However, for me today is more than Star Wars Day, as today is my oldest child's birthday. Today they turn 14.
14 years ago around this time I was at work. My wife called me from the hospital as I was training someone to replace me while I was out on Paternity leave. At that point, my wife had been in the hospital on bedrest for 3 weeks. But, our baby was coming that day as she developed pre-eclampsia and HELLP syndrome.
The baby was coming 10 weeks early.
Flash forward 14 years & we have a teenager. Where does the time go?
“I put this little thing on it: ‘A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, an incredible adventure took place.’ Basically it’s a fairy tale now.”
George Lucas, December 1975
Star Wars means a lot to a lot of people. Its influence can be felt in today’s culture especially around “fandom” culture, and it is often simple fairy tale stories that can speak to so many people the way Star Wars has.
When George Lucas was writing the script for the original Star Wars in the mid-1970s, he read the book The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. This ended up being profoundly influential to Lucas’ approach to the story. The book analyzes many myths and old tales from around the world. Campbell noticed a pattern to all these stories and summarized his findings in his book.
Today, this archetypal narrative is better known as the Hero’s Journey. After reading this book Lucas realized that this is what he had been doing all along. He had been following the rules of the hero’s journey and was trying to capture that magical familiar feeling older stories provide. Once he realized this, Lucas would lean into the classic motifs.
...So what do you think? Is Star Wars very obviously a fairy tale? Or is it a fantasy story? How do YOU define these categories?
today we remember that a wise man, who tried to teach peace to people in turmoil, but who eventually was betrayed and killed by the actions of one of his closest friends. some say that shortly after his death though he rose and was seen again by the faithful.
It may be #MayTheFourth but it's also a #LocalElection day in the #UK and its government's new law requiring #VoterID is straight out of the Sith play book.
@dosgameclub Hah, I picked up Dark Forces on Steam and have been playing it on the Steam Deck. It works great.
What's amusing is to find out that when Steam installs the game on the Deck, it uses the DOSbox emulator and the Deck actually shows the initial startup from what looks like a DOS command prompt on its screen. The game's UI, when you want to quit, asks if you want to quit "to DOS" as well.
(Gameplay on the Deck is great, and the experience so far has been superior to playing on a desktop or laptop)