May the 4th

[author_by_night]

I was inspired by a Facebook post I wrote a few years ago, expressing confusion over all the May the 4th jokes. I then realized that I'd been doing the same thing to people as a huge Harry Potter fan - they would mention they'd read the books, and I'd start going on about something that wasn't immediately clear to more casual fans, leaving them confused.

I still haven't seen past the first Star Wars sequel. I really need to amend that.

Questions for YOU guys:

1. Is there anything you like only casually, only to mislead people into excitement when you mention it?

2. Have you ever confused a casual fan with ALL the love and knowledge?

3. What is your stance on the Star Wars sequels? Do you consider them canon? (If your comment contains spoilers, please mark it. I originally asked that this be spoiler free, but that's not fair to anyone who really wants to get into it! It IS Star Wars Day, after all.)

4. What is a book, movie, or series you WOULD like to see a sequel or prequel to? Or, if it's already had one of those, do you think it could be done better?

Comments

[beatrice_otter]

2. Have you ever confused a casual fan with ALL the love and knowledge? Yes, but it's more likely to be me infodumping at someone who hasn't even heard of the canon before.

3. What is your stance on the Star Wars sequels? Do you consider them canon? What is canon? Seriously, that's a philosophical question that needs answering before we go any further. If you mean "do I recognize them as the official answer given by the official owners of the franchise," then sure. If you mean "will I ever write ST fic?" the answer is no. If you mean "will I ever write SW fic that includes any pieces of ST canon" the answer is that I currently have a WIP where Finn from the ST is sent back in time to the Clone Wars.

There are parts of the ST that are good, but most of it I dislike on multiple levels. It destroys or renders pointless most of the things I like about the OT and PT. It is internally incoherent--the director of the second movie didn't like or agree with the first one, and wrenched everything around to tell the story HE wanted to tell, and then they went back to the third director who didn't like what the second director had done and so he wrenched things around again.

The Solo movie ... they did not understand how to do a prequel. They kept trying to make the plot points suspenseful and action-packed, but the thing is, we KNOW how things end, because it's a PREQUEL. We know he's not gonna end up with Qi'ra! We know he's gonna make friends with Chewie! We know he's gonna be friends with Lando and then win the Falcon in a card game! We know he's gonna make the Kessel Run in a short distance! None of these things are ever going to be suspenseful. The question of a prequel is not WHAT is going to happen but WHY and HOW is it going to happen that way. Character and thematic development are key, because the plot is going to be utterly predictable. And the character development was terrible. Donald Glover did an excellent job as Lando, but Han was both written and portrayed as "generic action hero"

When I write Star Wars fics, my canon that I draw from tends to be: OT and PT, the Zahn trilogy of books (Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, The Last Command), bits and pieces from the Clone Wars series, and whatever details I find on Wikipedia when I need bits to fill in. I do read fic more widely than that, but that's what I tend to write.

4. What is a book, movie, or series you WOULD like to see a sequel or prequel to? Or, if it's already had one of those, do you think it could be done better?

The Star Wars sequel trilogy could have been done so much better. I mean, even if they'd taken the same basic plot elements (and I wish they wouldn't because I didn't like them) it would still have been 1000% better if it had been conceived of and written as a TRILOGY, instead of piecemeal.

I would also like to see a Star Trek series that was more tonally and thematically consistent with previous series of Trek than either Discovery and Picard. It's not that they're bad! They're not. They're quite good, overall. They're just ... not what I love about Star Trek. Come to that, if I could have the first two Reboot movies done by a different director I would. J.J. Abrams doesn't like Star Trek, and man, did it SHOW. It's not that the Reboot movies are bad, they're perfectly good SF/Action movies. They just don't feel like Star Trek, either in theme or characterization. (The less said about Fratboy Kirk the better.) The third one nailed it, though.

I'd love a sequel to Babylon 5.

If I could keep the Wonder Woman movie but redo all the other movies in that canon, I would.

If I could keep the MCU through Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and also Black Panther and Thor III and Captain Marvel, and get rid of the rest, I would.

[eleanorjane]

Your music is good and you should feel good.

(Which is to say, +1 to practically all of this!)