TV Discussion LACWAC Member Interviews (★☆★ SpecialOpsUnit & Fives_Says_No_To_Sixes ★☆★)

anakinfansince1983 2. Where in the world do you live, and have you always lived there? What are some of the best parts about where you live?

 

Todd the Jedi :

I'm in Charlotte, North Carolina, the Queen City, corporate headquarters of Bank of America, home of the Panthers, home of the NASCAR Hall of Fame but we don't talk about that, at least I don't. I've lived here since 2001. Before then...well, I moved around a lot. When people ask where I'm from, I say Wilson, NC, which is where I went to middle and high school and where my parents currently live; it's just east of Raleigh. But I've also lived in New Bern, NC, Lenoir, NC, Danville, VA, and when my Dad was on active duty in the Coast Guard, the DC area.

Best parts of where I live: the spring and fall are awesome here, and as much as I wish we got more snow, winters are mild enough to go hiking without getting stuck on the side of a hill and labelled Frosty. There are three nature preserves with hiking trails within Mecklenburg County and probably 30 more within easy driving distance; I can be in the mountains in two hours. We have the best children's library and one of the best science museums anywhere. As hard as it is to be an agnostic liberal in the South, Charlotte is a good place for it because the population is diverse. Housing is cheap as hell. And the Panthers won eight straight games in a row.

Don't let anyone (cough Seerow cough) tell you the barbecue here is good though. That's eastern North Carolina.

 

anakinfansince1983 3. What made you sign up for the Jedi Council Forums? Do you post on any other forums?

 

Todd the Jedi :

I cut my Internet teeth back in the late 90s on Yahoo mailing lists and with interest generating in the prequels, I looked for Star Wars related ones. I ended up on a list about the Skywalkers run by FernWithy, who moderated here years ago. Between that list and doing Yahoo searches for information about Anakin Skywalker, I found this place. This was before the IGN boards, I don't even remember what server the site used and it was still pretty small. I lurked for probably a year before I signed up, and then it was to comment on someone's fan fic. I jumped into conversations slowly after that. I initially registered under the name anakin_girl, not sure why I picked that name other than I'm sure alcohol was involved. But it stuck for over a decade until I retired it.

I post on a smaller board spun off this one and I'm a member of a couple of Anakin and Padme boards but I never go over there anymore. I was a member of a local parenting website for about five years but I lost interest in that as well and deleted my account after realizing that I was already Facebook friends with everyone I cared about keeping up with from there.

So...this place is pretty much it.

 

anakinfansince1983 4. What was your reaction to the announcement of Disney's purchase of Star Wars, and what are your hopes for the ST?

 

Todd the Jedi :

My reaction was...Oh hell.

I got the news off Facebook and I had to double check the feeds I was reading because I initially thought it was an Onion headline. When I didn't see the Onion listed anywhere, I still thought it was some sort of elaborate joke. Yeah, hilarious, Mr. Lucas. I think it was a link to Time Magazine that let me know this was real.

And my reaction was still "Oh hell" and "Hilarious, Mr. Lucas," followed by "God ****ing dammit you sold out!"

It took me a few days and I don't remember where I read the commentary that warmed me up to it, it might have been here, it might have been on friends' Facebook pages. But I had to look at the wide variety of material that Disney has made as well as all the company's great movies (and those of you who have read the recent Amphitheater thread as well as some of my other posts, you know I like a lot of Disney, Pixar and Marvel stuff) in order to realize that Star Wars with a large company does not mean that Star Wars will lose its originality and become generic Hollywood crap.

I'm excited about it now, as with Disney's resources and access to good writers and directors, we'll potentially get new Star Wars for the rest of my life.

Hopes for the ST:

An interesting story with complex dynamic characters. Good, funny dialogue with quotable lines. Heroes and villains, neither of them one-dimensional.

Those are my "must haves", otherwise I'm pretty open.

 

anakinfansince1983 5. What are some of your favorite non-SW books and comics? Which have made the biggest impact on you?

 

Todd the Jedi :

I had to really think about this one and I still may look back and think "Damn, I missed one." But here goes...

Deadline by Chris Crutcher. It's a young adult novel and I'm, well, not a young adult, but who cares. It's about a rising high school senior who discovers at his cross-country physical that he has a rare form of leukemia and probably won't live to graduate from high school. Sounds depressing as hell but it's not, at least for most of the book, because this guy has an awesome personality and a great (sarcastic smartass) sense of humor and decides that dammit, he doesn't have much time left and he's going to make the most of what he has. He doesn't tell a soul that he's dying, not even his parents or his brother; he just takes the attitude of "What would you do if you weren't afraid?" and runs with it. And he has hilarious conversations with a spiritual guru named "Hay-soos."

