--<-@ Over 30 SW Writers Club! @->--

The media seem to forget sometimes that "the SW Generation" is now 20 - 25 years older and views the prequels through a different prism than when the OT came out. I love the OT, and the prequels have just made those movies even richer and more enjoyable than they were before.

 

GL gave us a bunch of answers to questions with the prequels that we could only wonder about before what happened in the OT before the PT came out.

Course w/ the wide open holes in the timeline during the prequels- he left lots of room for us fic writers to let our plot bunnied imaginations run wild to fill in the holes And he gave us a ton of new characters to explore how they see the SW Universe. If nothing else, that's a reason to love the Prequels.

 

I think their rich and textured.. the remarks that 'SW grew up' echo my sentiments exactly....

 

Course w/ the wide open holes in the timeline during the prequels- he left lots of room for us fic writers to let our plot bunnied imaginations run wild to fill in the holes And he gave us a ton of new characters to explore how they see the SW Universe.

Hear, hear! The Phantom Menace introduced me to characters that I wanted to write about -- after I'd spent nearly 10 years having no interest in writing anything other than newspaper articles and various non-fiction items for my job. Even if TPM hadn't become my favorite of the five movies, I'd be grateful to Mr. Lucas for the inspiration.


I suppose I should add my vital statistics, while I'm at it:

1)Age- you can post range if you prefer: Born in 1961. You do the math.

2) How long have you been writing on these boards and post links to your stories. I?ve been posting about a year, although I lurked for several months before registering. In addition to the links in my bio, I?ve posted short pieces on both the Silent Challenge Thread and the Fairy Tale thread.

3) Favorite genre, saga of SW to write: I prefer the action/adventure type stories, just like the original SW movies. I tend to write in the prequel era, although a couple of my short pieces were set during the OT.

4) Favorite characters and why. I think my signature pretty much says it all.... I really enjoy the non-human characters of SW, so in addition to Gungans, I?m also interested in Chewbacca and Yoda and Admiral Ackbar and a couple of other folks. Not that I?m above admiring Qui-Gon Jinn, Han Solo or Lando Calrissian, mind you. I actually have a framed picture of Qui-Gon in my office....

I tell people that my interest in non-human characters is probably due to having worked in human service occupations most of my life ? if I want to see a human, I can just go to work, turn on the TV, or look out the window. When I go to the movies, I want something different! My Gungan obsession stems from the description of the race as being ?close to nature?; I?ve been fascinated with Native American cultures for over 20 years, and there are some powerful similarities there. (And I don?t care how many people didn?t like Jar Jar! Although Captain Tarpals is still my favorite Gungan.... )

5) Why has SW always been so special to you? ANH came out at a time when I was first devoting serious time to reading science fiction. The movie was big, loud, and exciting. The special effects were great. The music was wonderful. The characters were engaging and larger than life. Three years later it happened again. And then again. And then authors started writing novels, and whole new worlds opened up. It?s been a voyage of discovery from the comfort of my own home (or local movie theater). And when Phantom Menace came out, the whole thing started all over again. New worlds, new aliens, new special effects. (Contrary to many detractors? opinions, I thought the CGI creations were outstanding!) A plot line that had some depth to it. The Jedi order in full gear, in a universe where humans are just one race among many. I enjoy spending my time filling in the details of what?s implied on the movie screen, the challenge of creating cultures, backgrounds, and adventures, particularly for characters we only see briefly in the movies. Star Wars has something for everyone. It?s like being turned loose in a galaxy-sized candy store!

6) Fav tips or advice for writing.

Let?s face it, none of us get paid for this. Write because you enjoy it, or because you get some sort of personal satisfaction from it. I personally don?t post a word until the story is completely finished and has been edited, although I realize that may not work for everyone else. Choose your favorite subject or character and write, even if everyone else 1) thinks you?re crazy, or 2) is writing about the same thing. If ten authors write about the same idea and

 

John Denver...OMG...I love John Denver! My favorites are "Sunshine on My Shoulder" (reminds me of my father for some reason--I think he used to sing it a lot when I was little), "Follow Me", and "For Baby...For Bobbie."

