Luke Skywalker Will Die.
It occurred to me this morning before getting the kids ready to take them to Grandma's for the day -- it's the first school in-service day of the year, so teachers have to be there but students do not. With the Star Wars "sequel trilogy" beginning this December with The Force Awakens the Friday before Christmas, the stage is set just as Qui-Gon got killed in a lightsaber duel with Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace (first film of the "prequel trilogy") and Obi-Wan got slashed through by Darth Vader in the original Star Wars ... forgive your chronicler here, I cannot bring myself to use "A New Hope" to describe it; an elder Jedi has got to buy the farm. (At least it's plausible, admit it.) Incidentally, why is "buy the farm" a phrase in our own galaxy for someone dying?
Let's see, The Force Awakens is ostensibly set thirty years after Return of the Jedi which is set four years after the Battle of Yavin (the thirty rebel Alliance -- for why I put "rebel" in lower case, see me after class -- pilots including Luke, Biggs, and Wedge up against the Death Star in the original Star Wars), the signature event from the readers and fans' perspective that all other events are measured against, e. g. year zero.
So here's the chart for some of that:
Revenge of the Sith aka Episode III : 19 BBY (nineteen years before the Battle of Yavin, see below)
Star Wars aka Episode IV : 0 (year zero)
Return of the Jedi aka Episode VI : 4 ABY (four years after the Battle of Yavin)
The Force Awakens aka Episode VII : 34 ABY (see above)
There were times when the last people you wanted to find were Darth Vader and his master the political head of the Galactic Empire, the Emperor Palpatine, even if you were an Imperial. Paul S. Kemp's novel Lords of the Sith (ISBN 9780345511447) set eight years after Episode III (11 ABY) finds Vader and the Emperor (aka Darth Sidious, the principal orchestrator of the Jedi massacre and the Clone Wars culminating in said film) takes the villain with the breathing problem that you love to hate and the villain you just hate on a mission to the planet Ryloth where a rebellion's brewing and ends up with them crashing on the planet with no way to communicate and effect a rescue. With freedom fighters after them, various beasts trying to kill them, and perhaps not being able to trust their own enlisted personnel ... it's a good story but for not-so-good reasons, if that makes sense. Vader through this story still has to hone that killer instinct of his and forget about Anakin ...
THAT I finished reading while Martha, Sarah, and Jeffrey were gone with Martha's sister and their aunt Lesa driving a young lady Anna from Macedonia from Minot to Medora to meet with other work visa students from her group -- apparently the job Anna was supposed to have in Medora fell through so she got reassigned to Minot. And Lesa really wanted some company there and back; the kids wanted a day with Mom, and who was I to deny that. I mean, I was invited to go of course, but quite honestly the kids need it because Martha is away from us so much between work and ... work. I get them back when it's time for them to get in shouting matches and play who's gonna knock the most items off the racks in the bathroom; seriously, I was ready to throw them out in the snow (if we had some) and didn't care who knew it!
Saturday night we found one of Jeffrey's new favorite movies, Percy Jackson and the Olympians. He even brought it with on the road trip to watch again, the modern ... not exactly retelling of major Greek myths, but rather integration of them into a modern setting. The gate to Mount Olympus is at the top of the Empire State Building, the entrance to Hades is in Hollywood (who knew), and be careful of the Lotus Casino in Las Vegas -- you'll never want to leave. Got my start of being a Greek myth fan with a book of Roman mythology in elementary school, which is essentially a rehashing of Greek myth with different names, the ones you most likely recognize as the planets of our solar system.
Taught eleven first and second graders Joseph's Lesson of Forgiveness in Noah's Arkade at Sunday school yesterday, and it went better that you might expect. Several kids have been really paying attention! Bethany Lutheran's got seventeen new members, and Saturday at Breakfast with the Boys there were eighteen of us with all we could eat! Got the den leader paper work done for scouts as well and got it all picked up at my house yesterday, and this week will probably be dominated (here in Minot) by the annual Norsk Hostfest, essentially a Scandinavian heritage festival that like lutefisk tends to drive people a little crazy as the season approaches. We love the family, I want to say I love MY family, but I can really do a better job of showing it. Friends can't be trusted these days.
