#facpov: a new hope

[girlrandomstuff]

do you ever think about leia getting to see bail and breha again at force heaven/afterlife?? cuz i do and i cry every time

[queer-starwars-bracket]

Queer Star Wars Characters (Round 2): General Bracket Match 19

TK-421 | Identity: mlm | Media: “OF MSE-6 And Men”

TK-421 was a stormtrooper stationed in a Maintenance Unit of the Death Star and friendly with the mouse droid MSE-6. TK-421 had an affair with Grand Moff Tarkin. He was happy to be Tarkin’s sugar baby and intentionally assumed a more naive and backwater persona, guessing that’s what Tarkin would want. He was excited to be reassigned to a cushy position on Coruscant “guarding” Tarkin’s penthouse where he could enter MSE-6 into droid races. Even before beginning his affair with Tarkin, he was concerned with his appearance and had an eye for aesthetics.

He is the stormtrooper that Luke disguises himself as in A New Hope. When he went to investigate the Millenium Falcon, our heroes killed him. In the scene where a mouse droid approaches the disguised Luke and Han and is scared away by Chewbacca, that is MSE-6 fetching TK-421 to bring him to Tarkin’s private quarters. 

Caysin Bog/Tam Polsa | Identity: mlm couple | Media: Doctor Aphra comics

Caysin Bog and Tam Polsa are two background characters on Jedha in Rogue One (the latter not even making it into the final cut, but he was also in the background of Solo), but have been given a full story through the Visual Dictionary for the movie and the Doctor Aphra comic series. Tam Polsa was a member of the Milvayne Authority who went rogue to continue to pursue Corenlius Evazan and Ponda Boba, who were kidnapping people to turn into lobotomized cyborgs called decrainiated. Caysin Bog was one such victim, although the lobotomy didn’t take as much as most decrainiated. As Polsa pursued Evazan, he met Bog and the two fell in love, further motivating the former lawman. The two became bounty hunters to fund their search. They were both very legalist as bounty hunters, refusing to kill those who were neither criminals or someone they were being paid to kill. Polsa had a strong sense of justice, albeit restrained by the legal system. Although the lengths he had to go to tracking Evazan and the jobs he had to take recruited constant moral compromise and was sending him down the ‘self destructive noir detective’ path. Polsa was extremely dramatic in his speech, while Caysin showed no outward indications of his decraination effecting him cognitively.

They were hired anonymously by 0-0-0 and placed under the command of Doctor Aphra as part of a mercenary crew to retrieve a copy of his personality matrix. Said mission involved all the twists and schemes of a typical Doctor Aphra arc. Aphra reprogramed Caysin’s cybernetics with an override, which she used to make him walk into the fire of messed up Tarkin Initiative prototypes Polsa had previously refused to kill. Consumed by rage, Polsa slaughtered the prototypes. After the mission, he figured out that Aphra was the cause of his lover’s death, and swore vengeance on her as well. 

Imprisoned in Accresker Jail with Doctor Evazan, Aphra called Polsa to break her out of jail in exchange for being able to kill Evazan. He helped save her from some fungus that thought it was a Jedi (long story), before taking a frozen Evazan- not killing Aphra but not bringing her with him anyway. When Evazan was unfrozen, he used a shapeshifting squid thing (long story) to convince Polsa he was a changeling Aphra used to trick him. He returned to Accresker Jail, where 0-0-0 killed him. However, he was intact enough for the fungi that thought it was a Jedi to revive him and create a force-sensitive organism that believed itself to be a manifestation of the Force’s desire for justice. He tracked Aphra back to his home planet, where 0-0-0 killed him for real.

[jonberry555]

Star Wars: From A Certain Point of View REVIEW | REUPLOAD

Also Available to Watch on Utreon

[swreactions]

Welcome to part 2 of our special 2024 kickoff episode of  Star Wars Reactions!

In this episode, our own David Modders sits down with our special guest, Star Wars author and friend of the show, Jason Fry to discuss Jason’s stories from each of the From a Certain Point of View novels.

In Part Two, they discuss and breakdown “Kernels and Husks” from From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi! From the story, to the creative processes, to easter eggs, David and Jason continue to go in depth in a way only they can.

Plus find out what the future holds for Jason Fry and you don’t want to miss the 2024 premiere of Aaron’s Star Wars Dad Joke of the Week!