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. It starts out with her curled up on the bathroom floor in New York City in the middle of the night having a really ugly cry with "I don't want to be married anymore" repeated over and over again in her head, and ends with her in Indonesia having sex for three days straight with a hot Brazilian dude while monkeys hang around outside. And in the middle there's a lot of real Italian food and hard-core yoga.

Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. There aren't too many classic novels that I can read more than once but this was a good one--the French Revolution, the political climate of both France and England, and Sidney's sacrifice.

The Rock and the River by Kekla Magoon. Two brothers, the Civil Rights era, two conflicting philosophies, MLK vs Malcolm X. I won't give away the ending but I will say that I cried for an hour.

Night Boat to Freedom by Margot Theis Raven. It's a picture book, won a Caldecott. I can't read it at work because I choke up every time. It's about a slave who helps other slaves cross the river from Kentucky to Ohio, and the woman who raised him. At one point she encourages him to leave her behind and cross the river himself. "Don't you cry for me, Christmas John, 'cause love don't stop at a river, and no river is wide enough to keep us apart." It also includes "What scares the head is best done with the heart."

The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate the Wash by Trinka Hakes Noble. It's as absurd and hilarious as it sounds. Read it to your kids.

The Harry Potter series. I used to read these over and over to relieve stress. Fred and George alone are stress relief.

Dave Barry's books, particularly his Short History of the United States, History of the Millenium and Complete Guide to Guys.

 

I don't care what anyone says, but Fred's death was the saddest in DH. Though not as sad as Sydney Carton's.

anakinfansince1983 6. What are some of your favorite SW books and comics?

 

Todd the Jedi :

Traitor. This would be a good book on life philosophy and the state of the universe even if the words "Star Wars" never appeared anywhere on it and "the Force" were substituted for something else...the universe maybe? I went into it thinking, if this is another book with Jacen seeing **** moving in the stars again, I'm going into rage mode. But one chapter into it, I was using my Kindle's highlight feature with one hand and wiping away tears and picking my jaw up off the floor with the other.

Vector Prime. Great opening to the NJO, establishing the Vong as bat**** crazy zealot villains, the Big 4 as themselves, the Solo twins as likable versions of themselves. And Chewie. He got a fitting end for a great hero. CT-867-5309 I'm paraphrasing here something you said once: only a moon could take Chewie down.

Edge of Victory I: Conquest: Because Vua Rapuung, and Anakin and Tahiri.

The Revenge of the Sith novelization. Anakin Skywalker's spiral into insanity is creepy and sad, as opposed to ****ing idiotic like it is on screen. Padme is actually sympathetic as she helplessly watches the decline of her husband and the Republic she has served. "This is what it's like to be Anakin Skywalker, now." Dammit, Stover.

Labyrinth of Evil. That business on Cato Neimoidia that didn't count. Anakin and Obi-Wan show their friendship by getting wasted together. Palpatine trolls the hell out of Anakin. Padme faints in front of Bail and Mon Mothma. And Mace and Shaak Ti are frustratingly close to catching Sidious.

Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader. If Rebels can show the Dark Times half as well as this, we're in for a good ride. Obi-Wan and Bail find out that Vader survived, and Fang Zar gets creamed.

Honorable mentions:

Plagueis. Palpatine was always an ass, he was just once a college-aged ass. And Plagueis could use people like nobody's business, until he let Palpatine get him drunk.

Karen Miller's TCW novels. Yes, I said it. They're a bit of a guilty pleasure, kind of like the Star Wars versions of supermarket paperbacks, but Obi-Wan and Anakin bond, a lot, without alcohol. And do I really need to repeat the point about Anakin and Padme getting naughty with fruit?


Comics:

I'm new to the comics but I enjoyed the Empire series and I'm enjoying the Dark Times even more.

 

anakinfansince1983 7. Now that all's said and done, what are your overall thoughts on Ahsoka? What did you like and dislike about her character arc and how she affected Anakin?

This is of course ignoring if she shows up in Rebels. (she will. A wolf told me so. )

 

Todd the Jedi : LOL, was the wolf wearing a fedora?

