FanFic Ask Me Anything ~*~ Version 3.0 Daily Questions (See list on pg 164 or 1)

I think that Jawa fortresses should have been modelled on the Sankore madrasah in Timbuktu and built from cast sand instead of being made of scrap parts of old ships.



I also think that the palace of the Quesoth Queen should look like the Registan, but in the colour corresponding to the Queen's cycle instead of turquoise and blue.

I didn't give up on it, strictly speaking. I just had what I think is a better idea for the same scene, but that's still many chapters away, so I still have time to change my mind


I don't know if you noticed in the pentozali video that the very tall guy who dances at the end of the line and supports the acrobatic dancers is holding a handkerchief. It's meant to prevent their hands from slipping because they'll be sweating, but in very, very good pentozali performances they'll be holding the ends of the handkerchief instead of holding hands, and that's where you get the most impressive acrobatics. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find a video

This is - by faaaaaaar - the best question anyone has asked not only to me, but since this thread came into existence Since Gamiel is Swedish, chances are he'll come on holiday to Greece some day, and I'll take him for lunch to the Cretan restaurant near my office (the reason I'm saying lunch and not dinner will become clear soon.) It will most probably be in the summer, so I'll be wearing the same dress as today. We'll have the full works - stuffed zucchini flowers with xygalo cheese, apaki (smoked pork) in wine sauce, vinegar-flavoured sausage, dakos (a tomato-and-feta-cheese salad served on rye rusks), roast goat with potatoes, etc - but because he said in another thread that he likes butter, we'll also have staka in every possible form. Staka is an undefinable thing half-way between cheese and butter (the best description is probably "structured cholesterol") and they serve it baked, stuffed in mushrooms, or in an omelet. And to help all that food go down, we'll drink a lot of marouva (a reddish wine made from raisins) and then raki (Cretan moonshine) to finish us off. I'll try to give answers to his never-ending questions about any alien species of his choice, but when he's really ripe after all those drinks, I'll get him to spill everything he knows, and then some he made up, about the Mandalorians. And when he's really, really ripe (do you understand now why I said lunch? this is going to take time!) I'll teach him Cretan songs and dances, I'll film the whole lot and I'll post it here

Gamiel, you've been warned. You can start practicing on this song. The soloist is Nikos Xylouris, who was the greatest voice of Cretan music in the 20th century, and I expect you to be just as good.

Going to the cinema is another thing I had to cut back on because of the crisis I only go to films I really, absolutely, definitely want to see on big screen; if not, I wait for the DVD. For SW though, I won't have to wait for the opening Thursday (for some reason I never understood, films open on Thursdays here). There's a person in my group of friends who works in, shall we say, the right place, and she always has a two-seat ticket for movie premieres. The moment she found out the release date for Episode VII, she promised me the second seat on her ticket, so I'm all set

Is [face_pulling_hair_out] an emoticon?

For the Gree, I imagined a sculpture style. I'm putting this behind a spoiler tag because it's still many chapters away in my fic.

Spoiler: Gree sculpture

They use a dark, glassy material to create abstract shapes. The material becomes soft and gelatinous when touched, but it doesn't lose its shape, and it emits notes of music. When two or more sculptures that are part of the same ensemble are put side by side and touched, the music becomes coherent.

The Talz are a rather primitive species in canon, but the colony I'm planning to describe in the Unknown Regions will be more technologically advanced.

Spoiler: Talz colony

The world they settle is colder and harsher than their homeworld, so they use stolen Imperial technology to develop magnetic shields against the cold. When raised to protect a dwelling or a ship, the shields look like natural ice sculptures.

I'm a bit stumped about their diet though, because with that proboscis I'd imagine them to be eating insects, but where to you find insects on an ice world? Any suggestions are welcome

Just to satisfy your curiosity about alien food, I'll tell you that I also plan to have the Troukree in my story.

Spoiler: Troukree food

They host a banquet on their planet. They eat live insects, raw fish and small rodents but they prepared human food for the Imperials.

I developed a bad case of cataract since this morning. Now I need a surgeon.

