A&A The Official Jason Fry Discussion Thread

Hey! New book out! Rose Tico: Resistance Fighter is from the good folks at StudioFun, and continues the story of the Tico sisters from where Bomber Command left off. Love these characters and it's an honor to get to bring them to the page again. Plus I got to create a First Order laundry form. (Not even kidding. I did.)

 

New Jersey! Talking Star Wars, writing and storytelling in Bordentown tomorrow 5/8. Details!

 

Had a chance to read the book and liked it a bit better than the previous canon replica journals (I think the more narrative-based format was more engaging to me than the more technical manual aspect of the other ones). I did wonder about how the book had Rose writing in the journal while recovering from her crash on Crait; was that an invention of your own to allow the book to cover stuff that she otherwise wouldn't've had a chance to write about or was there some official confirmation that there's no plans to have Rose still be in a coma up til Episode 9, a la Finn in TFA and TLJ?

 

Given how much of the book was Rose exploring her own struggle after Paige's death, I felt it was vital to let her finish her own story, culminating with joining the fight on Crait and her moment with Finn. Having, say, Finn append something at the end would have robbed Rose of the chance to reflect on the fulfillment of her arc. So I made the case to cheat a bit.

If Rose starts Ep 9 in bacta or something, it's easy enough to blame complications, an infection, etc. A bunk in the Falcon's not exactly a full surgical unit, after all.

 

Makes sense. I can see why having Finn or someone else fill it in wouldn't work, like how Rose's epilogue for Paige's Bomber Command journal did or Darth Sidious's final chapter for the old Legends Episode I Darth Maul journal worked in context of its story.

Besides, these journal books are something of a cheat anyways. How did Rose not loose her journal as she was traveling from the Raddus to Canto Bight to Snoke's ship to Crait to the Falcon, much less where she could've stored it in her coveralls and stolen First Order uniform? How did Paige email her Bomber Command journal to Rose if it was clearly handwritten in a notebook? Where did Rey carry her Survival Guide on her journeys? (Okay, to be fair with the last one, she could've stuffed it in that fanny pack she wore on the back of her belt if the in-universe volume was about the same size as the real-life one. Personal headcanon.)

Or I suppose that conversely she could fill in the gaps sometime offscreen during Episode 9 if there's no time jump between it and TLJ. (Come to think if it, is Rose going to be in Episode 9 period? Kelly Marie Tran hasn't been announced as reprising the role and you'd think that would be a no-brainer if the character was going to come back as TLJ practically set up.)

 

Hi just to say I love your essential guide to the star wars universe. I notice a lot of the technical stuff in it is popping up in new cannon!

Just a question and I know any answer cannot be cannon. How big would do picture the size of the imperial navy?



In my head-cannon here is how I picture it.

Based on the old EU numbers that in a sector fleet you have 1600 warships for every 24 imperial star destroyers plus 800 support ships and there is 25,000 star destroyers in the fleet. Me in my infinite geekiness have calculated that the fleet might stand at 1700000 warships minus support ships. That being 67 other ships for every ISD.

I think the majority (half) would be tiny patrol vessels smaller than a corvette. And only say 1000-2000 being ships bigger than a ISD.

I know I am a geek but I love the technical side of things.

 

The 25k number always struck me as ridiculous, because it removes any sort of meaningful contribution by the characters. Luke and Leia stealing a ISD matters if it’s 2.5k ships, or 250 - less so if it’s 25k. It doesn’t reflect what we see on screen, either - if they had 25k Star destroyers, then why were there like fifteen at Endor? Why not 150? Or 1500? Jason tried to retcon it with his Invasion fleets at Chandrila, but that was pretty transparently a retcon. It’s a number that services the (imo) boring nonsense fake technology side of Star Wars, without acknowledging that it isn’t real, and has to service storytelling.

Not that I don’t think Jason doesn’t get storytelling. He’s clearly better at that then the rest of us combined.

 

Well, if we try to apply "science" and logic to SW, then 25k ISDs make complete sense. After all, they have to patrol and control most of the known galaxy. And galaxy is a pretty large space. Especially in SW, where it seems almost every planet, moon or asteroid has some kind of intelligent life form(s) on it. In fact, 25k is still not that much, when you realise that our own galaxy has at least 100 billion stars. And our galaxy is far from the biggest.

But yeah, we don't see anything in the movies that would suggest the Empire has that many ISDs.

 

I mean, SW is a romantic fantasy, ultimately. Applying fake science isn’t really useful to a universe where ten thousand Jedi Knights can police a galaxy of trillions, and where entire planets have populations smaller then Texas.

 

Space is big. Extremely big.

You might not like the techy side with numbers and scales......but some of us do, hence why there was a market for the essential guide to warfare

No ones stopping you believing star wars takes place in a few systems with a few dozen or hundred ships however.


