Events EUC Interview Thread: Now Interviewing Jedi Knight Fett!

My younger sister is a metalhead as well and she was super jealous I lived in Sweden last year... and annoyed I didn't go to a single concert. But there were posters up probably every week about a different metal group coming into town. Pretty crazy, I know one of my classmates was going to most of them.

And if you're into viking stuff you should definitely pop over to Oslo, Norway if you're in that area- only complete viking ships in the world there, among other things.

Anyway, not really any questions, just comments. For now, at least


Sent from my X-wing via R2-J6

 

Yeah, I left out Norway because I only had room for 3. I included countries that match parts of my ethnicity.

 

Thank you so much for particpating Kev-Mas_Colcha.

This week I will be interviewing The Great No One I look foward to getting to know you this week and I'm sure others do as well Here is your first set of questions:

1. When did you first become a SW fan? How old were you? What hooked you?
2. What first brought you to the EUC?
3. Who is your favorite SW character and why?
4. What do you hope to see in Episode VII?
5. What do you do when you are not logged on to TFN?

 

hey everyone, happy to be answering questions. firstly, for those not in the know, i had a name change on here. i used to be known as trimaj, so if you recognize the avatar but not the name, that'd be why. ask me about the change if you're curious, but i'm not gonna just give it up for free.

1. When did you first become a SW fan? How old were you? What hooked you?

heh, that was 20 years ago now. lord that's a long time... anyway, i was seven or eight, and my grandfather sat and watched the trilogy with me back in... 93 i think it was. that's when i first became a fan, no question. as to what hooked me... the epic scale of everything. it was all so big, such a realized universe, that it was easy to imagine other stories in the universe, and there were so many others already hinted at. the clone wars, for instance, and boba fett, this feared bounty hunter. what'd he do to get that recognition? vader, how'd he come about, and how was he turned from one of the good guys? there were just so many untold stories for a fertile imagination to fill in that i couldn't help myself. really, that's what's kept me hooked ever since.

2. What first brought you to the EUC?

heh, this was the first part of TFN that visited actually. i was already an avid reader of the books, got a lot of them out of the library, you know, read what i could of the comics. so when i finally found the site back in 2005 looking for something SWs related (had nothing to do with ROTS actually, but i've carried the movie stigma because of when i joined so meh), i spotted the regular TFN site. i noticed it had a forum, and i was like, hey, these things exist. let's go take a look. took me five minutes to join after that, and i've pretty much hung around here off and on ever since. there've been down stretches, but i've always come back in some capacity. even had a small involvement with the senate, which i swore to myself that i'd never even look at. guess if you're here long enough you do things you never expected, and you make a lot of friends. sadly many of them have moved on, but i still remember them and the impact they've had on my lives.

3. Who is your favorite SW character and why?

please tell me i don't have to pick just one in this... umm... i can give a top six, but knocking it down below that? heh, good luck.

boba fett has always fascinated me. i won't go out and say that vader respected him, but someone that vader had to give special instructions too... that captivated me the first time i saw it way back when i was a young'un. then there was the armor that just flat out looked cool. when i got to find out more about him in shadows of the empire and the bounty hunter trilogy (and to a lesser extent tales from jabba's palace, and the one story about jodo kast in tales of the empire that zahn and... i think it was stackpole wrote that was really thrawn in disguise (convoluted story that one). i mean, how much renown must you have to be imitated like that? anyway) i just basically fell in love with the character. the bounty hunter wars was easily the most fascinating look at the character to me, and it showed an astounding depth to a character that could have easily been made shallow. really all of the characters in that were handled very well to me.

vader. it always comes back to vader in a lot of ways for me. he's just so blasted imposing, and the presence that james earl jones voice brought to him was mesmerizing in a lot of ways. getting what amounts to one of the three male "voices" was a major coup on their part for the character. and then reading more about him over the years just solidified my interest in this broken, screwed up man and made me wonder how he reached that point. probably the most enjoyable three books i've read was the transformation of anakin into vader (handled far better by stover and luceno than the movie, no question). there's one thing that always stuck out to me in an infinities thing, it was when he was fighting maul and was asked what could you possibly hate that would give you the strength to defeat me? vader's answer: myself. that kind of self loathing in a character is not an easy thing to portray in any situation, but i've always felt that many of the authors who have had the opportunity to handle vader had done a good job at showing that. and really, i feel that it was that hatred of his self and what he'd done to padme that allowed luke to ultimately save him. to find such a broken character that could still be redeemed... that spoke to me a lot as a younger man, and in a way gave me hope for myself due to issues from my past. i've battled depression most of my life, and to find something in fiction that can give you hope is a powerful thing.