1. Raw carrots. I HATE raw carrots.
2. Clams. Not that I don't like them, but I'm allergic to them.
3. Insects. I never tried and I never will
It's lucky you said three, because I'd be hard pressed to name a fourth one

EDIT

Argh, I missed a question again!

I'm not sure why. It's really a primal fear, that after the horizon you fall into the void. I think my grandmother read too many ancient myths as bedtime stories when I was a kid, and the idea stuck with me.

 

Have you ever been on a cruise (ship)?

 

Chyntuck - can I just say that lunch you described sounds amazing!!!!! Especially the structured cholesterol stuffed in mushrooms,

~

What stories/legends did you grow up hearing at bedtime, and what are your favorites?

 

What kind of mythological creature would you like to see in SW?

 

You mention going to the theatre...but have you ever been in theatre?
I have....

 

Nope The closest I've been was on a fancy passenger ferry that had a nightclub (!) on the way to Santorini. But if I'm going to go for an island-hopping trip, I'd rather go sailing. I think I'd enjoy not hearing the sound of engines for a while; Athens is a very loud city.

The structured cholesterol in mushrooms is to die for. As a matter of fact, it might actually kill you, but that would be a pleasant way to die

I had everything! My parents were telling me "modern", "European" stories like Snow White, Cinderella etc, my nanny was telling me Greek folk stories and my grandmother was raving about ancient mythology (the funny thing is that she was very prudish, and many myths are about sex, so she had to skate over a lot of it).

In western tales my favourite is (unsurprisingly) Hansel and Gretel. That house made out of cake and candy is a powerful reason to like the story

In Greek folk tales I like the stories with Karagiozis, a classic character of the poor, not very smart Greek hunchback who always gets in trouble. I got to hear and see those stories both as bedtime stories and in shadow puppet theatre. My favourite was and still is "Karagiozis the doctor", where he's coerced into pretending that he's a doctor and goes to treat the Vizier's daughter who has gone dumb. He finds out that her illness is due to the fact that her father wants to marry her off to someone she doesn't know, while she's in love with the officer Selim. Karagiozis tells the Vizier that she must marry the first man she will see after taking the last of the medicine, and Selim, who was hidden in the closet all along, comes out at the right time and marries his beloved

In Greek mythology, there are just too many stories to choose from. I remember that when I was very little, I went through a period where I was fascinated by the story of how Athena was born from Zeus's forehead. I thought that was the height of cool

Mythological monsters would make good additions to Jabba the Hutt's pet collection, don't you think? I can imagine the dungeons of Jabba's palace populated with creatures like Cerberus the three-headed dog, or a Force-sensitive version of the Lernaean Hydra that grows two heads every time you chop off one, unless you use a lightsaber

EDIT: Since we're talking SW and mythology, a honourable mention goes to JadeLotus 's fic Eurydice. That was a great starwarsy take on a Greek myth

Shhhh! Don't say that. Gamiel will never come to Greece if we keep this up. We have to lure him in a false sense of security.

You know, I find it reassuring that I'm not the only person here to google everything everyone posts on these forums

3 September 1843 was a coup/uprising after which the king granted the first constitution of modern Greece. The song is called "Friends and brothers" and it's basically a call to protest for democracy ("Friends and brothers, mothers, elders and children/Look out the window and watch/the people walking in the dark and roaming the alleys/They're writing slogans, messages for the king/If you won't scream, at least go out and write" etc). It's taken from a play called "Our Great Circus" by Iakovos Kambanellis that was first performed in Greece in 1973. The play is a political satire of the history of Greece and the playwright, musicians and actors created it as an act of resistance against the dictatorship we had in Greece at the time. One of the funniest things about this play is that, to get it through censorship, they submitted it to the censors' commission as a comedy, and those guys were so stupid that they didn't understand what it was about so they let it go through But once the performances began, the audience started coming in droves. My mother was there (I was there too, but inside her belly) and she says it was amazing because there had been very few acts of public resistance until then, and suddenly you had this crowd of Athenian bourgeois booing the undercover police and chanting slogans against the regime inside and outside the theatre. The play's first run was suspended a number of times because some of the actors and musicians were arrested, but as soon as they were released performances resumed and people kept coming. After the fall of the dictatorship, there was a second run that was also very successful, with additional scenes about the dictatorship period. The two most popular songs from the play are "Friends and brothers" and "Pilgrimage", that was added in 1975. "Pilgrimage" tells the heartbreaking story of two parents who go looking for their children, Orestes from Volos and Maria from Sparta, who disappeared in the Polytechnic uprising (the video below is the full album, the song starts at 01:03:13).

