Today is May 4th, known to some as Star Wars Day. A day of celebration, a day of happiness. All Star Wars movies have come out in May, and May also holds George Lucas's birthday. This month is Star Wars month, the 4th being just a starter to a wonderful month of celebrating and memories. It is spring in most places, snow is melting or long gone, new life has begun and all the hopes and dreams for summer lay just out of reach, tantalizingly close. Flowers are blooming and birds are singing. It is a wonderful, beautiful month for Star Wars fans everywhere to come together and enjoy a fandom that has for so long been a part of our lives. It's not just movies, it's the books. Over a quarter of a century's worth of books, of characters, of places, of stories. Comics, though not always adhering to canonity, have had their place for longer than the books. There's video games, as well. There's collector's items, action figures, posters, there's toys and lego sets. There's costumes and role playing games. Some fans are not even old enough to remember a time before Star Wars. Without the expanded universe, the books, the comics, and even the video games, Star Wars would not be as big as it is today. The expanded universe kept it afloat when others would have let it drown. Proper recognition and respect must be shown to the books first and foremost, regardless of your own perspective and opinions, because they, more than anything, are important in our history, in our lives, in our fandom. The movies are great, there is no denying that, they are the foundation of all that has come since. They paved the road for the stories, the characters, the very lives of hundreds of unique people that, though fiction, are so real to so many. Where would we be today without the books? The movies? It is an alternate universe I would never want to see. And yet there are some who would have it so. For lately we have had very disturbing and grim news. Star Wars is no more. At least not as we knew it.
It is with the deepest regret that I look upon it's corpse, laying here before me. It is with sadness and a sense of hopelessness that I see it's murderers kicking it's body and spitting upon it. It is with a rising sense of panic and frustration that I see the funeral attendee's watching on and shrugging, some cheering them on, some not understanding what the big deal is. A few others grumbling but doing nothing, though who can blame them since none have the power to change anything anyway. How did this come to be? It started with cries for more. None could realize that a good thing can not last forever, that a person can not keep going without stumbling. "More!" they cried, "More!" Here is your more. Here are your 37 years worth of movies, books, comics, games, here is 37 years worth of time, money, energy, effort, emotions, wasted, dead, senselessly and mindlessly murdered for the sake of more. Here is your more! Are you happy? Cries for more have destroyed the more you already had, the wealth of books all but rounded up and burned, as though a dictator has risen up and wishes to rewrite history through the destruction of previous knowledge. With so much time covered in the books of course new movies would need their own timeline, of course they couldn't have squeezed new movies into perfectly good openings between books, of course the fans don't matter. They're the ones who cried for more, they're the ones who brought this upon us. The ones in charge will kill everyone we have loved and held dear for all our lives. The new movies will not even be released in May, as though our entire history is not so deeply entrenched in the month. It gets worse, though, as "new canon" even overwrites the original movies themselves, with the supposedly canon tv shows. Most recently announced was the list of actors the new movies will have. "Wait, is that one going to be Jaina," you ask. Perhaps, perhaps. After all, though they have decided the books don't exist they are still going to rape them for character names. "This is Jaina, she's just been born at a different time in a different place under different circumstances has lived an entirely different life with a different personality and is everything she is not," they say. True fans will know better. Newbies will not. The average person will not. It will become a widespread lie, something true fans will come to hate. Everyone will talk of it and they, like so much breath pushing against a brick wall, will fall down into distant memory, forever lost to lies. And no one will care. No one will care as our beloved fandom falls down around us, lost without it's leader, lost without it's base, it's foundation. Lost to confusion, to half-remembered truths, to confusing and convoluted timelines. "But comics have always had messed up timelines", well Star Wars is not a comic, Star Wars is better than other fandoms who can't keep their own stories straight. It will be a joke in later years, cruel though it is now. It is not just disrespectful to the books, to the fans, but to the characters themselves, and especially to the authors, the authors who wrote day and night and worked and struggled to birth to us these characters, to bring life to them, to maintain their lives and give them personality. If anyone should feel outrage it is the authors. And it doesn't end here, it is not enough to crank out a new episode every other year when previous episodes have taken 3 years apiece so quality and care could go into them, they are going to crank out new movies every single year in a vain attempt to cash in on the "coolness" of some characters. Our very own beloved Boba Fett may be turned into nothing but a lame action hero with even lamer catchphrases, abandoning his book-personality in lieu of an alcohol swigging womanizer. I shudder to ponder the thought, my very being recoiling at the thought.
Perhaps what could be considered one of the most twisted, sick parts of this is that the ones in charge believe they are "reviving" something that was not dead, but in fact they are putting the final nails in a coffin of their own creation. I will continue to bury my head in the sand, to pretend this isn't happening, to avoid spoiler-filled reports and rumors. Though is denial not a step of grief? Perhaps in later years I will be able to look back on this with a dull sense of sureality and accept what has happened. But not now. Not today. Today, a day that is supposed to be one of celebrating, is a dark, dark day indeed. Not a day of happiness, not a day of fun, but a day of mourning, a day of sadness, a day where we should be crying out in one voice for the ones in charge to stop this madness. I feel a sense of pity for those celebrating today, those who are like a distant family member who has only vaguely heard that someone died but does not quite truly realize it yet. Then there are those who do know, who do realize, but, like me, have chosen to deny it and are trying to cover the quiver in their gut with a pretense of cheer, as though trying, desperately, to cling to a sinking ship while proclaiming it unsinkable. I pity you, I feel for you, I wish I could join you in your celebration, but I can not. The pain is too fresh, too new, for me to smile and pretend all is well. I can but think sadly, fondly, of what once was.
So as we lay Star Wars to rest I urge you not to think about the future, bleak and depressing, but to remember the past. Remember the books, the comics, and most of all, the movies. Remember the characters, the lives so carelessly thrown away. Remember your happiness, a life-time of joy. Remember Star Wars as it was, not as it is and will be. Remember the 4th and all it once stood for. And always remember, the Force will be with you, always.
. It's about a little girl who uses a pendulum to tell fortunes for people, some with unhappy results. The wording in the book is very spooky, things like describing tree limbs scraping windows, how the moon shines through the trees, eerie Halloween decorations, things like that. Not scary, just scene settingly spooky. The book seems to have two stories running at the same time, and, at first, you're not sure how they're connected. Eventually they all combine rather soap opera-like. There's a few loose ends, but I love the telling of the story anyway. The teacher, especially, Miss Upton, I loved watching her character's evolution. More on that in the spoiler-filled review. Overall, the ending left me slightly confused but it's easy enough to make my own assumptions and conclusions on the things left hanging. But that could just be my view as an adult. I think a pre-teen (which seems to be who this was aimed at) would find it very entertaining, ending and all. It's a keeper.
. I don't know how popular this book is, I know it was made into a movie. I saw the movie in the theaters with my sister so when I saw this book I figured I'd get it. It was a good movie. The book was good too. Beautifully done. I'm definitely keeping this one, and if I see any of his other books for cheap I'll probably give them a try. I'm also going to have to re-watch that movie now!