han solo has always just brought me enjoyment. there is no single character in the saga that, when handled correctly, could make me laugh as easily as han. and there's something very valuable about laughter, especially with the depression that i was dealing with through most of my life. just the character concept is interesting, and that he had six books devoted to his past that were some of the best in the saga, with some of the funniest moments period? how can you not love the character. i remember in one of the brian daly books, the fight in the fire fighting foam against the slavers. even thinking about it brings a chuckle to this day. and having to deal with the tax collector dude. then there was blue max and bollux, that ended up showing up again in the NJO (great call out to the past there, i have to say). the the crispin trilogy... just some of the best written books in the entirety of the EU to me. when you have a character receive that kind of treatment, and it's a genuinely complex and funny character, there's no way not to love him. then the moments he had in the OT? charging the storm troopers and realizing, o crp, gtta gtho. bai. that moment always cracked me up. it made the death of chewie, and then anakin later, that much more poignant to me, and while i know many people hated those two things about that series, i loved them for the reason that they forced the writers to show us a very different han solo. and in that crisis you got another classic han solo story of his dealing with his grief and you have droma showing up out of nowhere to help him out (wish they'd brought him back, but oh well). han solo is one of the few characters that you get to see an entire picture of, from childhood through adulthood, and dealing with all of the inherent problems of life in each stage of life. because of that, you can actually learn a lot from him as a character. he's far more human than luke or leia, and it just makes him that much easier to identify with.

now for a more screwball type of pick, tarfang the ewok with the multiple deathmarks. just the very concept of tarfang is appealing to me, because it so utterly turns several tropes on their heads. sure, it may be in a fairly mehtastic trilogy, but tarfang made the series worth reading to me. i found myself laughing out loud at his antics, and his sullustan pilot barely keeping him in check. there isn't a huge amount to say about him, because he's shown up so little, but he's just one of those screwball characters that make star wars what it is, such a fully realized galaxy with all types.

you'll probably notice a bit of a theme showing up with this next one. mace windu, the borderline dark jedi (yes, i have a thing about dark jedi, the joker is my fav character in batman, go figure). really, i don't know what it was about mace windu that made me like him so much, but when you have one of my all time fav books written from your perspective... well, that certainly helps. shatterpoint is easily one of my fav books in SWs, and just in general. when you actually get to see where mace came from, all of his struggles make sense, and finding out how he overcame the inherent darkness he was steeped in as a child, it's kind of an amazing story in and of it's own. someone struggling to remain in the light while riding the knife edge, flirting with the dark to the point that he has to come up with a new lightsaber form and the philosophy that goes with it. not your every day character in the end.

this last one's a bit of a cop out, i know, but the entire cast from dawn of the jedi. it's such a different universe, but still the similarities and the things it ties together was absolutely fascinating to me. there was not a single character that i disliked in the 15 comics or book. i'm sad that we won't really get anything else from that era or those characters, but what there is... well, it's amazing the kinds of things creative people can do when they're given the chance. if you haven't had a chance to get into those, i highly recommend them while they're still available.

4. What do you hope to see in Episode VII?

honestly? a good movie. what with the changes they've made to the eu as things stand now, i can't even begin to have expectations until we can get our hands on some of these other books and see where they're planning on taking things. but even then... it's new ground for the star wars universe, and i honestly have no idea where they're headed. so all i can hope for is that it's worth investing my time into. if it isn't, then i have my star wars universe complete, and i can enjoy that.

5. What do you do when you are not logged on to TFN?

i read a lot, play games, write, talk to people, do stuff with my church. you know, life stuff really. if you want to know something specific, that'd be a lot easier question to answer honestly. those nebulous ones like this... there's just so much that you can say that figuring out what you actually want to can be somewhat overwhelming.