JG: One of the first albums I ever got was "Kenny Rogers' Greatest Hits"--which, I'll admit, I now have on CD. "Coward of the County" was one of my favorite songs in third grade, along with "Longer" by Dan Fogelberg (not sure if that's spelled correctly, but I have his greatest hits on CD, too ).

Jedi-Jae: I remember people actually having a crush on Michael Jackson when I was in seventh grade...it sure as hell wouldn't happen now. I got "Thriller" for my twelfth birthday...on LP. It's still at my parents' house. And "Down Under", from the album "Business as Usual."

I also recently bought Cyndi Lauper's "She's So Unusual" on CD, because I wanted the original version of "Time After Time" after hearing Miles Davis do a great jazz rendition of it. The other songs on there brought back memories, too...of eighth grade, and wanting to implant the words to "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" into the head of my strict military-officer father...

Madonna's earlier stuff was great...her first album, then "Like A Virgin" and "True Blue." Anyone remember "La Isla Bonita"? "And when the samba played, the sun would set so high, rang through my ears and sting my eyes, your Spanish lullaby..." (probably not exactly right, but...who cares. )

And I had forgotten "Captain and Tenille." "Love...love will keep us together..."

 

Holy... how did this get to PAGE THREE in ONE DAY!!!???

And so much to catch up on... other fandoms... well, Indiana Jones will stay with me a long time (I DO work in a museum now, but I only got lost in it once). I did write a fanfic for that one. And I did like Star Trek, though I think I liked Voyager better than TNG or DS9. I'm currently hooked on Buffy (dang that HaiGan!), and Veritas is promising. As for Tolkien, well, I read the Hobbit the year after SW came out (Mom was a fan). So that's always been there, too. Ooo, wait! BATTLESTAR GALACTICA! God, was I HOOKED on that show! They just re-ran it on the SciFi channel. All of sudden, I was in 7th grade again...

As to music, oh YES I remember Corey Hart! Loved "Sunglasses," but "Never Surrender" is better! Pat Benatar, anyone? ("Shadows of the Night" is the VERY FIRST music video I ever saw!) Cyndi Lauper... wrote the 80s anthem "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun," and of course the Goonies theme song! Loved Abba, too... and speaking of the 70s, anyone remember that funky disco Meco theme from Star Wars?

As to fashion, I confess I was strongly influenced by the Preppy Handbook, and went around in a lot of pink and green. Didn't have the big hair. Anyone remember that? I wonder if our generation is single-handedly responsible for the destruction of the ozone layer.

In a more sobering vein, anyone remember that movie "The Day After?" And "Red Dawn?"

 

I have to say, PLJ, this was an awesome idea starting this thread. It's great to find other writers/readers nearer to my own age. While I love the younger ones I've met, sometimes I feel like a dinosaur next to them (Gabri, if you're reading this, note what word I didn't say!).

It's great to reminisce about those old days, sometimes, and to know that there are others out there who still share the same memories, and that the world hasn't been taken over by Britney Spears and 'NSync!

JaneJinn - I agree, exactly! I always thought Corey Hart looked like a young HF...in fact, the only reason I agreed to watch the video for "Sunglasses at Night" was that my cousin told me "This guy kind of looks like Harrison Ford."

Ahh...young Harrison Ford....sigh....

 

Just wanted to add a little something my cousin sent me once. I posted it on my story thread and folks loved it. I thought it would be an appropriate repost here:

When I was a kid adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning uphill both ways through year 'round blizzards carrying their younger siblings on their backs to their one-room schoolhouse where they maintained a straight-A average despite their full-time after-school job at the local textile mill where they worked for 35 cents an hour just to help keep their family from starving to death!

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it!

But....

