Rian Johnson and Colin Trevorrow (director of Episode IX), will be meeting this week (early January, 2017) with Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy to discuss the way forward for the story in the wake of Fisher’s death on December 27. In the coming year and beyond, they will work to create a way to bring the new trilogy to the “deeply and profoundly satisfying” conclusion that Trevorrow promised us back in January of 2016, but Fisher’s death has, in many ways, forstalled this possibility. No matter what the creators choose to do, the new trilogy is now, at its core, a tragedy. Despite the fact that principal photography for VIII was concluded in mid-2016,– the pall of Fisher’s passing will shadow it too and may well affect the story Rian Johnson will give us at the end of this year.

“insiders say Leia was to have been a bigger part of Episode IX than VIII.”

- The Hollywood Reporter, January 5, 2017

It will never be alright again

Star Wars has always been a story about hope. Many of us see the new saga as an unwinding, or reversal of the tragedy of Anakin Skywalker. In this light, the opening words of the new saga, spoken by Lor San Tekka:

“This will begin to make things right,”

are resonant far beyond an implied jibe at George Lucas’ flawed prequels. Star Wars has always dealt in archetypes. In essays I wrote about the story during 2016*, I explored a number of different themes I see underpinning the new saga. From my first viewing of The Force Awakens, I believed that the large arc of the new trilogy will be one of homecoming, return, and redemption. As a fan who has spent the past year immersed in the world of the new saga, analyzing the plot, characters, and overarching themes of the new trilogy, reports that Fisher was anticipated to have a large role in Episode IX came as no surprise. All of central themes of the new saga can be gathered under the framework of one of the most ancient archetypal stories of all; The Prodigal Son.

Carrie Fisher’s death has rendered this tale difficult, if not impossible, to tell while remaining true to the characters created in both the original and sequel trilogies.  

Of course Fisher was anticipated to have a large role in the final installment of the tale; what is the return of the prodigal son but a process of coming to terms with the people and relationships one has left behind? The prodigal seeks forgiveness. The prodigal comes home. TFA killed Ben Solo’s father in the universe of the Galaxy Far Far Away. Tragically, Fisher’s death means that General Organa will also be gone before the story ends. From a symbolic standpoint, there is now no “home” to which a repentant prodigal might return.

Unless it was filmed for VIII (and from a narrative standpoint, I have no expectation that it would have been), here are some of the things which will never happen in the galaxy far, far away:

Ben Organa Solo will never see the living face of his mother again.

They will never speak to each other.

Ben will never be able to ask his mother for forgiveness. Nor will she be able to ask for his.

Leia will never see her son in the light again. Never see him whole. Never see him happy. She’ll never dance at a wedding, never hold a Skywalker grandchild.

Lucasfilm and the story group, Pablo Hidalgo, JJ Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan, Kathleen Kennedy - all of them: they destroyed the happy ending of the Original Trilogy, and have left us with this. I weep. I am filled with rage. They have a lot to answer for. Of course no one imagined it would turn out this way, but the storytellers have broken Star Wars in a way that strikes close to its heart, and on some level, no matter what they do, they cannot fix it.

For those of us who have loved the character of Leia our entire lives, this is almost unbearably sad. The storytellers set this particular tale in motion; they took what proved to be an ugly, risky gamble in choosing to tell this particular tale. They have broken the saga, and no matter how they choose to end it, even if they do it well; with sensitivity and courage, they have doomed the new trilogy to some level of tragedy.

Because the terrible reality is that the only honorable, logical, narratively appropriate way to deal with Carrie Fisher’s real death is that in the story, General Leia Organa must also die. This adds a bizarre, free-floating grief to the reality of Fisher’s passing. The destruction of the story – it is another kind of death. For those of us who knew Fisher only through her work as an artist, it is a loss that is bitter, bitter to bear.