 

Spoiler

I'm hoping to hit on a hobbie or interest of yours outside of SW that we can dive into further with more questions.

So on with more questions


6. Was Anakin's transformation to Vader anything like you imagined it would be when you first got to know the character in the OT? Do you still have unanswered questions or was everything answered between the novels and PT?
7. How did you pick your original username and was there a meaning behind it? If so what?
8. Why did you change your usermane and what is the meaning behind this one?
9. What type of writing do you do?
10. What are a few of your favorite non SW books?

 

non-sw's related things are always good.

6. Was Anakin's transformation to Vader anything like you imagined it would be when you first got to know the character in the OT? Do you still have unanswered questions or was everything answered between the novels and PT?

oh good lord... you really want to make me think don't you.

7. How did you pick your original username and was there a meaning behind it? If so what?

i read one of those stupid things about how you get a star wars name, and it was combine certain parts of your first and last names, and that's what it was. really no meaning other than that. i'd been wanting to change it for a number of years, but there was a pesky little thing called a post count and so forth that bugged me. i didn't figure a name change was honestly that important, then we got here.

8. Why did you change your usermane and what is the meaning behind this one?

i actually did take a fairly inordinate amount of time to change it, even though i'd been wanting to for a number of years like i said up there *points*. as to why i changed it... it just felt stupid to me, and i'd grown past that silly naming thing a long time ago. but so many people knew me as trimaj i didn't want to have to redo a watched user list, or anything like that. especially since a number of those users aren't here anymore. with the move that wasn't a problem anymore, but i still wasn't sure what i wanted to change it to. so i waited til a couple months ago when i realized this was the name that felt the most applicable for this site. i've been using a different name a lot of other places: themadzookeeper. but i don't know why really, but i wanted something different here.

as to the meaning, it's basically a means of saying that someone who isn't really known, who is just a voice in the crowd, can still do something great, and have a positive influence on the people around you. i did that with a number of people i consider friends here, i know i've managed to help them, even though i was just some random nobody that they knew nothing about when we met. so it's a reminder to myself that i can make a difference in people's lives, no matter how much of an anonymous no one i'm feeling like.

9. What type of writing do you do?

mainly fiction. i'm actually working on a book with someone from here, another of those friends who doesn't post around these parts anymore. i've done some poetry, but not really my favorite thing in the world. the class about writing it kind of turned me off from it even more, just because it's so... academic now. there's no hard and fast definition for it, but the prof felt like he could say what was and wasn't poetry. it bothered me a lot.

as for my fiction, there are some old samples of that. i look back at some of that and i'm just like... wow. that was really bad. heh. practice does that i guess. anyone that writes, or does anything creative really, will understand that feeling. it's frustrating in the moment, when you're working on something, and don't feel like you've actually grown at all, but when you go back and look at the path you've taken to get to where you are a realization of how far you've actually come just hits you. in some cases it can be like a wall of bricks. i know it was like that when me and my friend looked back at the start of the first draft of our book. it was like, oh dear lord, how bad were we... and yet, for our beta readers it was still good enough that they wanted to know what was going to happen. many of them after a certain point even basically stopped making comments whereas the first ten chapters were littered with them. instead we'd improved to the point that they were simply engrossed in the story we were telling. when you can get outside affirmation that yes, you have improved, like that? it's amazing. the confidence boost you get is something that can really help you keep going, keep working to improve.

now that i've rambled about creative stuff enough... let's move on. feel free to ask more about this if you find my thoughts on this kind of thing interesting. there's a lot more i could say.

10. What are a few of your favorite non SW books?

none of the classics honestly. i appreciate their places in history, and what they did for literary tradition, but when you get down to the actual writing (or translations as the case may be) it's just so often dry to me. i like and appreciate shakespeare, but who among the writing community doesn't? i suppose some of the old, old, pre-classic stuff for king arthur as well, particularly gawain and the green night. i love that old type of alliterative poetry that is frowned upon now-a-days (that was one of the things that my poetry prof got after me about, i was banned from using alliteration in that class. -_-).