Me, nah. I'm hopelessly out of key, and my piano lessons were a bloody disaster. All I know is the folk dances we learned in school. Mr Chyntuckopoulos on the other hand has a great singing voice. He spent his younger years in a very small village and he was an altar boy, so he can sing psalms really well. He also likes to sing rebetiko, which is a genre of music that originated in the underworld. It was initially the music of thieves, drug addicts, prostitutes etc, and it was all about sex and drugs before rock'n'roll was even a concept, but now it's immensely popular and it became less uncompromising in the process. The nicest evenings we spend with friends are those where they bring their musical instruments and we sing rebetiko all night

The following song, "Cloudy Sunday", is a classic rebetiko composed by Vassilis Tsitsanis, the father of modern rebetiko. This is the interpretation by Sotiria Bellou, which is slightly more cheerful than Tsitsanis's own interpretation.

I'm not sure what being "in theatre" means, but I'm guessing it must be playing a role as an actor/actress? I had my moment of glory in intermediate school, when I played Cassandra in Euripides's Trojan Woman. Okay, "glory" must be a bit of an exaggeration, because Cassandra has to sing and that didn't go very well, but the audience were very nice and applauded anyway

Tell us more!

 

no don't

What are your plans for Halloween?

 

Do you know of Horrible Histories: Historical Masterchef? If no, see below for an example

Personally I quite like the idea that the GFFA can have counterparts/representations of species from other stories, just like how many fantasy worlds have counterparts/representations of the Lord of the Ring species and/or species from Greek/Roman mythology

Do you know of the Worrite species? They, or rather one of them, were introduced in WotC's Coruscant and the Core Worlds book and we was never given any facts about their homeworld beside that is was unknown to the galaxy at large. I always imagined it to be located in the outer Rim or Wild space and in a burst of creativity created some facts about them and their technology. If you are interested so can I post it.

 

Beside Star Wars, what kind of fiction do you read?

 

I don't have any We don't celebrate Halloween in Europe, although I know that it's been gaining ground in the UK and some other countries. The closest we get here in Greece is the carnival season in January-February, for 4 weeks before Lent. We organize a lot of masked parties, and on the last Thursday before Lent, Tsiknopempti ("the Thursday that smells of burning food"), we eat grilled meat and we have something like a street party, where we go around in our disguises and beat other people with plastic bats But it doesn't have the "scary" themes of Halloween with the ghosts and pumpkins and all.

I do, actually. I'm rather partial to the WWI soldier, though

Don't misunderstand me, it's not that I don't want to see species from other stories/myths in SW, it's just that the SW creators are doing such a great job at inventing new species that I don't feel the need for it. I'm happy for them to borrow anything they want, as long as they don't go into horrible, cheap, Clash of the Titans-like creatures.

First time I hear of them, thanks! Yes, I'd like to see your ideas, please I still think that we could have a thread in resource to post stuff we developed and won't use, or stuff that we're using but are happy for other fanficcers to borrow. I need to talk to the mods about it, maybe on lazy Sunday tomorrow.

I always have to look up Trak's stuff. Was your rebetiko musician in grad school an American Greek? American Greeks have a great tradition for rebetiko.

It's funny you'd say there isn't this sort of socialization in the US. I always imagine Americans spending their holidays around a camp fire with a guitar, but that's probably the sort of cliché that was drilled into my brain by watching too many American movies.