“…she burns very bright, and has such a great, generous energy…for that suddenly to not be on set…to have her character; not just her character in the movie, but her character, missing from that very small unit, is a tragedy.”

Adam Driver, speaking of Carrie Fisher, January 6, 2017, with Stephen Colbert

How does the story go now?

At recent conversation around our dinner table, our family talked about how we imagined the storytellers completing the trilogy without Carrie. Most of the ways in which movie makers have dealt with this kind of loss in the past felt deeply inappropriate. It’s possible that our responses are still being strongly shaped by grief – as I write this, we’re only a couple of weeks removed from Fisher’s death in December. Still, I suspect that the views of our average family, consisting of both casual and hard-core fans is pretty representative. Here’s how people felt:

No re-casting.

The Star Wars saga films should not be treated like yet another superhero retread. Carrie Fisher’s Leia Organa cannot be recast to be played by another person. She’s not Batman or Spiderman, a costume to be filled by whatever flavor-of-the-month up and comer is presently in vogue.

No CG.

This is a more difficult question, and a reality it is probably impossible to avoid. With the example of the re-animation of Grand Moff Tarkin (and god, the young Leia cameo) fresh before us in Rogue One, bringing a person back to life onscreen is obviously a newly-emerging reality. Rogue One showed us exactly what that technology can presently achieve, and it is both woefully inadequate to carry the weight of a significant role like Fisher’s, and ethically questionable. Fisher herself was famously outspoken about her unhappiness at being objectified as a fictional character, and railed against the overexposure and exploitation she felt surrounding some aspects of her fame as Princess Leia.  She also understood how important the character was to many people:

“Movies were meant to stay on the screen, flat and large and colorful, gathering you up in their sweep of story, carrying you rollicking along to the end, then releasing you back into your unchanged life. But this movie misbehaved. It leaked out of the theater, poured off the screen, affected a lot of people so deeply that they required endless talismans and artifacts to stay connected to it.

Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist, page 194

In The Princess Diarist, Fisher describes making peace with the fact that Leia is her, and she is Leia. This passage hints at how she might have felt about the possibility of being turned into a computer-generated entity:

“It turns out she matters to me. Leia. I’ve spent the lion’s share of my life…being as much myself as Princess Leia. Answering questions about her, defending her…wondering who I’d be without her, finding out how proud I am of her, making sure I’m careful to not do anything that might reflect badly on her or that she might disapprove of, feeling honored to be her representative here on earth, her caretaker…[it] made me angry and resent it when other people would try to put words in her mouth without consulting me!“

Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist, page 244

Unless Rian Johnson had the foresight to capture footage of Carrie Fisher which could be used for Episode IX, the reality is that some degree of CG work involving Leia is likely to be part of the final installment of the trilogy. As fans, I think we actually have a role to play here by letting Lucasfilm know now, and emphatically, that the fanbase does not want to see Carrie’s Leia turned into a Tarkin-style zombie, that any CG work be kept to an absolute minimum, and that it be avoided altogether if the story can be told without it.

And can it? Could IX reach some form of acceptable ending (if not the “deeply and profoundly satisfying” conclusion described by Trevorrow) even with Carrie and Leia gone?

Yes, but.  

As I said earlier in this essay, Carrie Fisher’s death renders the new trilogy tragic in ways that were probably not anticipated, and now cannot be avoided. Even so, it is possible to wrest some form of peace and balance from this story at its end. Despite my angry grief with the story group and everyone involved in bringing us to this painful place in the story, I have some trust that the storytellers have the skill to do it right.

The reality is that the most straightforward way to deal with Carrie Fisher’s real death is that General Leia Organa will die in the story, and that this death will take place off-screen. To me, this feels like the most honorable and honest way to let the truth of Fisher’s passing become part of the Star Wars universe without resorting to awkward and potentially offensive use of CG or re-casting to complete the saga. But oh, just thinking about it hurts. A lot. Many of us who have spent a lot of time grieving in recent days will grieve deeply again. So be it.

