StarWarsClassics

 (Calibre is being a pain in my butt with my notes, so this is probably not going to be quite as in depth as I'd like.) One of the biggest things that stands out reading HttE  after the earlier Lando and Han trilogies is how much it integrates (and eventually is integrated into) the movies. Zahn bravely stakes out new systems and starts arranging them, throws out ship names, pulls technology from the RPG books. This is STAR WARS and he's writing IN the universe, not next to it. A big part of this are the callbacks to the original trilogy. Sometimes it feels like I'm on book four of a series, and Zahn is helping me catchup. We explains how the battle of Endor devastates the Imperial fleet (particularly the loss of the Executor and its young but rising officers), talks about the loss of Luke's aunt, uncle, and masters, and does little dialogue callbacks ("I am not a committee!") While the other books tried their best not to brush too close to the movies, Zahn is...

 Did I say plot? Nah, no plot. We're going to talk about Timothy Zahn's eyebrow wriggling. Timothy Zahn predicted this meme by almost two decades. The word eyebrow or eyebrows appears in Heir to the Empire  42 times. About half the time, they're being cocked. Regardless of what verb they use, it is usually only slightly. People like to make fun of Zahn for this (and he probably should mix in some nose twitches or something) but I want to take tonight's post to talk about why he probably does it and how (if he'd mixed things up a bit more) it'd be a good writing technique.  Dialogue is weird. It's one of the things with the most rules in writing, but a lot of them are vague. You want to describe a castle? Do whatever you want. Some authors will just slap down a quick, "imposing stone facade" and others will write three pages, and neither one is "wrong". Dialogue, you have to deal with stuff like, "make people sound the way we think pe...

 I think one of the things Zahn does better than almost any other EU author is integrate the OT characters with his own. I generally lean into more original character heavy EU (OP Luke gets tiring quickly), but the use of the original cast works here, and is fitting for a jumping off point into the broader EU. Original Cast: Luke- Still looking for a Jedi Master to finish his training. He's really not much more skilled/competent here than he is in Jedi  despite training Leia. Most of the abilities he exhibits are marginally stronger (if at all) than their OT counterparts (he can jump, he can do telekinesis, he has better telepathy with Leia, he has a vision...) This works great for his character arc. C'Boath can try to seduce him to the Dark Side later in the trilogy and he can't steamroll everything, but it does seem a bit odd that he seems to have developed less in the half decade since Jedi than he did in the yearish between Jedi  and Empire . Han- Married Leia! Got h...

 Heir to the Empire (1991) IT'S FINALLY HERE! The "official" kick off to the Expanded Universe, and still one of the best Star Wars books ever written. I'm so excited to do something other than another minor spinoff/adaptation (although I have only myself to blame for that). I wanted to get this up Friday, but: 1. I overcommitted to blogging in general (10+ entries a week? As a hobby? MADNESS!) 2. There's a lot to talk about.  I've decided to do a whole week (doing nothing for my "too many blog posts" problem, but whatever) of it. Starting with a little bit of an overview of why Heir to the Empire  is such a big deal, how the franchise got here, and how I first read it. But first, have a fan trailer with bishonen Luke: Why is Heir to the Empire a big deal? To start with, it was the first novel released in almost a decade. There was a time in the late 80s/early 90s where Star Wars was borderline a dead franchise. You got a couple of RPG source books, ...

Episode VI: Return of the Jedi  I should've just gone with the Harmy versions all along. And I'm live blogging this one! The stars behind the Death Star II look great. The way it blocks and unblocks them between the structure as the angle shifts is impressive. "The Imperial March" gets a lot of (well deserved) attention, but the new Imperial themes here are great. The use of the Emperor's theme in the TIE Fighter game menus is burned into my brain. Coming back to Tatooine is a nice touch, very full circle. I'm normally not a fan of selective subtitling, but the combination of C-3PO translating, cognates, and good voice acting/puppeteering let them get away with it. Watching it on a TV with no scanlines makes the scanlines in Luke's hologram stand out. I'm surprised TVs don't have an onboard scanline option (although I guess there wouldn't be any on a theater screen either.) The shorter "Jizz Wailing" sequence is both tighter and more ...

 Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) After writing however many paragraphs about pirating the OT last week, I decided to watch the Specialest Edition on Disney+ for ESB . I figured it was good to try one of them that way (even if it doesn't align with the Thrawn release time period) and ESB  has the least objectionable changes. Plus, it's easier to watch on my lunch at work. I'll do Harmy for Jedi . I'm still that weirdo that thinks Empire  is the worst of the original three. As soon as Luke says he's going to Dagobah I groaned a little. It feels like it has all the parts of a good movie, the arrangement is just kind of bizarre. The big battle scene is about twenty minutes in, and then the Han and Leia plot (the more interesting of the two) fires along (in between Dagobores) until it resolves with Han being frozen and we're stuck with Luke for more of the last act. A couple noticings after watching ANH  last week: 1. Wow, you can tell the budget went up! I...

  Star Wars I spent a fair amount of time figuring out which versions of the Original Trilogy to watch for this. My first choice was the 4KXX releases, for maximum originality. I'm normally more of a Harmy guy, but it'd be fun to try something new, and presumably more authentic. But that wouldn't actually be authentic to the early 1991 Heir to the Empire  release time period viewing experience. VHS/Laserdisc being much lower quality, and Lucas having already making minor changes (EPISODE IV was added in 1981). So I spent some time digging around for what would be the correct release version for 1991. There's a handful of pretty questionable VHS releases (I'm not dedicated enough to watch a pan and scan): I sure don't miss only getting to watch 2/3 of the movie, or having stuff stretched/squished weird.     There were zero official widescreen/letterbox tape releases until 1992 (and even that was a fancy big box collector set), meaning they were fair game for Last...