Now that I've reached the ripe old age of twenty-nine, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today.

You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia! And I hate to say it but you kids today don't know how good you've got it! I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have The Internet-we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damned library and look it up ourselves!

And there was no e-mail! We had to actually write somebody a letter-with a pen! --and then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!

And there were no MP3s or Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you had to go to the record store and shoplift it yourself! Or we had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ'd usually talk over the begining and mess it all up!

We didn't have fancy stuff like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal! And we didn't have fancy Caller ID Boxes either! When the the phone rang, you had no idea who it was it could be your boss, your mom, a collections agent, your drug dealer, you didn't know!!! You just had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

And we didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation videogames with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like "Space Invaders" and "Asteroids" and the graphics sucked! Your guy was a little square! You had to use your imagination! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever! And you could never win, the game just kept getting harder and faster until you died!

Just like LIFE!

When you went to the movie theater there no such thing as stadium seating! All the seats were the same height! A tall guy sat in front of you, you were screwed!

And sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 20 channels and there was no onscreen menu! You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! And there was no Cartoon Network! You could only get cartoons on Saturday morning... ...D'ya hear what I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK, you spoiled little brats!

That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy.

You're spoiled, I swear to God! You guys wouldn't lasted five minutes back in 1984!

Author unknown.

 

LadyPadme: LMAO! That was priceless!

Mistress_Renata: Pat Benatar...oh yeah... Actually, I think "Love is a Battlefield" was a theme of my adolescence...

I was one of those with "big hair". I had the largest can of aerosol hairspray that you've ever seen. I wore dark eyeliner, bright pink lipstick, and my clothes were either black or various neon colors. Let's not forget the "jelly" bracelets and shoes in neon colors.

And yeah, the sobering note...I remember "The Day After." *shudder* And Sting's song "Russians." "How can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer's deadly toy?" It's kind of hard to believe now that the Soviets were once scary...but the whole Communist threat was terrifying then.

 

*SQUEALS* Cyndi Lauper! She's my fave! "Time After Time" is one of the only songs ever recorded in all time that I can listen to over and over and over and over.... and I still cry sometimes when I hear it. *sniff*

When you're lost and alone, I will find you...

inez

p.s. I getting teary right now, just thinking about it.... *sniff*

 

I bought the "Day After " a few months ago... I don't watch it very often because it makes me cry....

 

God images from that are burned (no pun intended) permanently in my brain. I think I saw it twice- thanks to having my mother as my physics teacher in high school who just lived for movies like that where "science comes alive" to terrorize her students with.

Jason Robards was wonderful in that movie.

LP

I'm very happy to have a new hangout for the elders to chat I actually have to thank Jedi-Jae for suggesting it in the first place over in the age poll area. I leaped at tthe opportunity to start it- I thought it was a great idea!

I feel like a dinosaur sometimes too- when these other posters are "complaining" about going to class and college, I want to slap them alongside the head and shout- "Enjoy it now baby! Because REAL LIFE SUCKS!"

Gahh! They don't know how good they have it- your second posting is just soooo right on the head.

 

1) Age: I think I'm the oldest here now --- I will be 55 in June.

2) How long have you been writing on these boards and post links to your stories. The link is in my sig. I've been posting since June 2001, although I lurked for several months before registering. As for writing, I began my one and only fan-fic in August 2001 ... and it is still, albeit, slowly plugging along .

3) Favorite genre, saga of SW to write: I prefer the second half of the EU time-frame --- from the TTT to what would be the time just past Luke and Mara's wedding. My favorite approach is character-driven. Action is part of the story, but the key is character. FWIW, I drew inspiration from David and Leigh Eddings' Begarion 10 book saga.

4) Favorite characters and why. I have always liked the supporting characters, mainly because they offered so much opportunity for development. My story focuses on Talon Karrde and Shada D'ukal. What do we really know about those two? Also, there is a gap between the end of VotF and VP ... so I am having fun filling in the blanks.