I posted the recipes for the spinach chick peas and the feta with honey on the foodies' thread (here). I haven't seen Vefa Alexiadou's book but I'm told it's very comprehensive and what she published in Greek, as well as her show on TV, were all excellent, so buying it was probably a good investment I'm not sure she'll have all the fancy Cretan stuff though. That's really regional specialties and I doubt you'd even be able to find the ingredients outside of Greece. Hell, even in Athens we can't find some of that stuff! Also, as you probaby saw just from looking at the book, Greek cuisine is not a high-precision science, so you can adapt most dishes to your taste, and two Greeks will never agree on how to prepare it anyway. Cooking recipes must be the second-most hotly debated topic in the country after politics

*Note to self: do not write an encyclopaedia.*

I read a lot of everything, but two genres I particularly like for entertainment are detective and espionage stories. I have John Le Carré's latest novel on my bedside table and I'm saving it for a rainy day. I just finished reading two novels by Panagiotis Agapitos that take place in the Byzantine Empire, with a Byzantine army officer as the key investigator. That was great stuff.

In the non-entertainment, high-flying literature category, I don't have a preference for any specific genre, but I do have favourite authors. The one who's sitting on a throne all the way up there just next to God is Gabriel Garcia Marquez I read One Hundred Years of Solitude for the first time when I was 17 and it was an unforgettable experience. After the first sentence I knew that I was holding a masterpiece. To this day I have a ritual of reading it again once a year. Another author who is sitting, maybe not on a throne, but in a very elaborate armchair, is Stratis Tsirkas for Drifting Cities, a trilogy of novels set in the Middle East during World War II. In addition to an epic plot and an ensemble of fascinating characters, it's written in the most beautiful Egyptian Greek dialect, but that gets unfortunately lost in translation

I also read a lot of poetry, which is not fiction per se, but it isn't non-fiction either, so I'll mention it here. Most of the poetry I read is Greek poetry, because even more stuff gets lost in translation, so the poetry throne is occupied by Constantine Cavafy (also an Egyptian Greek who wrote in dialect, but the English translation of his works, here, is surprisingly good). Two foreign poets I like are Omar Khayyam and Pablo Neruda. Omar Khayyam I always read in the FitzGerald English translation, which has a reputation for not being very faithful to the original Persian, but then, I don't know Persian and it's exceptional poetry nevertheless. Neruda I read in Greek. You'll tell me that I should learn Spanish to be able to read Marquez and Neruda in the original text. Yes, I should, but I should also do a great many other things

 

How did you come up with your username?

What two questions were you not asked that you most wanted to be asked, and what are the answers to those questions?

 

Would you be willing to jump out of a perfectly good airplane (skydiving)?

 

What SW animals whould you most like to eat and do you have any idea how?

Hej, I happen to like the Clash of the Titans creatures and they were in no way cheap, not always that good I admit but they were not cheap. B.t.w. are we talking about the first or second Clash of the Titans movie or both?

There is actually a thread about mythological creatures in SW - Here be Monsters: Mythological Creatures in Star Wars
And while I am at it so will I just complain about that nobody after Dario Carrasco, Jr draw the tuk'ata so they resemble the sha a.k.a. Set animal

Here -

The worrite are not a people united by a planetary government, instead their planet is made up by a number of countries who are more-or-less, usually less, united by an UN like organisation. One of the things that makes the “worrite UN” a bit more powerful the our UN is that it controls the hyperspace program, so all hyperspace capable ships are owned by the “UN” and theoretically crowded by a multinational crew.
As for now so do they have colonies, who are more-or-less self-sufficient on all the other dead planets, were it is possible, in their solar system and colonies on living planets in two other systems. Those colonies are not self-sufficient, at least in technology, and the worrites actually lack the population for any kind of planet wide colonisation.

Worrite technology
They lack blaster, military force field technology and Ion weapons, their hyperspace and astronavigation technology is primitive and most likely reverse engineered. They only have the most basic of AI:s.
Because of their chitin armour so did worrite never developed swords for close combat, instead warhammers and axes were the main weapons.
In range combat so are slug throwers their main weapon, of some reason so do they prefer revolvers and all their automatic weapons have drum magazines.