Everybody dies, but not everybody really lives, and I want to live.
David
Let's see, The Force Awakens is ostensibly set thirty years after Return of the Jedi which is set four years after the Battle of Yavin (the thirty rebel Alliance -- for why I put "rebel" in lower case, see me after class -- pilots including Luke, Biggs, and Wedge up against the Death Star in the original Star Wars), the signature event from the readers and fans' perspective that all other events are measured against, e. g. year zero.
So here's the chart for some of that:
Revenge of the Sith aka Episode III : 19 BBY (nineteen years before the Battle of Yavin, see below)
Star Wars aka Episode IV : 0 (year zero)
Return of the Jedi aka Episode VI : 4 ABY (four years after the Battle of Yavin)
The Force Awakens aka Episode VII : 34 ABY (see above)
There were times when the last people you wanted to find were Darth Vader and his master the political head of the Galactic Empire, the Emperor Palpatine, even if you were an Imperial. Paul S. Kemp's novel Lords of the Sith (ISBN 9780345511447) set eight years after Episode III (11 ABY) finds Vader and the Emperor (aka Darth Sidious, the principal orchestrator of the Jedi massacre and the Clone Wars culminating in said film) takes the villain with the breathing problem that you love to hate and the villain you just hate on a mission to the planet Ryloth where a rebellion's brewing and ends up with them crashing on the planet with no way to communicate and effect a rescue. With freedom fighters after them, various beasts trying to kill them, and perhaps not being able to trust their own enlisted personnel ... it's a good story but for not-so-good reasons, if that makes sense. Vader through this story still has to hone that killer instinct of his and forget about Anakin ...
THAT I finished reading while Martha, Sarah, and Jeffrey were gone with Martha's sister and their aunt Lesa driving a young lady Anna from Macedonia from Minot to Medora to meet with other work visa students from her group -- apparently the job Anna was supposed to have in Medora fell through so she got reassigned to Minot. And Lesa really wanted some company there and back; the kids wanted a day with Mom, and who was I to deny that. I mean, I was invited to go of course, but quite honestly the kids need it because Martha is away from us so much between work and ... work. I get them back when it's time for them to get in shouting matches and play who's gonna knock the most items off the racks in the bathroom; seriously, I was ready to throw them out in the snow (if we had some) and didn't care who knew it!
Saturday night we found one of Jeffrey's new favorite movies, Percy Jackson and the Olympians. He even brought it with on the road trip to watch again, the modern ... not exactly retelling of major Greek myths, but rather integration of them into a modern setting. The gate to Mount Olympus is at the top of the Empire State Building, the entrance to Hades is in Hollywood (who knew), and be careful of the Lotus Casino in Las Vegas -- you'll never want to leave. Got my start of being a Greek myth fan with a book of Roman mythology in elementary school, which is essentially a rehashing of Greek myth with different names, the ones you most likely recognize as the planets of our solar system.
Taught eleven first and second graders Joseph's Lesson of Forgiveness in Noah's Arkade at Sunday school yesterday, and it went better that you might expect. Several kids have been really paying attention! Bethany Lutheran's got seventeen new members, and Saturday at Breakfast with the Boys there were eighteen of us with all we could eat! Got the den leader paper work done for scouts as well and got it all picked up at my house yesterday, and this week will probably be dominated (here in Minot) by the annual Norsk Hostfest, essentially a Scandinavian heritage festival that like lutefisk tends to drive people a little crazy as the season approaches. We love the family, I want to say I love MY family, but I can really do a better job of showing it. Friends can't be trusted these days.
Everybody dies, but not everybody really lives, and I want to live.
David
Comments
Post a Comment