Talking Points:

Opening

“Kernels and Husks” From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi

Coming Soon from Jason Fry

Star Wars Podcast Day 2024 announcement

Closing

Star Wars Dad Joke of the Week

Star Wars Reactions: Elegant discussions for a more civilized age!

Follow Jason Fry on X (formerly known as Twitter)!

Follow Jason Fry on BlueSky!

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[gffa]

Are you excited for FACPOV Empire Strikes Back edition? I was very excited when I heard the news.

I REALLY THOUGHT THEY WEREN’T GOING TO DO IT. The anniversary date was May 21st 1980, so when the 40th anniversary passed and there was only some on-line stuff (cool stuff, but no major announcements), I thought for sure that it was just a one-time thing they did for A New Hope, but APPARENTLY THEY ARE DOING ONE FOR ESB!

We have no idea when it’s coming, the author list hasn’t even been announced, they’ll reveal the full list on June 16th and maybe a release date. Browsing twitter, some authors have mentioned themselves as part of the 40 authors participating:  Gary Whitta, Emily Skrutskie, Zoraida Córdova, Amy Ratcliffe, Mark Oshiro, Mike Chen, Lilliam Rivera, Brittany N. Williams, Karen Strong, Delilah S. Dawson, Christie Golden, Kiersten White (I think?), Martha Wells, Rob Hart, Jason Fry, Django Wexler, Austin Walker, Jim Zub, Elizabeth Schaefer (I think?), Alexander Freed, Tracy Deonn (I think?), Quarynnetine Valente, S.A. Chakraborty, Michael Kogge, and Charles Yu. I’m cautiously optimistic.  I haven’t really been enjoying the Star Wars books in the last year or so and so many of the authors are new to me that I don’t have a sense of what their SW writing will be like (though, I know I like Dawson, Golden, Wells, Fry, Kogge, and Freed), so I’m also kind of wary. I guess we’ll see how I feel once the character list happens and what the actual book is like, but I’m glad they’re at least trying to branch out and I see a lot of women and people of color on that list, which I’m most certainly in favor of.

[rebelsofshield]

Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Stories of Light and Dark- Review

One incredible story is not enough to make this mostly uninspired Clone Wars themed anthology worth picking up.

(Review contains minor spoilers)

It’s been a big year for The Clone Wars. Twelve years after the cult favorite animated series started, it finally came to a conclusion earlier this spring on Disney+. Lucasfilm Publishing smartly capitalized off the hype for this long awaited finale with an anthology comic series released through IDW Publishing and a young reader collection of short fiction, Star Wars: The Clone Wars Stories of Light and Dark.

On paper, the idea of a collection of short stories centered on the heroes and villains of The Clone Wars sounds incredible. I personally love short stories and From A Certain Point of View was maybe the most creative Star Wars book of the last decade. (I can’t wait for its sequel this November.) The talent assembled for this project is similarly impressive. You have veteran Star Wars writers like Jason Fry, Zoraida Cordova, and Rebecca Roanhorse alongside standout science fiction and fantasy writers such as Yoon Ha Lee and young adult stars like Sarah Beth Durst and Preeti Chhibber .

It’s disappointing then that Star Wars: The Clone Wars Stories of Light and Dark feels like a mostly phoned in endeavor. The editorial decision to make each story a retelling of an existing episode of the television series does a lot to hamper creativity to begin with. Rather than finding new tales to tell with these iconic and beloved characters, the writing talent assembled is forced to recant existing narratives and hopefully inject some life into them in the process.

The level of creativity in tackling this limiting editorial decision varies from writer to writer. Lou Anders, Tom Angleberger, and Rebecca Roanhorse opt to tell their stories in the voice of their characters through smart uses of first person point of view. Anders manages to inject his take on “Dooku Captured” and “The Gungan General” with the indignant haughtiness that made the series’ take on the Count Dooku so fun. Angleberger and Roanhorse have their characters (Bane and Maul respectively) recount their stories to another character and it’s fun just seeing the inner monologues of these different villains.

Others opt for more direct rewriting of their assigned episodes. These by and large make up the more boring or frustrating reads. While Jason Fry manages to turn “Ambush” into a discussion of Yoda’s relationship to the Force in wartime and Greg van Eekhout peppers in new bits of dialogue into the already jampacked “The Lawless,” most of these revisitings are unimpressive. The most frustrating proves to be Yoon Ha Lee’s take on season four’s incredible Umbara arc. Lee is a talented writer of military focused science fiction so his taking on this story makes perfect sense, but “The Shadow of Umbara” can’t help but feel phoned in. It feels less like an adaptation but instead a heavily truncated transcription of four episodes of content. The complex character dynamics are stripped down. The emotions are lost. The horrors of war are nonpresent. It’s beyond disappointing.

