A New Hope (See What I Did There?)

This morning my kid sister said she fell asleep during the best part of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Star Wars fans would, I wager, know she could only be talking about one of two scenes: the pod race or the Darth Maul vs. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan battle at the end. Okay, it could really only be the second one, else I really need to reevaluate Kirsti's ability to recognize quality.

I told Kirsti she could have saved time by only watching the two aforementioned scenes, sparing herself 90 minutes of terrible dialogue and acting (albeit missing some impressive visuals). Kirsti answered back, saying she and her husband wanted to watch the series as a whole, regardless of the bad acting and such.

Enter my other younger sister, Sarah, with a recommendation: don't watch it in the logical orders in which the films are presented: Release Order, where you go 4-5-6-1-2-3, or the Chronological Order of 1-2-3-4-5-6. Sarah then pointed us to the the following blog about how one can get the maximum enjoyment from watching Star Wars while avoiding the biggest pitfall, Episode I:

http://static.nomachetejuggling.com/machete_order.html

Now, I came up with my own way to change the prequels to make them better, outlined here: http://slammysworld.blogspot.com/2010/08/recasting-of-star-wars.html

I think it's good, but the Machete Order is a lot better. It's brilliant, because it's as simple as taking the movies as they are, just switching the order a tad. Seriously, read through the proposal and see if he isn't completely right. He offers a new hope for Star Wars fans still smarting from George Lucas' failure to make the prequels as awesome as the original trilogy.

What do you think of the Machete Order? Gonna give it a try? If you do/did, what do/did you think?

No, No, No - This One Goes There, That One Goes There, Right?

The Millennium Falcon is stuck on Hoth, and Han and Chewie are figuring out how to fix it to get it off the ground.

That's hard to do when you keep getting distracted by stormtroopers.

Let's analyze/break down that sentence, which is a metaphor for Cantina de los Star Wars:

• "Millennium Falcon" = this blog
• "Hoth" = quagmire of creativity, meaning I've ignored this blog for years and am still unsure where it's going
• "Han and Chewie" = me, roguishly good looking and covered in the Wookie hair of ideas good and bad
• "fix it to get it off the ground" =  what I need to do to keep this blog and its possibilities alive

Now let's backtrack.

I started this blog back in 2007 as a sort of nerd central, posting videos, trailers, links, and other stuff related to not just Star Wars, but other fanboy fodder as well. Later that year, I decided it was going to become a place to create a Star Wars-based story using original characters and original storylines. I even got so far as to spin some plotline, as well as some behind-the-scenes kind of stuff.

Then it got caught in a sinewy swamp of stagnation.  Part of it was that I became more interested in writing Warcraft-related fiction - Tevan Kearu gave way to Nikolas Tien, and a galaxy far, far away surrendered to the fantasy world of Azeroth.

Someone has too much time on their hands,
and for once it's not me.

Another problem is one I suffer when approaching the writing of fiction in general - I feel like I need to know exactly where a story is heading before I start to write. I map out this whole, great idea and get a good start, but then a new idea/plot twist/story element comes up and screws the whole thing up. I then fall into a catatonia while trying to regroup and re-figure out where the story will go. It's happened numerous times with my Warcraft story, it happened in a crippling way to my Star Wars story.

So what now, then? Why am I only now addressing the comatose state of Cantina de los Star Wars?

Because no one wins with an empty cantina.

First, over the past couple of years, I've experienced what I call a "Star Wars renaissance," meaning a renewed fan-style interest in all things Star Wars. I blame:

• The Old Republic - though I have no illusions of ever playing the latest Star Wars MMORPG, the setting is one I grew to adore thanks to playing both installments of Knights of the Republic on Xboxes borrowed from friends. The story takes place thousands of years before the movies, and you play the role of a Jedi re-learning his/her powers, choosing your path and abilities and all that fun stuff. I loved those games, and loved the part of Star Wars lore they occupied, so when The Old Republic was announced, I was keen to learn all about it I could. Bombastically awesome cinematics only grew my interest:
• Return Cinematic Trailer
• Hope Cinematic Trailer
• Deceived Cinematic Trailer
• LEGOs - If you have a chance to play any of the LEGO games for Wii, do it - they're a lot of fun, plenty challenging and kid-friendly to boot. They explore the worlds of Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, Batman, Pirates of the Caribbean and soon, Lord of the Rings. But my first one was the Star Wars game, and it not only entertained me for hours (and still does), but re-interested me in the movies.
• Movies - speaking of which, I've watched them again over the past year with renewed interest in how they tell their stories, finding new things to love and new things to criticize. I've even come up with a way to revamp the prequels (Episodes I-III) so they wouldn't suck as much.

Call me childish if you will, but these games are SUPER fun.

Now, where does this all lead? Well, I want to revive this blog. What it could be is too much fun to cast away. It may not be updated as much as my other blogs, and it likely won't be all fiction, all the time. You may notice I added a sidebar element that has Star Wars-related links for you to enjoy. I'll try to keep the YouTube videos there so as not to clog the main feed, but I won't promise one won't sneak in from time to time.

And then there's the fiction - I'd like to try my hand at it again. Maybe that will involve a total scrapping of what I was going to do. I've started liking the idea of an Old Republic setting - that, at the very least, would give me the option of having a lot of Jedi (Light and Dark side) for my characters to interact with. Maybe I'll try more short-story-style writing as opposed to a long narrative. I don't know how the evolution of Cantina de los Star Wars will progress.

But I promise to try and make it a fun ride.