Also, I started writing 'cause I was so fed up with the NJO. It seemed to me that the purveyors of that "material" (can't bring myself to call it what it really is, imho) have lost sight with what made SW so special for folks like me. In a sense, the characters are frozen in time, and I *want* them to stay that way. Moroever, the treatment accroded some of the characters was not "true" to what *I* believed it should be, so I took the ooportunity to do it the way *I* would like to have seen it done.

5) Why has SW always been so special to you? I remember taking my wife to see ANH in the summer of 1977 at a small theatre. It was our first weekend away in the nearly two years since our son had been born. I remember coming out of the theatre and thinking "movies will never be the same. This was FANTASTIC." As a life long sci-fi fan (having been exposed to it when the Golden Age was still relatively golden, SW was a breath of fresh air.

6) Fav tips or advice for writing.

I write professionally for part of my living (OK, it's for accountants, but I *do* get paid for it) and one very important tip is to have your work "beta read." The things that drive me crazy about stories on the board is poor grammar and worse spelling. There is no excuse for either.

Also, make sure your story holds together --- that there are no inconsistencies. What you say on page 12 should be tied to what goes on on page 2. Further, make sure your readers can follow the story. Do not have long unbroken passages or jump around from place to place. Perhaps most important is to maintain proper points of view. Don't jump around from character to character in the same scene. This is not a TV show and dialogue and action must flow naturally.

Lastly, do it for the love of the characters and the story. The SW universe offers us so much freedom.

PS: I must be getting old. My musical tastes seem locked in the 50s and 60s. Where are the Four Seasons, the Beach Boys, the girl/boy groups and the wonderful wall of sound from Phil Spector?

 

I remember Battlestar Galactica! I was hooked on that show, too! I couldn't wait each week for it to come on, and I think I even tried to write a bit of fan fiction about it. I know I had at least one dream about it. Boxey was too childish for me -- I loved Starbuck! (Maybe that's why I liked the A-Team, too, when it came out?)

And I liked Magnum, but I liked Simon and Simon more.

I'm trying to decide which music I listened to as a teen. I'll admit to having had a great crush on the Bee Gees until I was about fourteen. But I also listened to the Oldies a lot -- especially any groups that came from England. Herman's Hermits ... There's an Oldies station here in Kiel called Radio Nora -- the best music from the 60's, the 70's, AND the 80's. The Eighties?

My brother had a Devo record that I used to like to sneak in and listen to when nobody else was home. Remembering that, I looked up Devo on amazon the other day and listened to a clip of "Whip It" -- it sounded completely different than what I remembered.

I never really bought any records for myself, I just listened to what came on the radio. I remember liking the Cars a lot. I'm sure I liked other groups, but I really can't remember now. I remember I really detested Pat Benatar -- she was too racey for my taste.

And I remember the word 'awesome'. I remember how over-used it was and how I hated it, especially when this girl in high school whose last name was Aussenberg changed her name to Awesomeberg, so I grabbed a thesaurus and decided that I was going to say "paramount" instead. Just to be different.

I don't remember The Day After at all. Who can tell me more about it? It's possible that it came out after I moved to Germany and that I missed it completely.

 

Okay, I'm a little behind in responding...

I thought that the 1960's were terrible!!! Okay, I grant you that the Beatles changed the music in a good way and the clothes were gloriously colorful. Lots of free sex and drugs floating around (I don't consider that a good thing but some do). However, that time was full of death and destruction in the US - race riots, National Guard in the major cites as they burned, assassinations of John and Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and the demonstrations everywhere (which very often blossomed into violence). I do not have good memories of the 60's.
Give me the late 70s with the new movies - Star Wars, Close Encounters, a huge influx of hopeful cinema (unlike the depressing movies of the 60s). It was a great time.
However, since Lucas also was a teenager in the 60s, it may have marked his worldview as well. Hummmm....

