A&A The Official Jason Fry Discussion Thread

I think Join the Battle got his and Mon Mothma's heights swapped - he's listed as 1.67m, she's listed as 1.83m - but the accompanying pictures both show Padme as well, and he's nearly a head taller than Padme whereas Mon Mothma looks only a tiny bit taller. Padme is listed as 1.65.

The main other example of problematic heights was for the Hutts - Jabba, Oruba, Arok and Marlo have human-level heights of 6 ft or so (Jabba's 6 ft 5, Oruba's 6 ft 8, Arok's 6 ft 10, Marlo's 7 ft 6) but several of the others (Gorga, Gardulla, Ziro,) all have much bigger heights listed despite them not towering over their fellows.

Maybe height in those 3 cases (Ziro 12 ft 10, Gorga 11 ft 10, Gardulla 12 ft 2) should actually be length?

Mama's 11 ft 10 is a bit more plausible for height - I recall her towering over Qui-Gon and Ziro when they met her.

 

Hmm. Let me get back to NYC and look into that one. I have my suspicions but let me review the case.

 

Nice little article from Jason about our favourite garbage.

 

In case anyone's curious, I wrote a Substack thingy offering some notes on "The Guns of Kelrodo-Ai," which was just reprinted in the new Insider Fiction Collection.

 

Hey @jasonfry do you have a copy of Art of Galaxy's Edge yet?

I am stunned by what could have been in Galaxy's Edge. Lots of alternate ideas and concepts. Among them is an "Galactic Explorer's Shop" that probably ultimately got turned into Doc Ondar's collectors shop. But the concept art in the original form had much more content for explorers and cartographers including a giant galaxy map hologram above customers heads...

Now that would have been something... missed opportunity I'd say!

 

Oof. That's pretty cool. Still, if I know LFL/Disney, the "not yet" pile of ideas is a lot larger than the discard pile. So here's hoping!

 

Jason, I was rereading the Guide to Warfare Author's Cut, and for the first time noticed the list of sections that didn't even make it into that, being totally unpublished! Would there be some way to release them, like through Joe Bongiorno's site, or were they just ideas?

 

A bunch of things from the initial outline never got written in the first place, as I saw we were going well over word count and crossed them out.

There are probably a dozen pieces (IIRC) that were written but left out of the Author's Cut, but there are no big secrets there. Most of that stuff was left on the cutting-room floor (of the cutting-room floor) because the material either needed another draft or wasn't going to be very interesting even with another draft or two. You got the good stuff, promise! If there are any questions about stuff listed as written but unpublished, I'd be happy to answer what I can.

As for releasing that stuff elsewhere, it's not a good idea IMHO. Besides the fact that it's not super interesting, LFL took a pretty big step (and did a lot of work) by letting us do an Author's Cut. I'm grateful for that and going around them would make it less likely that they'd do such a thing again for another author.

The biggest thing from my back pages that I'd like to see released one day is the alternate "heist" scene from TLJ's novelization, which got replaced at the very last minute by an account that matches what we saw on-screen. I wouldn't put that out into the world without LFL/Disney approval, but it would be fun as an online anniversary thing one of these years. Here's hoping.

 

Thank you for the info, Jason! Good to know we didn't miss much.

 

Another question, and one that I'm going to out myself as a turbo-geek for caring about in the slightest - is the new information in Join the Battle valid for both the new canon AND Legendsverse? I ask because Son of Dathomir was stated by Leland to apply to both (one of the few times the continuity people have weighed in on Legends since the reboot) since it was based on an unreleased arc in TCW, and TCW and the Lucas films are the only things canon to both.

 

Sorry, not sure how to answer that one. Will leave it to folks better versed in continuity gymnastics than poor little me.

 

Which Star Wars character would most improve the Mets batting?

 

Hi Jason - just picked up a copy of the Galactic Explorer's Guide, which promises to be a fun read. I did have a question about the placement of Jakku, which in this book ends up in the Interior rather than the Western Reaches (which is where dialogue in TFA would seem to place it). Jakku's actual location on the map appears accurate based on other maps, it's just that the WR seems to end well south of Jakku. Is this in error, or is there a rationale behind where Jakku was placed?

