I think I've mentioned Film Crit Hulk and his interesting essays a couple of times recently. Here's a video essay that's especially interesting: Why Star Wars Works: A Scene-by-Scene Breakdown. (The closed captions on the video seem reasonably decent, but you can also read the scriptIt doesn't focus on the themes or meaning or lore, but on the ( Read more... )

Short version: this book is really fun and well-written. If you are at all interested in the adventures of sixteen-year-old Leia, read it!

A few minor spoilers, but I've mostly tried to avoid them.

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Very belated flash fic for
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Chapters 1-9

We're now at 18/27 chapters, which means that it's time for...

The Courtship of Princess Leia: Abridged (Chapters 10-18)

( Chapter Ten: Welcome to Jurassic Park )

Why read-through?
Chapter One
Chapter Sixteen
Chapters 1-9: Abridged

One advantage of being stuck without Internet is that you have no excuse not to get some reading and writing done already.

So, Chapter 17, in which Isolder blushes and thinks about how girls' hair smells nice instead of helping plan a prison robbery.

( She was rather plain by Hapan standards, but Isolder knew she was his designated love interest, so he would dream about her anyway. )

First up, Google Ocean: Has Atlantis Been Found Off Africa? Slightly misleading, since it's not so much "Wow, we found a former city/island in roughly the right place!" as "Hm, we found some oddly regular lines on the ocean floor which might be of human origin, and therefore might have been a settlement of some sort at one time, and might be about ( Read more... )

How did I not know about this essay? SF and Technology as Mystification.

The following excerpts may be relevant to your interests. ( Joanna Russ wrote the internet! )

Why read-through?
Chapter One
Chapter Fifteen
Chapters 1-9: Abridged

Yeah, I fail at timeliness. Unfortunately I don't and probably can't get paid for this. (But speaking of money, I have a real paying job for the next few weeks!) But on with the show.

( Leia just stared at Dave Wolverton with an expression somewhere between bewilderment and horror. )

Heh, the reasons Star Wars sequels would be worse than the prequels is excellent. Now, #5 I can quibble with. Needing to finish cleaning up after the Emperor died makes sense, as the article admits, and that might take a few years. As long as it eventually works and we actually get that galactic peace we were promised, it's all good. But the other ( Read more... )

senatorsfan-ink's post on liking the Star Wars Prequels better than the Originals got me thinking, especially this quote:

- You say you stood up and cheered when Leia grabbed a blaster from Luke and shot down the Death Star hallway before ordering Han & Co. into the garbage disposal? Well, I stood up and cheered when Padmé Amidala planned the successful ( Read more... )