Oh, I just reread this and while I stand behind what I wrote, I didn't really mean for it to sound so....well, my 14 year old asked me about growing up last year when she was doing a project for school and it brought back a lot of bad memories. She thought that the '60s were a great time with all that color and splash but hadn't heard about the Dark Side.


Booster_1986 - Yes, you are the oldest so far...LOL I'm looking forward to being 55, retiring and getting the heck out of my job. Time to write more, read more and finally give some real time to my other hobbies. Oh...a lovely thought.

On music - I listen to Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys (sometimes, I write SW fics to their music) and Celtic music. I remember John Denver when "Rocky Mountain High" came out. It described my view of Colorado perfectly and always gave me goosebumps.

TV shows that I loved growing up - I remember Battlestar Galactica and thought it was wonderful. I adored Apollo but I was unhappy when they brought it back and changed a lot of the characters.
I watched Star Trek when it originally came out. It was so cool to see science fiction authors that I read writing for the show. I remember going to college in its final year and everyone clustered around the one tv set in the viewing room (it was always packed!!).
My favorite Star Trek show was Deep Space 9 in the final 4 years of syndication (the suits finally left it alone and the writers were allowed to do story arcs and complex characterizations that were wonderful)
Don't forget Babylon 5 - a superb show that just gets better with reruns.
Now, I hardly watch anything (too busy reading). Farscape is terrific, of course, but is over as of Friday. Bah!!!
I admit it but I watched My Favorite Martian every week when I was young. I thought Bill Bixby was hot and some of the stories were sweet.


Okay, that's enough for now....

 

Bill Bixby! The Incredible Hulk! Another one of my favourites. And wasn't he the host of a program on PBS called Once Upon a Classic? I used to get extra credit in elementary school for watching those adaptations of classic books such as The Prince and the Pauper. I really loved them, too, so it was not a chore to get that extra credit.

 

Preppie?

I seem to recall failing with my alligator shirts and turned up collars, LOL. I spent my high school years in Doc Martins and long skirts.

I LOVED the Incredible Hulk. I wish they would show re-runs. The theme song always gave me shivers.

Hmm... anyone here a fan of Grizzly Adams?


And, Battlestar Gallactica! Yeah.


Note to DB: Mynock! Mynock!

And PLJ: this thread was a great idea.

 

The Preppy Handbook! That was my bible in HS. Lots of pink and green and all my shirts had to have alligators or polo ponies on them. Didn't do the big hair, though - I was a swimmer and it was pretty much useless to try.

I loved the torn t-shirts and sweatshirts a la Flashdance, but I never got into the leg-warmer thing.

Music - you know you're getting old when K-Tel starts selling collections of your favorite HS tunes.

 

Battlestar Galactica... ah. I remember my friends and I looking for the constellation "Starbuck," once we found "Cassiopeia." (We found the cigar tip and some bangs...)

Anyone else remember Leonard Nimoy hosting In Search of... I used to love that show, with their little reenactments (the little princes fading dramatically away by the tower, the rocking chair in the Amityville house, etc), and Nimoy's this-is-the-most-serious-thing-in-the-world tone.

 

Ohmigod, the theme for Battlestar Galactica is going to be in my head for the rest of the day.

I can't believe that I thought Starbuck was the cutest thing with that feathered hair of his...what a blast from the past.

Anyone remember watching "Wonder Woman" or "The Six Million Dollar Man" or "The Bionic Woman"? Anyone else out there spent their elementary school days twirling and wishing they could turn from Diana Prince to Wonder Woman?

 

Anyone remember watching "Wonder Woman" or "The Six Million Dollar Man" or "The Bionic Woman"?

My best friend at that age was a boy (how's that for a hallmark of our generation? was the inter-gender thing ever a barrier?), and we used to play Steve and Jamie, jumping off of beds for bionic leaps, and going ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch... Running in slow motion to represent super speed was always fun, too.


Anyone else out there spent their elementary school days twirling and wishing they could turn from Diana Prince to Wonder Woman?