OK, starting with what I like (don't adjust your screen font to make sure you read that correctly, there are a few things ):

She was cool when she was introduced. I even had a couple of posts in the Hanging with Skyguy Fan Club in 2010 or early 2011. I liked the way she wasn't intimidated by Anakin in spite of his best attempts to pull off the "yeah, I'm too cool to teach you, get lost kid" attitude. I liked the way she was similar to him, and Qui-Gon in a way, in doing her own thing. She was impulsive like Anakin was and I appreciated that, I thought it would be really interesting to see how he handled an apprentice so much like himself.

I assumed at the time that the intention behind her inclusion was to add to Anakin's fear of loss and/or his attachment issues, and there were some good episodes that showed how attached he was; Cargo of Doom was one, the Trandoshan Arc was another.

What I didn't like:

She stopped being a contributing character to a larger show about a lot of characters, and she became the show itself. So many episodes could have been re titled The Ahsoka Showcase. She sees purple Hutts. She decapitates four Mandos at once. She finds Anakin's mask when he loses brain cells and can't do it himself.

Nothing wrong in and of itself with a character having certain abilities but sometime around season 3, there was no longer a larger story about how the Jedi we already knew, developed during the war, or how the war affected the Republic. That change was not entirely due to showcasing Ahsoka but that definitely factored in. Just the fact that I heard a lot of sentiment along the lines of 'Ahsoka exiting was a good point at which to end the show since there is little to no show without her,' proves my point. No one character should carry that much weight in a cast of so many.

 

anakinfansince1983 8. If you had been in charge of TCW instead of Dave Filoni, what would be different about the show? What would you change, and what would you keep?

 

Todd the Jedi :

What I'd keep:

1. The episodes focused on characters introduced to us but not developed well in the movies due to time constraints. Seasons 1 and 2 had a lot of these: a Yoda-centric episode (yeah, Yoda was developed in the films but only in relation to other characters, not as himself in his prime), a Mace-centric episode, a Plo-centric episode. That was cool, and something that a weekly show has the opportunity to do but a film trilogy does not. I would have more of these.

2. The Anakin/Obi-Wan friendship. I like the banter but that's not all I'd keep, I'd add in more serious heart-to-hearts as well. Show Anakin as the good man and good friend that old Ben talked about in the OT.

3. Cad Bane. I don't know that he was essential to the show but he was fun, a good foil for the Jedi, and bounty hunters have a following in Star Wars.

4. Young Boba Fett in the capacity of trying to avenge Jango's death.

5. Mother Talzin and the Nightsisters. Their arc demonstrated an alternate way to look at the Force, and Mother Talzin was an interesting villain.

6. Savage Oppress, only I would have him going after Obi-Wan to try to avenge his brother.

7. I'm on the fence about this one but I would probably keep Ahsoka as she was originally introduced, as a Padawan for Anakin with a similar personality, given to him to teach with the idea that he would learn responsibility and maybe learn how to let go of attachments. It was an idea bound to backfire but I can see Yoda's thought process on this and I would have liked to have seen it developed better. I would only develop Ahsoka as an apprentice/sidekick for Anakin though.

8. Ventress. Because she's ****ing awesome. I would keep her Nightsisters background too, it wasn't exactly like the comics but I liked it. I would add in more episodes showing what she did between Bounty and the fugitive arc, how she made her way in the galaxy as a bounty hunter looking after herself, how she came to be on Coruscant.

9. Clones: I'd keep their personalities, but I would add more examples to the idea that they are genetically programmed to be obedient, which is to say that I would add some examples of their being genetically programmed to be obedient.

10. I'd keep the Anakin/Padme interaction but I would add more secrecy to it. As it was, there were too many situations when their colleagues would have had to have been dumber than a box of rocks not to know what was going on.

11. The younglings. It was cool to see them building their lightsabers and I liked the Harry-Potter-esque concept of the crystal choosing them.

12. The Separatist Senate. I liked what they tried to do anyway, which was to show them as normal people with different ideals as opposed to one-dimensional "bad guys."


What I'd throw out:

1. The whole arc concept, or at least the mandate of it. It's fine when used sparingly, but every single ****ing episode does not need to be part of an arc.

2. Character development for Ahsoka that is unrelated to any of the other characters or the Clone Wars itself and is done solely for the purpose of showcasing.

3. The mentality the writers had regarding pacifism. There is a way to write a pacifist character or characters without making them look spineless or stupid. I'm reading Remnant right now, it does so pretty well with Releqy A'Kla, just demonstrates the philosophy pacifists have and focuses on the idea that the end goal is peace, not simply ending conflict. I was not given the impression that she was an idiot, which is more than I can say either about Satine or the Lurmen.