Their sea-life like spaceships are crafted around a living coral skeleton/frame and have chrome hulls with highlights in a different (usually primary) colour and are equipped with foldable, fanlike gravity sails. They are usually of a similar mass to an ISD but their hyperdrive, astronavigation systems and power plants are at beast only 1/6 as good as the galactic standard model of similar size. Their oxygen factories are actually mangrove-like parks that also work as fruit and vegetable gardens, fish farms and recycling plant for the crew’s excrement.
I was imagining their ships to look like this but with the above mentioned colour scheme and gravity sails

Their land transportations are usually wheel based, even if they also use primitive hovercrafts but don’t seem to have any knowledge of repulse technology. Of some reason all their wheeled vehicle have at least three pairs of wheels.

If possible they like to incorporate biological material in their technology and use technology to make useful life forms more cooperative. As they explore the galaxy and get their hands on more advanced technology they may abound this approach or continue now with a galaxy of life forms to use.

Ukû: a beetle-lizard armed with an ink spit that is usually carried on the shoulders. It will use its spit against anybody that it doesn’t know that come toward it to fast or in stressed situations, just near it and anybody that surprise it. The ink is sticky, lightly acidic and poisonous and the Ukû always go for the eyes. So if you are wearing protection you will most likely need to wash it to be able to see through it again, if you are not wearing protection: you will be blinded, it will hurt like heal and you better wash it out before your eyes are damaged beyond repair.
Is usually given a cyborg implant that help it’s owner to control its mood and temper.

Gimba: a tick coral cane or staff with a jelly-squid living in symbiosis in it. The staff has a control unit on its side that compels the jelly-squid to fire its three tentacles toward the nearest heat source it is pointed toward. The tentacle tips are covered with nematocyst toxin that is strong enough to go through finer leather. The poison is painful and will paralyse any limb it hits.

Kellax: a ankylosaurus like beetle-lizard with a mean temper and an ability to eat nearly anything, even minerals and metals. In its natural state they usually live in harems of three to six females and one male. Its temper and domestication was fixed with chem- and brain implants that made it a lot more easily controlled if very dim-witted.
They are used as pack animals and weapon platforms since they are extremely fearless and will without problem walk into a hail of blaster fire. They can also be turned back into their old aggressive selves and will then, usually charge toward whatever is in front of them. There have also happened that the implants don’t fully work when the kellax subject to a sudden great pain or surprise and it will for a short time attack any non-kellax that’s near it.
They are also used for their meat, their bones that are usually high in metal and hardy skin that make excellent protective leather. With the right diet their **** will also be of interest for many chemists.

Ant/wasp grenade: A small container full of fertilized ant/wasp eggs in a jelly that stop their development wile keeping them alive. The grenade is activated in two steps: the first pump in a chemical in the jelly that makes the eggs begun to quickly develop and within three to four days all the eggs have hatched and the ants/wasps are doing their best to eat up what is left of the jelly. The second stage is that you activate the release timer and throw or place the grenade on the enemy. It will then open up and the insects will angrily well out of the small container to the terror of most enemies. The grenade has to be used within at most six days after being set or most of the insects will have died.
The ants/wasps used are highly aggressive have large mandible/stingers that are capable of penetrating clothes without problems and a potent poison that is very painful to most species. In the ants case it has show that zabraks are hyper allergic to its poison and often die after just one bite.

Acid rifles: fires a projectile of gelatin acid. The acid is sticky and rather corrosive against organic material but ineffective against most modern fabricated materials.

[animal] throwers: fires an [animal], a centipede like animal with a metal shell that feeds on energy. When it hits the target it will be newly awakened, angry and hungry and will go for the closest larger energy source, like a blaster’s power cell, easily show through the covering and begin to eat. As it is eating its body will be electrifying anybody/-thing that is touching it, the electric charge will depend on the size of the power source it is feeding from.