QUOTE="comradepitrovsky, post: 55183626, member: 1425341"]I mean, SW is a romantic fantasy, ultimately. Applying fake science isn’t really useful to a universe where ten thousand Jedi Knights can police a galaxy of trillions, and where entire planets have populations smaller then Texas.[/QUOTE]
And the size of a galaxy is not fake science. Galaxys are massive with hundreds of billions of stars.

 

Yeah, but who cares? It’s not real. If EGTW had said that the Imperial Navy consists of 250 Star Destroyers, 15 SSDs, and a bunch of smaller craft, that would be equally as true as there being 25,000 ISDs, because it’s all fake. Realism doesn’t matter because Star Wars has never cared about realism. Space combat in Star Wars is taking a bunch of Napeoleonic warships and WWII dogfighters and tying them together, with sounds in space and parabolic blaster bolts and so forth.

 

Then why bother being on a star wars forum?

Some people just have imaginatio thats works this way and like to think how the star wars universe works.

 

In the Legends era I went with the numbers that were out there and tried to make them work. That was the gig.
To be perfectly honest, I'm glad there isn't a new-canon number (or maybe there is and I missed it) to defend or decry. My headcanon is blissfully snoozy on the subject.
Have fun debating it. Just remember because of the nature of SW lore there's no way to win -- with made-up lore you really are entitled to your own facts.

 

FIFY

 

Thanks for the imput. They did recononize the 25,000 ISD number, I think it was in one of the battlefront games but I could be wrong.
I think that' why it can be fun to debate it because there is no way to win and no right awnser. I think we all have in our own heads the our own way the starwars galaxy works.

 

Yeah, SW is a space fantasy, not a science fiction, but its still important in my opinion to have some internal "rules" and consistencies.

To react to your two examples you provided: The ten thousand Jedi Knights were actually not able to effectively police the galaxy, hence the rise of the Sith, corruption, piracy, separatism, etc. And I don't see no issue with having entire planets with populations smaller than Texas. If they were colonised only recently or are used only as refuelling stations, mines, etc. then they don't need to have large populations.

There actually is a new canon number (sort of). The mobile game Uprising reused the 25k number in one of the in-game descriptions and because the game is (sadly) considered canon, that number is canon again. At least until someone writes a new reference book that will retcon that number

 

That was in Star Wars: Uprising (a game whose existence was cut tragically short).

 

Uprising wasn't a great game, but I'm sad every time a game becomes unplayable. Especially since Uprising is canon, and now no one can experience its story.

 

Uprising was not at all the best game but IMO it had a great atmosphere, story, and characters. I would love to see the story of Uprising retold in some fashion in the near future. We keep revolving around those events with mention in the Aftermath books and Battlefront 2 and the like, but I'd love to see the actual uprising play out in a comic or something.

Hell, Lucasfilm Story Group. I'm a writer trying to publish my first novel. Get me in there and I'll write an Uprising book for you.

 

@comradepitrovsky
I agree with you about the 25,0000 figure, but I take issue with "Star Wars has never cared about realism". It sounds a bit too much like how "it's not real/sci fi/magic!" is sometimes used to deflect any and all criticism of a work of speculative fiction. ""Star Wars has never cared about realism" is a defense that could conceivably be used to justify anything. All the main characters turn into living turnips for 20 minutes, with no explanation? Who cares, Star Wars isn't supposed to be realistic!

Ultimately different people are going to have different limits to their "suspension of disbelief", and what unrealistic things they're willing to accept for the sake of the story. Maybe someone can shrug off Indiana Jones surviving a nuke in a fridge, but because they studied reptiles they're bothered by non Egyptian snakes in Raiders of the Lost Ark. It varies from person to person.

 

It's a franchise where space magic is real. I think realism has gone out the window.

But yeah. C'est la vie.

 

Well, even the fantastic needs a degree of verisimilitude to work. For example, the cloning in the Jurassic Park is scientifically impossible and highly improbable. But since the dinosaurs act like real animals, we accept the "reality" of these extinct animals coming back.

 

I think what counter that lopsideness is the fact controlling half a galaxy is a massive under taking on a scale we can' really imagine.
Even with a fleet of millions the Empire fleet is spread thin. They have terriory to control and uprisings to stamp down. They also have other dutys like pirate hunting, some policing, search and rescue plus boarder control, yeah the Empire in a loose agreements with the hutts but would you trust them? In the old EU you also had hapes. Plus you have the tens of thousands of independent star systems in places like wild space , parts of the outer rim and explored bits of the unknon regions that the Empire wanted to bring under heel.

The Rebel Alliance did not have to bother with that or have territory to defend. They had the freedom to scatter and reform and concentrate there forces at will. They could choice there battles.

If your a imp then that's a nightmare situation. It'
Also why in rebels thrawn was less intrested in killng
Individul rebels and bases and more temptng them to deploy a large number of there forces.

 

Well, we even have partial explanation for the space magic and why some people have it and some don't, its called midichlorians