as for others, pretty much anything by jim butcher. i love the dresden files, and read the last book in a single sitting. yea... kinda silly, but hey, all nighters can be worth it at times. harry is just such an interesting character to me, and i've loved the progression of the series. everything i've read by brandon sanderson. definitely an up and comer in the fantasy world in my opinion, and the guy they chose to finish robert jordan's epic. i can't think of anyone else that could have done that justice honestly. sanderson's mistborn trilogy is one of the best three books i've read, period. it does some things that i honestly hadn't seen done anywhere, and turns so many tropes on their heads that it was kind of astounding. read it, even if you don't like the second book that much, the third would be vastly poorer without it. the night angel trilogy by brent weeks is another one that's really good, i've read it more than a few times and highly recommend it. again, some things done there that you just don't really see anywhere else. the discworld. period. great, great reading, that will make you laugh and look at the world in a very different light. i've not read a single pratchett book that i didn't basically love. if you like satire at all, or just laughing, read. now. you have so been ordered by the grand high poobah of nonsense.

now back to that first question you asked here...

6. Was Anakin's transformation to Vader anything like you imagined it would be when you first got to know the character in the OT? Do you still have unanswered questions or was everything answered between the novels and PT?

like i said, you wanted to make me think. i don't think the clone wars in general lined up with what i was imagining it would be... but i suspect that was probably the case for everyone. our lack of knowledge of what the old republic looked like really made it hard to come up with anything that even resembled an accurate picture. at least for me. i think i pictured something closer to what the star wars comics that dark horse did recently based off the original script was probably closer to what i was thinking would happen. but while it was handled very poorly in some ways, the backbone of ideas was solid. that's one thing i really have to respect lucas for. even if his actual finished product can leave something to be desired (aotc... just yea, the dialogue. >_<) the ideas for what he's trying to do are amazingly sound, and if they had just been handled with a defter touch would/could have been phenomenal. lucas is a helluva idea person, he's just not great at the execution.

but really, i think that what happened in the PT did kind of weakened the character of vader. this was salvaged somewhat in the novels and novelizations done of the movies themselves. to me matthew stover's ROTS is the definitive version. it explores everything so much deeper... really, i couldn't have asked for a better handling of the basic ideas that lucas came up with and left use all a little wanting in the movie. it answered so many questions that the movie simply couldn't because we couldn't ever see the thoughts of the characters, we couldn't see what dooku was thinking, we just couldn't see. and that's one of my biggest problems with movies, they're just so limited with what they can do. it's so hard to really get the character's inner motivations out there on the screen in an easily understandable fashion, but isn't also clunky as hell. the movies that handle that well become classics, those that don't are popcorn flicks or just terrible movies that you may never watch a second time.

as to more questions... i don't think so. the plagueis book answered so many of those for me, because they answered so many of the questions you had about palpatine and where he came from. really the only questions left are about the dark times, but even that's been touched on quite a bit in recent years through the dark horse comics. i guess in a way the eu has become kind of bloated... because the room for new stories, and ideas is so limited in the times that we're familiar with. but the books simply haven't been willing to go off to new time periods in the same way as the comics until recently, but they're still centered around familiar things, or games. i'd love to have seen the books go a few thousand years into the future, and introduce completely new things, new worlds, and have the things that we've all grown so familiar with be nothing but myths or legends. or go back farther, explore some things like the gree, and some of the other races from way back then. show some of the things that the ones did with the killiks for instance. and why. more to do with the history of abeloth would have been interesting as well. telling those stories would be kind of amazing to me, but i doubt that we'll ever see those things now.

there is one major question to me that's still left to be told about anakin/vader, and it relates to the ones and mortis really. it's a simple question as well. why? why did they even open up that can of worms, and why anakin? is it because he is basically an abomination in the eyes of the force? that entire storyline just opened up so many cans of worms... and if they never explore that then... wasted opportunity is really all i can say.

 

My final set of questions for The Great No One

11. What is your favorite non SW movie?
12. What three SW planets would you like to see in person the most?
13. What are your three top travel destinations in RL?
14. If you could get half the time back that you have spend on these boards what would you do with it?
15. Can you share at least one of your goals for the future with us?

Once these questions are complete the floor is open for others to answer questions

 

11. What is your favorite non SW movie?

kinda have the same problem here that i did with SWs characters honestly. if i HAD to pick just a single movie though, i'd say probably philidelphia story with cary grant, jimmy stewart and katherine hepburn. it's the only movie i've watched literally dozens of times, and still go back to because it's just a fun movie. if you like classic flicks, i highly recommend it, it's a thoroughly enjoyable jaunt. although if you like grant or stewart, you probably now about it.