The most inspired take of the collection comes from Sarah Beth Durst who reorients the point of view of season five’s “Young Jedi” arc to Katooni. Katooni was already a standout character in this story and getting to step into this fledgling Jedi’s thoughts and really get to understand her fears, hopes, and insecurities adds a nice flair to the narrative. There’s also just a certain joy in seeing the next generation of Jedi in awe of Ahsoka. Very relatable.

It’s a bizarre product and it leaves you wondering who exactly this collection was targeted to. The stories feels so disparate and also dependent on the continuity of the series to make sense for a new reader and fans of the show are unlikely to get much out of this book due to the familiarity of the source material.

And then there is “Bug.” The final story in this collection is somehow a must read despite it all. E. Anne Convery spins an original Star Wars fairy tale out of the traumatic aftermath of “Massacre.” Centered on a nameless young girl forced to work for her abusive innkeep parents on a backwater planet, “Bug” feels instantly compelling in its deft weaving of familiar fantasy tropes with Star Wars back droppings. When a strange old woman arrives fleeing the war, our protagonist’s world begins to expand and strange magic seems to spill from every corner. Convery writers her Dathomiran visitor with the right amount of wonder and fear and she feels right at home alongside any number of fairy tale witches and sorceresses. “Bug” proves to be an incredibly enjoyable genre play but also a blast of a story in its own right. It feels like the kind of bedtime tale you could read to an adventurous child at night and it hints to a larger world just outside its doorstep.

It’s a shame then that I have trouble recommending paying for a $17.99 book just for one stellar short story. If the entire collection had showcased the same level of freedom and creativity as its final piece this may have been something really special. But unfortunately, what we are left with is a mostly forgettable collection with one diamond in the rough. I guess I have to wait until FACPOV in November after all.

Score: C

[jasonfry]

“Duty Roster” is my contribution to the unbelievably fun Del Rey anthology Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View. (Please go here to read more about the project and First Book, the charity it benefits.) As promised, here are some notes about the story and a discussion of its construction.

(SPOILERS MOST DEFINITELY AHEAD! SERIOUSLY! STOP!)

“Duty Roster” was my Plan B for From a Certain Point of View -- the scene I asked to do was taken. Happily, the consolation prize was pretty good: in the same email I’d also proposed a story I wanted to tell nearly as badly, which I described as “Wedge with the other pilots.” 

But I had a twist in mind: my POV character wouldn’t be Wedge, but Fake Wedge.

If you’re not a massive Star Wars dork like I am, this will require a little explanation.

That’s Wedge Antilles sitting next to Luke in the Yavin 4 briefing room as General Dodonna tells the rather skeptical pilots the plan for attacking the Death Star. Wedge says hitting a two-meter exhaust port is impossible, even for a computer; Luke, apparently hell-bent on coming across as a yokel who says nonsensical things, replies that he used to bulls-eye womp rats, which aren’t much bigger than two meters.

Here’s the funny thing: the actor in that scene isn’t Denis Lawson, who plays Wedge in the cockpit scenes in A New Hope, as well as in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. They sound the same, but they sure don’t look the same. 

That’s because they aren't the same. Wedge is played by two different people in A New Hope. In fan circles, briefing-room Wedge became known as “Fake Wedge,” and arguments about the identity of the actor who’d played him went on for years -- until Lucasfilm’s Pablo Hidalgo dug into production reports and Web images and proved that briefing-room Wedge was an English actor named Colin Higgins.

Why the switch? By Higgins’ own admission, he kept flubbing the line and got fired. Happily, Hidalgo’s discovery led to Higgins joining the Star Wars convention circuit and getting some love and recognition from fans before his death in 2012. 

So why does Wedge sound "right” in the briefing-room scene? Because all of his lines in the original trilogy were dubbed by a third actor, David Ankrum. If you were miffed by reports that Lawson had no interest in a Force Awakens cameo, perhaps you have more sympathy for him now. Also: you should stream the 1983 movie Local Hero. Lawson has a starring role, he delivers his own lines, and he’s wonderful.

Anyway, Fake Wedge became a part of Star Wars lore, with his different appearance just one of those movie moments in which you had to suspend disbelief. 