Another Eeep! I loved the WW where her sister came and didn't know she could do the same thing, and she just kept trying to twirl until suddenly it worked. Very hopeful.

 

I was never into the Superhero tv shows- I remember being at my cousins and being annoyed because somehow they won a wager and we watched "Wonder Woman" instead of what I wanted to watch... "Donny and Marie!" (Go ice angels go! )

I played "Star Wars" with a couple of the neighborhood boys on my elementary school playground- I always played a duel role Princess Leia and George Lucas. If the boys dared to go outside the storyline of the film- I'd nail them for their inconsistancies and get them to "stay on target" in our playtime. Yes, even at 7 GL was my real hero

 

Also posted in the "Comunity" thread, as well as one or two othere places scattered about the JCF....

Written in 1971, it still has revelance:

The Box
John Denver

Once upon a time, in the land of hushabye.
Around about the wondrous days of yore.
They came upon a kind of box,
Bound with chains and locked with locks
And labeled, "Kindly do not Touch, it's WAR"

A decree was issued round about,
All with a flourish and a shout,
And a gaily colored mascot tripping lightly on the fore,
"Don't tamper with this deadly box,
Or break the chains, or pick the locks
And please,
Don't ever play about with war."

Well, the children understood
Children happen to be good.
And they were just as around the time of yore
They didn't try to break the chains,
Or pick the locks,
They didn't play about with war

Mommies didn't either,
Sisters, aunts, grannies neither
They were quiet and sweet and pretty, in those wondrous days of yore,
Fairly much the same as now.
Not the ones to blame somehow,
for opening up that deadly box of war.

But someone did,
Someone battered in the lid
and spilled the insides out across the floor
A Kind of bouncy bumpy ball, filled with guns and flags and all the tears and
horror and death, that goes with war.

It bounced right out and went crashing all about And bumping into everything in store,
and what was sad and most unfair
Is that it didn't really seem to care

Much who it bumped
Or why, or what, or for.

It bumped the children mainly,
And I'll tell you this quite plainly.
It bumps them every day and more, and more
And leaves them dead and burned and dying
Thousands of them sick and crying
Because when it bumps,
its really very sore.

Now there?s a way to stop the ball.
it isn't difficult at all
all it takes is wisdom...
and I'm absolutely sure
We can get the ball back in the box,
And bind the chains,
And lock the locks.
But no one seems to want to save the children any more.

Well that?s the way it all appears...
Because its been bouncing round for years and years.
In spite of all the wisdom whiz since those wondrous days of yore...

When they came upon a kind of box,
bound with chains, and locked with locks.
And labeled "Kindly do not touch"
"ITS WAR"

 

Booster-1986

Also, I started writing 'cause I was so fed up with the NJO. It seemed to me that the purveyors of that "material" (can't bring myself to call it what it really is, imho) have lost sight with what made SW so special for folks like me. In a sense, the characters are frozen in time, and I *want* them to stay that way. Moroever, the treatment accroded some of the characters was not "true" to what *I* believed it should be, so I took the ooportunity to do it the way *I* would like to have seen it done.

Thank you, THANK YOU! All I'm going to say is I agree with you- to avoid a battle in here.

I love the mythological/fantastical aspects of SW rather than the Sci-Fi influences. I've written a huge AU epic w/ the EU characters as well as a couple of O/C's who I believe are truly worthy as new additions to the universe GL created. I plan to continue writing more stories w/ my own vision of the the EU- because I certainly don't like where the NJO have taken the SW Galaxy. I've also found that there are a lot of people on these boards who seem to feel the way I do about the books. I'm always glad to find more.

 

Look out! we'll become a EU basher/gusher thread!!

I just can't get into the EU... I tried "Heir" and found myself alternately bored and mortified (Zahn nutered Luke more effectivly then anything I've ever seen.) Some people have tried to convince me to try the others but from what I've seen....

I'll pass....