[dolmantle]: near transparent amorphous creature that comes from the deeper parts of the worrite’s planet's sea. They are highly adaptable and capable of changes structure, for example growing ticker when confronted by physical violence. The worrites use them as a body armour, god against physical attacks can take a hit or two from a blaster but is quickly pierced through by acid. It is usually worn on the front and/or back as a harness, as a cape or in the cases of larger [dolmantle] as a full bodysuit. In the later case it can also work as a pressure suit, as long as you have a helmet.
The [dolmantle] also clean their wearer’s carapace armour from dirt and parasites and works as a lighter compress when the wearer is wounded. Most non-worrite finds it highly uncomfortable to wear a [dolmantle] and they usually come of rather red skinned.
In their natural environment so do the [dolmantle] live of plankton and similar small organic material, in environments with less biological material just drifting to them, like spaceships, so do they need to be feed.
They don’t work below subzero and need to be constantly rehydrated in dry enviorments.
Right now so are the breeding programs to create [dolmantles] who are more resistant to blaster fire or acid.

That sounds like an excellent idea

 

The chyntuck is a humble, onion-like vegetable from Kashyyyk, and it's my protagonist's favourite food.

C'm'on, say it. You can't be surprised that I chose a food item as my user name

The first one isn't not so much a question I wanted to be asked as a question I expected to be asked. I expected someone to ask about the SW fandom scene in Greece (which I am absolutely clueless about).

The second one would be any question to which the answer is "radio." I love listening to the radio and I love the human voice. When I was a little girl, my favourite show was Εδώ Λιλιπούπολη ("Lilliput calling") on national radio. The stories, poems and songs were created by some of the greatest artists of the time and the quality was simply astounding. It was a great way for children to unleash their imagination. One of my earliest memories is listening to the song below, "The green peas' ball" (summary: the fat pea is dancing tsifteteli at the green peas' ball, the spinach is dancing sirtaki and the courgette is waltzing with the artichoke.) My nanny was preparing a vegetable stew while we listened to it and she gave a performance of dancing vegetables worthy of Charlie Chaplin.



Bonus answer: after all this talk about food, I'm surprised no one asked me if I'm morbidly obese (I'm not).

No. Not ever. If I'm going to be outside a perfectly good airplane, I want to be on the ground, thank you very much.

PS: Next time we're interviewing you, I'll be quizzing you about your passion for flying

Bantha. Specifically, roast bantha (I imagine it to taste like goat) and blue cheese fondue (blue, as in made from blue milk.)

Oh, Gamiel. I thought of you as a gentleman

I'm talking about the first film only. I never saw the second one. I hated the scenario, I hated the creatures and above all I hated those ridiculous beards!

Brilliant, thanks so much for this and the Worrite stuff. You're a fount of knowledge!

I'm on it

 

I know it's a different mythos but what do you think of the Norse group of legends with Thor, etc.?

 

Do you like Star Trek? Why or why not?

 

Okay, thanks to Chyntuck for answering questions! (Feel free to answer the remaining questions)

Okay guys, we are starting to run low on victims again (we still have a few more, but not many) so if you haven't been the subject or there is someone you would like to be the subject, let me know.

Also, I'm going to be away next Sunday (and longer) and I don't think I'll have net access, so there will be a skip week. Please don't ask questions after Saturday night/early Sunday.

This week's subject of FFAMA is... Space_Wolf

 

SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE WOOOOOOOOOOOOOLFFF!!!

Ever watch Space Ghost when you were a kid?

 

What fandom(s) are you most involved with as a reader/writer?

 

I can forgive a movie for a lot if I am entertained and/or like the design work

It feels like you are missing a pice of movie history knowledge here, forgive me if I repet things you already know
The 2010 movie Clash of the Titans is actually a remake of the 1981 movie Clash of the Titans that had special effects by stop motion master Ray Harryhausen, the story is rather different between the two movies but many of the designs in the 2010 movie is based on the ones from the 1981 movie. This is what I meant with the "are we talking about the first or second Clash of the Titans movie".

 

So Space_Wolf: who do you consider the best dressed male in SW?

Who do you consider the best dressed female in SW?