For FACPOV, I figured we could have a little fun with that. Hence my proposal: I wanted to do a pilot story about Wedge, except I’d be writing about Fake Wedge, who wasn’t Wedge at all. He was another pilot who was frequently mistaken for Wedge, and hoo boy was he tired of it.

I thought that was pretty funny. My editor thought it was pretty funny. The folks at Lucasfilm, presumably, thought it was pretty funny.

I was pleased with myself (and tweeted out a picture of a Wedge figure standing next to Aunt Beru and her blue-milk pitcher), at least until I realized something I hadn’t thought through earlier.

Fake Wedge not being the same as Wedge was a gag. It was a pretty good gag, but a pretty good gag is still just a gag. It would take about 500 words or so for me to tell that joke. What would I do after that?

That’s where I realized I’d actually signed up for something pretty challenging, and got a little worried.

“Duty Roster” wouldn’t work if it was just a Fake Wedge gag. It had to pivot from that and become something else -- a story that captured the terror of the Yavin 4 battle from the perspective of those left behind and saluted the heroism of the pilots who’d fought in it. The reader had to start off identifying with Fake Wedge, but wind up appreciating and admiring Real Wedge. And Fake Wedge had to make that same journey.

I realized that was a tough landing to stick, and 2,500 words (or however long “Duty Roster” turned out to be) wasn’t a lot of time in which to stick it. Well, there was no way to solve it except to get to work.

Before we go any further: Is “Duty Roster” canon? Beats me. I wrote it as if it were, working carefully on Red Squadron’s assignments and making sure the scenes in Massassi Base matched the movie. But that's just good practice. I suspect The Powers That Be would rule that it isn’t -- they��d say Wedge is Wedge, long pointy nose or not. Which is just fine with me -- and, for the record, would be my ruling too. My only concern was telling a good story. 

Job One was giving Fake Wedge a name. “Col” was easy -- that rather obviously honors Higgins. “Takbright” came after a couple of false starts, and was a portmanteau of two TV roles from his long career. 

From there, I told the joke, which I will now ruin by explaining. 

We see Col first, raging about the nickname he hates -- a nickname that I had to avoid specifying for as long as possible to make the joke work. A Mon Calamari tech, Kelemah, thinks Col and the person he’s confused with look alike -- but then all humans do to him. (Setup, plus mild social commentary.) Kelemah then notes that Col and his doppelganger sound exactly alike. (More setup, Ankrum tip of the cap, the most astute readers now realize what I’ve done.) A veteran pilot, Puck Naeco, almost says the forbidden nickname, but falls back to asking what, exactly, “the kid” said to make Col so mad. (Bit of misdirection, more setup.) Col recounts the two-meter objection we know as Wedge’s line. (Some readers now get it, which is a reward but means I’ve got to hurry to the punchline while they’re still smiling.) Biggs enters with other pilots, including Wedge. (Pieces moving into place.) One of those pilots, Elyhek Rue, mistakes Col for Wedge. (Board now set.) Laughter, and Puck explains that’s why Col is and will always be known as Fake Wedge. (Punchline, and scene.)

See what I mean? We’re less than two pages in and the joke has been told. Which is why I also used the gag to introduce the most important characters for the more serious story “Duty Roster” would have to become.

To pivot effectively, I couldn’t tell the joke and then take time to introduce a bunch of new characters to the reader. So we’ve got pilots and techs doing double duty for the gag and the serious story. There’s Puck, who’s Col’s mentor. Kelemah, whose technical knowledge will be critical later. Rue, who will be with us throughout. And of course Wedge himself. That’s a variant of a basic lesson: storytelling is most effective when scenes and/or characters are advancing the story on multiple fronts.

With the gag behind me, I had to establish Col as a sympathetic yet flawed character. And so I dived into that, setting up Col and Wedge as opposites in temperament and attitude. Col is dedicated to the rebel cause but thinks his anger reflects well on him; he’s too self-absorbed to realize it’s what’s holding him back. He sees Wedge as too quiet and reserved, perhaps even insufficiently devoted to the cause -- which is both unfair and untrue, and says nothing about Wedge but everything about Col’s immaturity and jealousy.

The pilots get their assignments, which is where Col’s dreams turn to dust. I had to engineer it so Luke’s flight of three is the last one filled out with pilots, and the final spot seemingly comes down to Wedge or Col. There’s no particular reason that flight would be announced last, so I suggested that Red Leader is filling flights in order from most-experienced pilots to least, with Luke a bit of a wild card since he’s just shown up. You can see the storytelling gears turning a bit there, which you’d rather avoid. But sometimes you can’t, and I like to think I got away with it.