12. What three SW planets would you like to see in person the most?

hmmm... i suppose dromund kas, zonama sekot and maybe tython back in the dawn of the jedi era. if anyone would like to know why, i'll be happy to answer that as well.

13. What are your three top travel destinations in RL?

the scottish highlands, i've always thought that was some absolutely beautiful, if rugged, land that i've always wanted to see. it's also where a lot of my ancestors are from, so it'd be kind of like going home in a way as well.

angel falls. would be a pain to get to i admit, but it's probably the single most beautiful place in the world in my opinion.

macchu picchu would have to be my third. i've always been fascinated by that place, form how in the world did they get the boulders up there, to how did they carve them. and how/why did they not use right angles? i mean, they had joins that were literally perfect enough that you can't fit a razor blade between them, and they're curves. that just amazes me.

14. If you could get half the time back that you have spend on these boards what would you do with it?

well, given when most of that time was spent, probably being depressed. if it was more now, i'd probably spend it reading. got a lot of books and so forth that i've wanted to read over the years that i finally have access to.

15. Can you share at least one of your goals for the future with us?

to find someone to share my life with, would probably be my biggest goal at this point. maybe not as inspiring as some things, but it's what's important to me.

 

Favourite non-human species and why?

Who do you consider best dressed in SW?​

 

Favourite non-human species and why?

the defel. i've always been fascinated by them, and a lot of the characters i played in the RPF were defel. the ability to basically disappear from sight is just so intriguing to me, and opens up so many possibilities. probably been my favorite species in SWs for a very long time. probably non-SWs as well.

second would be the shi'ido. shapeshifters with the ability to not only mimic living things, but rocks, trees, and other inanimate objects as well? c'mon, what's not to love about that? and they aren't as limited by size as a lot of other shapeshifters like clawdites. i've been given the privilege to play a few of them in the RPF as well, and thoroughly enjoyed it. being able to change your appearance on a whim creates for some very interesting options for expression that you simply can't have with any other species.

Who do you consider best dressed in SW?

lando. who else could it possibly be?

 

Why would you like to see those three planets?

Are you looking forward to the new EU books coming out?

 

Why would you like to see those three planets?

because they're all very significant for different reasons. dromund kaas is one of the most major darkside locations there is, and i think it would be interesting to see what being steeped in the darkside would actually do to a planet, and the way it feels.

zonama sekot... well, why wouldn't it be interesting to see a sentient planet? i mean, that's just a concept that is kind of amazing really. and i wonder if they got that from sid meiers alpha centauri from back in the day...

tython, that time period specifically, because i'd like to see a planet that is so in tune with the force that anything out of balance causes such major disruptions. and seeing how the jed'aii functioned back then would be interesting, what with being balanced in the force and everything. was definitely a unique look at... everything really.

Are you looking forward to the new EU books coming out?

i'm hesitant to look forward to them. james luceno definitely helps, but overall i'm taking a very wait and see approach. again, like with the new movies, i'm hoping for good, but not really expecting anything because it's too hard to disassociate everything that has been part of the SWs universe for so long completely. any ideas i have, or expectations i have, are going to be colored by that, so i'm basically trying to have none, and not really get hyped for it so i won't be disappointed.

 

The Great No One remember that time I handcuffed you to a chair?

 

nooooo... not at all... >_>

 

Selective amnesia. . .lucky barv

 

no, i am not bazel warv... i don't know what gave you the idea that i'm a ramoan.

 

Favourite SW culture?

 

Favourite SW culture?

actually, if you'd asked me that a few months ago i doubt i'd have had an answer to that. having only just recently read the dawn of the jedi stuff (seriously wish there was going to be more of that, but oh well) that's probably it. it's easily the most fascinating to me. seeing what both the jedi and the sith ultimately came out of was fascinating. there's so much potential there, that sadly will never be realized.

 

What fictional culture would you like to see used as an inspiration in SW and how?

What real life culture would you like to see used as an inspiration in SW and how?​

 

ok, firstly, my apologies Gamiel for taking so long to answer these. i really just didn't have one, and have been thinking about it some since.