4. Pointless retconning of EU material. The most obvious case in point was the use of Barriss as the bomber instead of introducing an original character or several original characters in an earlier season and making one of them the bomber, but there were more minor incidents too, such as Adi Gallia and Even Piell's deaths. I'm not particularly attached to their stories, I don't even like Coruscant Nights, but when there is no reason to put that particular character in that particular position other than to say "**** you" to fans of that character's old story, it shouldn't be done.

5. On the bomber issue again, I would throw out the idea of Jedi being disgusted and disgruntled at their own involvement in a violent war and solving that problem by instigating their own version of violence. See also: Krell. Show them leaving the Order in disgust or something, not behaving exactly the way they are supposedly so disgusted with.

6. I'd throw out Clovis, because no matter what anyone thinks about Anakin, there's no way Padme's taste in men was ever that terrible.

7. Mortis. Because Aristocrat vodka (and other cheap nasty liquids that can fuel my car) is available at my local liquor store if I am so inclined to see rocks floating in the air, the well of the Dark Side, and Ahsoka wearing goggles, and hear old people speaking jibberish. And if I want to see Anakin behave like a ****ing idiot, I've got ROTS on Blu-Ray.

A little more seriously, the less that is said about the "Chosen One prophecy," the better. Definitely not blaming Filoni for that one, that's all Lucas's fault, but let's just pretend that **** never happened.

8. Three out of four droid arc episodes. Use one to show R2 as the hero, Missing in Action maybe, because let's face it, R2 spent six movies saving everyone's ass, he deserves it. But no WAC or QT-KT unless we're going to introduce the Vong and Rhommamool droid execution pits this early.

9. Lux Bonteri. Just go watch Twilight already.

10. Maul. I was more pleased with his resurrection that I had thought I would be, but I still wouldn't do it, I'd have Savage fill his role.

 

anakinfansince1983 9. What do you think are the most important issues in America and why?

 

Todd the Jedi :

Warning: I am so far to the left, I make Nancy Pelosi look like a Fox News anchor. If that offends any of you, don't read further.

1. Income inequality. The concentration of a good portion of wealth into the hands of a small number of people or corporations.

I think everyone knows that he/she who has the good, makes the rules, and as such we've moved away from a democracy or republic by the people into an oligarchy. Plus the upward mobility that America has been known for is stifled now.

2. Lack of a living wage. Related to upward mobility, it is very difficult for people to seek further education and training in order to get a better position if they are working sixty hours a week just to cover rent and food.

There is a lot of commentary about the Joe the Plumber types who start their own businesses and have success with it and therefore gain wealth, and I say kudos, that's awesome, but it takes capital to start a business, let's not pretend Joe the Plumber started with mud pies and a spare pipe in his back yard. Even when I sold Mary Kay, I had to invest over a thousand dollars before I could pay myself.

Someone trying to pay rent and put food on the table, especially someone with kids, with wages from McDonald's is not going to have capital to start a business.

3. Corporatism. Wealthy corporations bribing buying politicians in order to get legislation passed that benefits them, even if it harms the rest of the population.

4. Back to income inequality and lack of upward mobility, lack of funding for and general attitude towards services that would help the poor improve their situation, such as education, libraries, public transit, preventative health care.

5. Back to corporatism, the lack of real choice in our government. If anyone has seen the political compass test, all the Presidential candidates in 2008 were in the upper right quadrant per one graph that I looked at. That leaves those of us who test in the lower left quadrant with very little voice. Canada with its five-party system is better in that regard.

6. For-profit prison systems and for-profit health insurance, plus war profiteering. No company should make money based on how many people get sick or get arrested, much less how many people get bombed.

 

anakinfansince1983 10. What are your views on the state of education in America, both primary and secondary levels? How do you think we compare to the rest of the world?

 

Todd the Jedi :

We're behind. There is commentary on both sides of the political fence about this but nobody can agree on a reason. I do think that for a long time there was a big disconnect between the skills that schools were teaching and the skills that employers actually needed, and there is an attempt to rectify that with the new Common Core standards (which a lot of educators hate but I think are fantastic). Therefore I think that a lot of students rightfully felt that nothing they were learning in school was going to be useful in the real world; hopefully that changes. Schools have also been technologically behind, mostly due to a prevailing attitude that funding any service in the public sector is bad. I'm working with several other people in my building on technology grants because we are ridiculously far behind, and we have more technology than many poorer systems.