A brief continuity note, for those who are interested: I’d filled out Red Squadron for The Essential Guide to Warfare, in a section whose most notable contribution was assigning Puck Naeco (originally introduced way back in the strategy guide for the X-wing game) to the up-for-grabs call sign Red 12. I was happy to do so again in “Duty Roster.” 

The rest of the squadron had some alterations, though, to fit Rogue One. It was obvious that X-wing pilots who’d survived Scarif would fly at Yavin 4 too, so Ralo Surrel, Harb Binli and Zal Dinnes were in, and off-screen Legends pilots Rue, Bren Quersey and Wenton Chan got sidelined. But that fit perfectly with the theme of the story. It’s no accident that Rue, Quersey and Chan are the  three pilots with Col as he watches the battle.

Col doesn’t get his spot on the mission, and so remains in the pilots’ ready room, alone in his misery. (Once again: he thinks it’s all about him.) Giving into his rage, he trashes the place -- only to realize Wedge has left his helmet behind. Wedge enters and tries to avoid a confrontation, but when Col tries to bait him he quietly but firmly puts Col in his place, showing the maturity and sense of camaraderie that Col lacks and the leadership he’ll display as a squadron leader in the future. 

It’s a moment of realization for Col. Which is why he cleans up the mess he’s made and heads for the war room to stand with his fellow pilots. That’s his turn -- and it’s because of Wedge.

Col finds his place in the war room and the Battle of Yavin unfolds as we know it. Except we learn something new that’s really important: Wedge is flying an X-wing with suspect hydraulic lines that were patched up after Scarif. It’s risky, but his choice was to fly and take the risk or stay behind, and he chose to fly.

As a fellow pilot, Col understands the risk Wedge is taking. As the battle unfolds, he thinks about how each of the squadron’s pilots has a shot at becoming the rebel hero he’s dreamed of being. That’s a bit of the old Col, but he doesn’t stop there. He cheers for them (a marked change), and also understands that some of them have no chance at glory -- they’re flying to buy the others more time, and know they’ll have to sacrifice their lives to do so.

And he understands that once Wedge’s hydraulic lines are severed, he’s as big a danger to Luke and Biggs as he is to the TIEs chasing them. So Col doesn’t blame Wedge when he peels off -- in fact, in a sign of his newfound maturity, he urges Kelemah to tell Wedge to do so. 

We then learn something else: Wedge charged his auxiliaries and tried to go back to help, which would have been a death sentence. It’s a bit of continuity added to a scene that doesn’t really work in the movie (where the heck is Wedge going?), but Col’s reaction is the key. He understands he would have done the same thing Wedge did, that it would have been a mistake, and begs Wedge not to throw away his life for nothing but pride.

The pilots return, but while everyone runs to congratulate Luke, Col hurries to find Wedge, who’s wrestling with the guilt he feels at having left the fight. It’s Col who absolves him, pointing out that Wedge took out six TIEs, ran the trench at full throttle, kept a malfunctioning fighter intact and then tried to go back. Because Wedge Antilles is that awesome, and because Col Takbright -- Fake Wedge -- has finally figured out that they’re both part of something larger, and that a single pilot’s identity (or mistaken identity) is far less important than what they can do together.

So that’s a wrap. Some other interesting bits for the trivia-minded:

Wedge’s malfunction has been described in various ways in various sources. I took bits and pieces of multiple explanations.

Luke’s simulator run is from the old Brian Daley radio dramas.

I didn’t know the canon status of Blue and Green squadrons, and didn’t want to open a canoncial can of worms. So Red Leader doesn’t know what’s happening with them either. Which makes sense -- he’s got enough on his plate. Since I couldn’t have the reader think Col could just join another squadron, I added the note about his having to go to the back of the line in such a situation.

Colonel Cor is mentioned in the Rogue One visual guide.

Kay-One-Zero is the Alliance evacuation code. Note that you don’t need to know that to understand the reference -- Quersey gives an explanation that reads right on the page but also helps those who don’t know every bit of Star Wars canon. Context is critical for making lore support a story instead of distracting the reader.

When Porkins dies, Rue quietly says “So long, Piggy, you will be avenged.” This is a thought balloon for Biggs in the original Marvel adaptation of A New Hope.

I accounted for the fates of Red Seven, Eight, Nine and Eleven, whose deaths aren’t seen on-screen.