When Darth Jar-Jar came out I realized it was time to finish something I’d had on the back burner for a while… an un-theory (i.e. there’s no way this is what George Lucas had planned) that makes some of the worst parts of the prequels very watchable and fixes both Jar-Jar AND the Midi-chlorians.
It’s strange and eccentric, of course, but where else can the Emperor be the hero, Luke be the villain, and the opening credits of every movie contain a chilling warning? Secrets of Star Wars and the End of Everything
I won’t spoil the article (I really think you’ll enjoy the read! And yes BoingBoing and anyone here can use it with my blessing) but I will add something that I left out of the article for fun…
A long time ago, in a galaxy Jar Jar away…
(yes: Jar-jar was foretold decades ago with a font)
Oh, that’s Warhammer 40K, it was the only ‘cities battling cities’ I could come up with in my head that was weird enough to get close to reality. I should find out who drew that one and credit 'em!
And that Jar Jar/Far Far font is on like a dozen of the old posters! I seriously do wonder if maybe that’s where they got the name from.
Even back in the 1980s it was common knowledge that other than some leadership issues, the Empire were the good guys.
Look at the Ewoks for example. A primitive tribal people. And yet the Empire was able to build a massive shield generator and landing pad right next to their village without disturbing them.
The landing pad was built on pylons and the power generator was underground, so that there was hardly any disturbance to the forest. The Empire used a mix of walking and hovering vehicles, so that they didn’t even need to carve roads into the forest. Only the shield antenna poked above the tree-tops. The Empire was as “green” as they could possibly be. Small wonder the Ewoks had no real fear of them.
Along come the rebels, and what’s the first thing they do? They take advantage of the Ewok’s religion to convince them that their golden robot is actually a god, and by extension, that the rebels are the god’s representatives. Then they tell the Ewoks stories of good and evil, with the Rebels being good, and the Empire evil.
In short, they convince the Ewoks - who have club and spear technology - to attack the Empire with its blaster and walking tank technology. Many are killed. This makes even the Emperor look like one of the good guys.
Then the Rebels blow up the power plant and shield generator - near the Ewok village - with a nuclear-level explosion.
Then they blow up a Death Star - the size of a small moon - in low orbit around the Ewok’s planet. They stayed to party that night, but no doubt they left before the atmosphere and surface of the planet were laid waste over the following weeks by hundreds of cubic kilometers of metal wreckage raining down from above.
I never got into the minis thing (though I admire the heck out of the artistic skill of some of those guys, especially with respect to the environments they make) I do keep stumbling across it in various ways and tried a couple of the RPGs.
They’ve also got some excellent books! Dan Abnett did some great writing for them (Ravenor, Eisenhorn, Gaunt’s Ghosts) and there are a few other great series (Like Sandy Mitchell’s Ciaphas Cain…which is half Stainless Steel Rat and half Myth Adventures).
They came to mind when I was trying to express the absurdly amazing things going on inside a single cell that we gigantinormous humans have almost NO comprehension of. There’s so much going on in there and treating a protist like an ‘organism’ doesn’t do them justice, they’re more like living cities that eat other cities.
I mean, this one little dude is more amazing on the inside than anything I’ve ever read about in sci-f! And yeah, that’s kind of why I went with the ‘what if midichlorians were actually awesome’ route…well, that and a challenge from a friend to get me to stop bitching about 'em
