Well, it’s been another year. Sunrise officially began on February 12th, 2008, when this horrible-looking page was posted to the then-very-rough website I’d set up at the time. (The cover of Issue 1 appears to have been posted the day before, but was actually posted somewhat later, with the date adjusted to ensure correct position in the archive.) Now, some 230 pages later, it seems like a good time to look back and see what I’ve learned from this little experiment.
Sunrise: Three Years!
February 12th, 2011Why People Didn't Like the Star Wars Prequels
September 30th, 2010(Aside from the obvious, that is.)
I recently finished reading a book about fandom, Textual Poachers by Henry Jenkins. It was published in 1992. It examines various aspects of the fan community, and in a section about how fans interpret material by re-watching it, I found this choice quote:
“Each time I see [Star Wars], a new level or idea about something in it shows itself. [Part of the fun is] piecing together from the few clues what the Old Republic was actually like, who the Jedi were, what Han’s background was, … what the Clone Wars were[.]” (Roberta Brown qtd. in Jenkins 1992, 73)
That’s the entire fan controversy in a nutshell, right there. Fans watched the original movies and came up with their own theories about the background material. By keeping the background in a liminal, undefined state, it was alive and exciting. By solidifying his own version of the past in the form of the prequels, George Lucas effectively killed the fans’ grounds for speculation. That, more than the shortcomings of the films themselves, is what inspired fans’ ire.
Bonus: A moral for writers of fiction. Gaps in stories are not necessarily meant to be filled. Interesting background is often more exciting when it’s undefined; when we see the trappings but don’t necessarily know what’s behind them. This is a rocky road to tread (background still has to at least appear to have a reason to exist, you can’t just make things up at random), but it pays to remember that some things are better off unexplained. Bill Watterson never defined what “The Noodle Incident” was, and you can bet if he had, it wouldn’t be as absurd as you imagined it.
On Revisiting a Childhood Epic
May 2nd, 2010Here in my lap I have eighteen pages of lined paper ripped from a notebook. The obsessively neat handwriting is mine, as is the story. Both date from when I was ten. The story takes place on Crystalia, a world that had a pseudo-medieval society and a landscape dotted with giant inexplicable crystals. For a short time the place fascinated me, but now these few pages are all that remains.
Treyl’s foot slipped on the slick crystal. As he ascended up the side of the crystal, he wondered whether this climb would really succeed in getting him up high enough to be picked up by hot air balloon. He had to head to the island of Taloba to have his corn ground and sold.