As Carrie noted, Star Wars is a story that misbehaves; it won’t stay on the screen. Our understanding of the characters is unbreakably linked to the people who created them and to our own experiences. 

When news of Fisher’s heart attack first broke, I had the absurd thought that it was time for Ben Organa Solo to stop his descent into darkness and get himself home; his mother needed him. I can readily imagine a version of the saga in which Leia’s death is the impetus that turns Ben back to the light. I can just as easily envision a version of the tale in which his mother’s death is the blow which finally extinguishes the light in him, but I don’t believe that darker path is likely for the filmmakers to take. The redemption of Ben Solo was the most likely endgame of the new saga before Fisher’s death; now I posit that it is the ONLY acceptable way in which the new trilogy can end.

Is there a way to tell the story without CG or re-casting which permits some final reconciliation between mother and son?

Yes, but.

Star Wars is a universe in which the dead sometimes appear to the living in the form of ghosts, and it is possible to envision a version of the story in which Leia appears as a Force ghost. In fact, I would almost guarantee that episode IX will make use of this trope to give both the other characters in the story and the audience some form of closure. It’s a gift of fiction that we are generally deprived of in real life. We’ll have to trust the storytellers to handle this with sensitivity and skill.  

Star Wars is a universe in which people tend not to send letters, but rather use holos to communicate with each other, so some form of CG might be used to permit Leia to send some form of final message to her son. In Rogue One, this storytelling technique was used when Galen Erso gave his message to Bodhi Rook to carry to Saw Gererra. Galen did not know if his message would reach either Saw or his daughter Jyn; but it did indeed serve as his last message of love and reconciliation to his daughter. In a similar vein, a message from Bail Organa to Leia featured prominently in Claudia Gray’s novel, Bloodline. 

Leia, a wartime general, might well have had a “farewell” letter of some kind in keeping for Ben, in the way soldiers who know they might never see their families again have done for centuries.

Actually, we don’t have to invent a message written by the General Organa we met in The Force Awakens, because we know that in Bloodline, Leia composed a letter to Ben at the time their relationship to Darth Vader was revealed. The story so far has not revealed whether this message ever reached its intended recipient. It’s possible that Leia’s message to her son, written long before the events in TFA, might finally reach his hands in Episode IX. 

Bloodline didn’t tell us what was in that message, but we can easily guess: Leia told her son she loved him. She apologized for not telling him the truth of his family history. She asked for his forgiveness. She told him she believed in the light in him.

She told him she loved him.

In one of my essays written in 2016, I speculated that the “mystery box” Rey opened in the basement of Maz Kanata’s castle, in which she discovered the Skywalker lightsaber, was the same box in which Bail Organa’s message was found in Bloodline; a keepsake box from the lost world of Alderaan that belonged to Leia as a young girl.

If my speculation is correct, the box and its contents may have a meaningful role to play in episode IX. As far as we know, the box was left behind after the battle on Takodana, but there’s no reason to assume it was not recovered by Maz and returned to Leia. If it was Leia’s keepsake box from her childhood on Alderaan, it becomes a powerful talisman which the storytellers could use to connect Ben to his mother after her death. In TFA, we catch a very brief glimpse of the objects which were in the box with the lightsaber. I don’t know what the storytellers will do with this detail, but I hope very much that the box did belong to Leia, that its contents were her own childhood treasures, and that the box eventually finds it way into the hands of her son. Maybe Luke will give it to him. Maybe Rey will.

A box of keepsakes and a final message would be a heartrending end to a story which should, by rights, have concluded with Leia dancing at a wedding and living a peaceful life, surrounded by grandchildren, but sometimes even fairy tales don’t go that way. Like life.

With much love to our fandom and our storytellers.

The Force is with you, Carrie Fisher. You are one with the Force.

 * I’ll edit this and add some links to my old metas soon. XOXO