In countries with more successful education systems, teachers are better respected by society as a whole, not to mention better trained and better paid. The lower pay here goes along with the lack of respect, as teachers don't "deserve" better pay or benefits. There is also a lack of focus on standardized testing, if it exists at all. I understand the need for some standardization but the amount of it present now just goes back to the lack of respect, the unwillingness of some in society to allow teachers the autonomy to choose what students should learn on a subject.

I could probably write a book on this and I won't, I'll just say that I've worked in several public schools, and the majority of teachers that I have worked with, love kids, love what they do and work their asses off. Same with teachers that my kids have had. It seems that society unfortunately likes to judge the whole system by the few bad apples.

 

It doesn't help that we have had the idea that "we want to be able to say we have more high school and college graduates than the rest of the world" and we accomplish that by eliminating VoTech programs and trying to force everyone to go to college.

I've got a masters degree because I ****ing love school. (Yes, I put "I ****ing love school" on my grad school applications.) It's not because I'm smarter than anyone else. There's nothing wrong with not getting a post-secondary degree if that's not one's thing. And people without post-secondary degrees should still be able to find training and decent jobs. We kind of fail there in the US, not to mention the fact that college is expensive and the pressure to go, has left people saddled with debt.

 

anakinfansince1983 11. What are your favorite quotes? (Fictional/said by real people, etc.)

 

Todd the Jedi :

I've delayed a little longer on this one than I did on the others because I have so many, and this is not a comprehensive list by any stretch of the imagination. These are in no particular order of importance. And for right now I'm sticking with media, because every time I try to think of specifics from real people, I come up with "so much stuff that this person said" and "so much more that that person said."

TV and Movies:

"Look kid, I've been from one side of the galaxy to the other, seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen anything to make me believe that there is an all-powerful Force controlling everything. No mystical energy field controls my destiny, it's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense." Han Solo, explaining Tracy's spiritual philosophy in a nutshell

"Your focus determines your reality." Qui-Gon Jinn sums up life

"If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits 88 miles per hour, you're going to see some serious ****." Doc Brown, explaining how to navigate traffic on I-77 during rush hour

"Think, McFly, think." If you need an explanation, read it again.

"I used to have [a radio], but I threw it against the wall when I couldn't figure out where the batteries went. I found out later I was suffering from premenstrual syndrome." Truvy Jones, Steel Magnolias

"Ed, do you ever notice that the older you get, the younger your girlfriends get? Soon you'll be dating sperm!" Mitch Robbins, City Slickers

"...you're going to spend the next three months going blind on paperwork because a Seaman Second Class bought and smoked a dime bag of oregano." Dannee Kaffee, A Few Good Men

"There have been others, to be sure. There are always others. But you know the difficulties between men and women, how seldom it works out? Yet we all keep trying, like fools." David Lo Pan, Big Trouble in Little China

"Life goes by pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it." Ferris Bueller

"Change can be so constant that you don't even feel the difference until there is one. It can be so slow that you don't even notice that your life is better or worse until it is. Or it can just blow you away, make you something different in an instant. It happened to me." George Monroe, Life as a House

"You say you're dark and twisty. That's not a flaw. It's a strength. It makes you who you are." Derek Shepard, Grey's Anatomy

Books:

"When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become real. It doesn't happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen too often to people who break easily, or who have sharp edges, or have to be carefully kept. Generally by the time you are real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get all loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are real you can never be ugly, except to people who don't understand." Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

"From what I gather, the Yuuzhan Vong have been using us for target practice and to thin the stupid from their gene pool." Greg Keyes, Edge of Victory I: Conquest

"How did you expect it to feel? You are free, Jacen Solo, and that can be lonely, and empty, and frightening. But it is also powerful." Matthew Stover, Traitor

"Jacen had learned that one can meet the Universe and all its irrational pain--which means meeting oneself--with fear, or with hatred, or with despair. Or one can choose to meet it with love. Jacen had chosen. But still, he was astonished to discover that the Universe could love him back." Matthew Stover, Traitor

"Now, though, I understand : you don't say this because it's true. Not even because you think it's true. You say it because you hope it's true. Because if I am insane, then you aren't really the revolting slime-hearted vermin that deep down, you know you are." Matthew Stover, Shatterpoint

"And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything." Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"Did you ever get the feeling that you were connected to somebody? I mean the minute you see them, or have some stupid little conversation where neither one of you said anything important, but..." Chris Crutcher, Deadline

"Love, in the universal sense, is unconditional acceptance. In the individual sense, the one-on-one sense, try this: we can say we love each other if my life is better because you're in it and your life is better because I'm in it. The intensity of the love is weighed by how much better." Chris Crutcher, Deadline