This week I am going to round out my list of 40 things I love about Star Wars. But I have decided that this is only the beginning of celebrating the 40th anniversary of this franchise. This year, I want to write a total of 40 posts about Star Wars, both for TGM and my personal blog, The Jedi in Jeans. We’ve got a long ways to go, so stay tuned! Enjoy May the 4th this week, if you have a minute with all the other fandom shenanigans going on.
Yes, I can make this list work. I can come up with 17 reasons that the year 2017 is going to be a good one that are all geek-related. Can you? Is there anything on this list you didn’t think of? Anything I didn’t have room for?
Dear Mom: If you are reading this, I want this book for Christmas, and I also think you should read this book because I think you would love it. I think the boys and Mary Lynne would love it, too.
To my general readers: I haven’t read that many Star Wars books. I never touched the former EU/Legends material. So I couldn’t tell you fairly how it compares. But this is one of the best books I have ever read, period. And I think it needs to be read. And my fellow Star Wars geeks on Far Far Away Radio agree. Bloodline by Claudia Gray is that good. My review here contains a lot of what you would consider spoilers but Bloodline is not that fun to talk about without them. I have a lot of feelings for this book.
My capstone paper at BYU was on online fandom and I had to explain a lot of terms in detail to a professor who wasn’t very well-versed in modern trends. Since graduating, I’ve found out there is a lot more to fandom that I wasn’t even aware of, including terminology and slang. If you use Pinterest and Tumblr or you follow fandom sites on Facebook, the following may be some ideas to be aware of when looking at fan art and reading others’ posts, as well as commonly used slang. The slang terms you can look up in the Urban Dictionary (which is a site I DO NOT recommend for children).
Part of this essay is based on a term paper I wrote for my English 333 class at BYU
This is mainly about The Hobbit but I cite Steve and Bucky as an example because Civil War is still on everyone’s minds.
Steve: Remember that time we had to ride back from Rockaway Beach in the back of that freezer truck?
Bucky: Was that the time you used our train money to buy hot dogs?
Steve: You blew three bucks trying to that stuffed bear for a redhead.
Bucky: What was her name again?
Steve: Dolores. You called her Dot.
Bucky: She’s got to be 100 years old right now.
Steve: So are we, pal.
(source: Pinterest)
I grew up hearing that The Lord of the Rings films were actually pretty close to the books. When I finally watched them, however, I found out that the films were actually quite a bit different. True, there were some things I liked better, and some of the changes were understandable or more interesting, but on the whole, I liked the books better.
That’s actually all I’m going to say about LOTR for this post, but it serves as an introduction to an important discussion. I am a book geek. I have been since the first grade. I will be until I go blind in old age. But that doesn’t mean I a hundred percent hate movies that are based on books. I don’t always read the book first, but I am the kind of person who prefers to. This is the case especially when I’ve heard good things about the book as well, for instance, Life of Pi. On the other hand, sometimes I refuse to read the book because the film/television version I grew up watching is completely different and I don’t want to tarnish my feelings for the film (a lot of Disney movies I like are this way). But if the movie is based on a book that I have read and liked, then I am going to hold it to a certain standard.