 

Hi Jason did you have any input into IDW Star Wars Adventures Weapon of the Jedi comic other than the story ? and did it match what you had in mind ?.

 

Well, the Western Reaches were introduced as a pretty vague concept -- a cultural region rather than a territory that's explicitly defined. It's like calling something the Mid-Atlantic or the Northeast or Appalachia. For starters, the original map in the Atlas (which was meant to be an approximation anyway) doesn't really match the 11 billion uses of the term since it got name-dropped in TFA. (Which will always make me super happy, to be clear.)

When Disney Parks introduced the "puzzle piece" regions -- which aren't meant to be replacements for the Core, Colonies, etc. -- the puzzle piece now labeled as the Western Reaches was the closest to a fit. The others actually work pretty well with the previously established lore in terms of boundaries.

TLDR: Jakku's in the same place, I wouldn't sweat the rest.

 

Nope. Actually I haven't read it other than some preview pages that the author was kind enough to send way back in the day. Will pick it up once the TPB comes out, because I'm cheap like that.

 

Follow up - what unholy Sith powers are infused in Jacob DeGrom?

 

That's clearly the light side of the Force at work.

 

A discussion about the close collaboration between Lucasfilm and Johnson for TLJ brought me back to that great Twitter thread Jason had shared from 2018. There’s a lot of great insight on how this great novelization came about, as well as some of the themes and patterns that surround the story.

I did have a couple of questions about some tweets, which, Jason, you said you couldn’t answer back then in November 2018. Since the trilogy has ended, I’m not sure if that’s changed, but I figured it’s worth a shot.

One thing you mentioned was that you met with Pablo Hidalgo and Leland Chee to figure out what you could and couldn’t define or tease about Snoke. Are you able now to say what things or what kinds of things you were asked to omit?

Beyond that, it seems now like there was no clearly defined backstory for Snoke, so what kind of information did Chee and Hidalgo provide to help guide this section? Was it more related to dark-side/First Order lore from the expanded SW canon rather than anything the filmmakers specifically had come up with?

 

Sadly, the Sith NDA Jason signed has no expiry.

 

Hmm. Let me see if I can remember.

I don't recall that there weren't any specifics that they let me in on or that I proposed. I knew from the start that that chapter would be mostly general and that I'd be going for impressionistic and evocative -- character arc/arc of history stuff. So I was bouncing some things I might or might not say off of Pablo and Leland and they were reacting/nudging/suggesting.

Most of what I was interested in dealt with Snoke's relationships with the Imperial refugees, Kylo and Luke. I'm not sure how much they knew of the backstory or if it even existed, though I had and have my suspicions. I doubt I would have requested a dump of secret backstory, because that's a very different ask and one I'd never spring on people in their position.

That probably sounds weird and not at all as cool as people like to imagine. But there's an art to these things I find both interesting and kind of fun: The key is to not tie down future storytelling and eliminate pathways, so you're feeling your way through possibilities and trying to find something that will work for a range of outcomes but still be interesting to the reader. As is usually the case, I found the best answer was character: How has Snoke viewed all this? Does he have his own specific lenses through which he sees the Force/the galaxy/history? What does he think might happen next?

Hope that's some help. And thank you for remembering and asking!

 

Either way, that was a great chapter. It made him feel mysterious, and a big "here's exactly who this guy is" infodump would probably have spoiled that. It made him a little more interesting to me after reading.

 

A hunch I've had for a while... is the Resistance controller Mi'ala Frenoc, mentioned in Battles that Changed the Galaxy as being on the Raddus during the evacuation of D'Qar, the previously unnamed character played by Michaela Cole?

 

I'm starting to think that's true

 

Not my material, so can't say.

Here's what I did in BTCTG:
Hyperspace and Warfare
Capital Ships
Galaxy maps
Malevolence
Mygeeto
Saleucami
Anaxes
Kashyyyk
Eadu
Scarif
Mako-Ta
Mon Cala mutiny
Hoth
Rebel Pilot roster (got cut, oh well)
Intro: First Order/Resistance War
Imperial Remnants
Takodana
Crait