What fictional culture would you like to see used as an inspiration in SW and how?

this one... this one is hard for me. any fictional culture that i like at all, just would not fit in SWs at all. because of that, i really wouldn't want to see them implemented, even on an inspirational level because they're all so out of place.i SUSPECT that the closest thing that could work would be the culture from the coldfire trilogy written by c.s. friedman. a large part of why that would interest me is how fully sacrifice is implemented into their culture. if you want something from the magic that governs the reality they live in, it requires a sacrifice of some sort. for truly great magic, or something like immortality, the sacrifice is almost unimaginable. take for instance the sacrifice to basically change the world so that it was safer, not really safe, but safer to live on. they had crash-landed on the planet from space, and early on people were still holding out hope that they could make it back into space. but that soon proved somewhat impossible, because the dreams that they had created monsters. anything you can think of can exist in this world. and it was the only world like it, where they had come from there was nothing even remotely similar. magic didn't exist. so what this one guy did, after the principle of sacrifice for controlled magic was discovered, was destroy the ship and all of it's knowledge as a sacrifice to make the land they lived in safe. that's ancient history during the time of the books (but covered), but the very concept of that is just absolutely fascinating to me. and i could see it working really with with the force.

to make this work, it'd have to be basically that the only way that the force was discovered on the world was through rituals in a way. maybe something similar to sith rituals, but even the jedi had them once upon a time when they made alchemically enhanced swords instead of lightsabers (one could argue that making a lightsaber is one as well, now that i think about it). or they used to before the dawn of the jedi series. but anyway, i could see these rituals not even necessarily revolving around blood sacrifices, or death, but around giving something up, probably most often an item, that was burnt or something so that something that you wanted would happen. how that would ultimately shape a culture, i'm not entirely sure as that's something i'd probably need more than few days to really consider, but the possibilities as a writer... well let's just say fascinating is a very good word.


What real life culture would you like to see used as an inspiration in SW and how?

so for real life i think norse mythology would have to be my choice. that or celtic. or even a mixture of the two. if you consider them to be fictional, i'm sorry. i started to put them there, but realized that they were actually part of a culture. but it's the mythological side of those two specifically that i find interesting. although adding in space vikings to star wars would be kind of cool. anyway.

my reason for those two is that they're just so different from the stories you get in the more "traditional" mythologies that people look at (read greco-roman) that i was always fascinated by them. i mean, take the celtic god dagda. he ate a lake of porridge because he was captured by giants, and then proceeded to brain them all with his spoon after. who comes up with that kind of stuff? or the trout of knowledge that finn mac cool burned his finger on and whenever he sucks it he knows what his enemies weaknesses and so forth are. i mean really. a hero that sucks their thumb to gain knowledge. or with the norse mythology, fenris the wolf that is going to essentially bring about armageddon and tyr who was willing to lose a hand just to bind him until the end time. just totally out of left field kinda stuff here.

as to how it would be implemented... you see, here i really haven't been able to think of an answer at all. i really can't see how it would fit within the star wars mythos very well, because of the way the force works most of the things that make the cultures fascinating just wouldn't really fit. it'd be completely jarring, unless someone came upon this absolutely brilliant idea. and if i could do that i'd probably have already written it somehow as a fanfiction kind of thing. alas, i've drawn a complete blank there.


hope i was able to answer those two in a satisfactory fashion given the time involved.

 

Take the time you need, I am patient.

Do you know about the comics Valhalla and/or Sláine, I can recommend them if you can get your hands on them.

And while I am talking about Sláine I just have to post this fan made trailer

 

no, i hadn't heard of either one of them. i'll have to take a look, thanks for the heads up.

 

What order did you watch the SW movies first, and would you watch them the same order today?

I'm tempted to post the "Inside the Actors Studio" questions here... but I won't.

 

go ahead, i doubt i'd really mind.

as to your question, i saw the original trilogy in correct order first, and then the second in order. as to if i'd watch them in the same order or not... i'm very tempted to try a couple of the alternate orders, but haven't really had any kind of chance to do so. i've seen them all from I-VI, which is decent, and drives home lucas shortcomings pretty hard. there's some consistent issues, but overall it's pretty good.