1. Always Respond to Threats with Complete Confidence
When someone threatens you, he is trying to invoke in you some fear in which he can feed off of. If you respond to his threats with confidence, even eagerness, it will give him a pause. If he doesn’t chicken out right then and there, he will enter the fight with a slight feeling of unease. His apprehension is your advantage.
2. Fighting Dirty is Fighting Smart
A fist fight isn’t the same as a karate tournament with judges and points. Your opponent is trying to hurt you, so don’t let some silly moral argument prevent you from kicking the little bastard in the nuts. Throw sand in his eyes, kick him in the back of the knees, bite him, or punch him in the stomach hard enough to knock the wind out of him. If he’s got you pinned down and you happen to see a rock out of the corner of your eye? Don’t be afraid to grab that rock and smash his face with it. There is no shiny trophy waiting for you at the end of this fight, so everything goes.
3. Talk Some Shit
Nothing will rattle your opponent faster than you screaming a steady stream of shit at him while you’re engaged in combat. The crazier you sound the better. If you can’t think of anything tough to yell, yell nonsense like, “I’m going to eat your eyes!” If you can’t think of any nonsense to yell, just plain scream. The second your opponent suspects that you’re a freaking lunatic he’s going to get scared. Fear causes people to make mistakes.
4. When You Lose, Claim It Didn’t Hurt
Sometimes you’re just outmatched. But even losing a fight can be used to your advantage. When it’s over, feel free to spit blood in his face and tell him that it ‘didn’t hurt.’ Laugh when he walks away. You might have just gotten your ass kicked six ways from Sunday, but I guarantee you that anyone watching that fight will think twice about ever messing with you in the future. No one wants to fuck with the crazy guy who feels no pain.
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
Understanding a "Girl Bully"
Here is something I came across relating to how girls bully... interesting reading..
When I was in elementary school, I was a bit of a tom boy. I spent every recess ignoring the gaggle of girls gathered by the monkey bars in favor of a sweaty game of soccer with the boys. To me, boys were superior because boys were simple and easy to understand. To win the respect of a boy, you simply had to run just as fast, throw just as far, and punch just as hard as they did.
With girls, it was a different story. Girl World is full of subtle manipulations, vague power struggles, and intense mental warfare. I was brought up to be a very straight forward and honest kid, but in Girl World, the ability to lie well was your greatest asset. If you couldn’t fake concern for a weaker kid one second and then rip her to shreds 10 seconds after she walked away, you couldn’t hang with the girls.
So I didn’t. I hung with the boys.
This worked out beautifully until Junior High rolled around. It was at this point that the boys started puberty and the practice of having a girl friend they weren’t fucking suddenly became taboo. So, I was pushed out of the group. For a couple of days, I was bitter about this, but after much wound licking, I decided to suck it up and make some girlfriends.
The only problem was that I was absolutely clueless on how to go about it.
Fast forward to seventh grade gym class where I witnessed for the first time a group of girls bullying another girl. The victim was a gawky kid named Kristy who apparently had a pretty ridiculous sounding last name. Another girl, Wendy, began taunting her because of it and had even managed to convince some of her vicious harpy friends to join in with the name calling.
That’s how girls bully. They never confront a victim alone. They never say a word unless they have a bunch of loud mouth friends behind them backing them up. They are the worst kind of coward.
To make a long story short, I got up in Wendy’s face and called her some choice names of my own. Gawky Kristy was eternally grateful and ended up becoming my first female friend. The day I told Wendy to shut her fucking pie hole was the last day they ever picked on Kristy.
Instead, they started picking on me.
I cannot stress this point enough, but girls don’t pick on other girls the same way that boys pick on other boys. If you want to pick on a boy, you snap him with a wet towel in the locker room. Or you play keep away with his basketball. Or you lick your finger and stick it in his ear. If Wendy had done something like that to me, I would have been better equipped to defend myself.
Instead, Wendy gathered her harpy friends around her in a circle so they could whisper and giggle and shoot nasty looks in my direction. If I approached them, all confidence, and challenged them to say what they had to say about me to my face, they’d roll their eyes and insist, “We weren’t even talking about you. Paranoid much?” But they were.
If I bent over to grab something out of my locker, they’d oh so accidentally bump into me and knock my head against the metal. When I turned around, furious, they’d say, “Oh SO SORRY! Didn’t see you standing there!” and then they’d scurry away vainly trying to suppress grins behind their hands.
Wendy didn’t want my lunch money and she couldn’t care less about publicly proving her strength to the rest of our peers. The only goal of Wendy’s was to totally isolate me from the rest of the girls in my grade. Wendy wanted to make me into an outcast.
The main goal of Girl Bullying is to completely destroy your self esteem. It is not enough for girl bullies to convince others that they have gained the upper hand with you. They want to convince you that you’re a loser. They want to use all the people they manipulated into disliking you as evidence that you’re a failure and a totally unlikable person. They want you to go home and cry into your pillow and think, “Wow. Wendy must be right about me. Just look at all the people that agree with her.”
Even then, I realized that most of the people who befriended Wendy only did so because they were afraid of her. Woman, as a whole, have a really hard time accepting criticism and often mistakenly believe that if the negative spotlight is shining on someone else, no one will notice all the places were they fall short. The weaker ones almost always attach themselves to someone like Wendy in the hopes that enough ass kissing will ensure that they will never get attacked.
I guess what I’m trying to communicate with all this long winded philosophizing is that Girl bullies are far more complicated and sophisticated than boy bullies. And I, having very little experience in that world, hadn’t the foggiest clue on how to deal with them.
One day in gym class we got all set to play hockey. Because of my general aggressiveness when it came to sports, I was chosen to play forward. Wendy just happened to be the goalie on the other team.
When I picked up my stick, I became determined to score a point against Wendy. I thought if I could just make her look foolish and weak athletically, then I would ‘win the war’ against her and her friends.
Obviously, I was still trying to play by boy rules in Girl World.
I gained control of the puck and headed down the court towards Wendy. A few feet from the net, I began swinging my stick fiercely. Wendy was trying her best to block my puck, but she never quite managed to knock it completely out of my control.
I gave up trying to finesse the puck into the net and started swinging my stick harder…trying to score using brute force. At one point, my stick connected with Wendy’s shins with a loud smack that echoed in my ears. Instead of stopping, I swung the stick again and was rewarded with the faint plinking sound of my puck hitting the back of the net.
I stepped back, triumphant, convinced that I had finally gained the upper hand.
Wendy rolled her eyes and smirked at one of her friends. Suddenly, I realized once and for all that boy rules would never work in Girl World. If I wanted to beat Wendy, I either had to crush her spirit or steal her boyfriend.
To crush her spirit, I had to play her game. I had to seek out her past victims and rally them around me. We would have to rise up, together, and bully her like she had bullied us. We would have to turn all of her friends against her and make her believe in her own inferiority. Something like this would be more than effective, but it would take months and I was an impatient young woman.
And Wendy didn’t have a boyfriend to steal.
These two truths hit me simultaneously as I looked into Wendy’s sneering eyes after I had scored that point in Gym class. I realized that my aggressive athleticism wouldn’t be admired and respected in Girl World, but used against me later. Vicious rumors where my sexuality would be questioned would be my only reward for scoring that point.
I thought to myself, “Fuck it. Might as well run with it.”
Then I threw down my stick and I clocked her. That morning, God, my gym teacher, and all of my classmates watched in horror as I beat the shit out of Wendy like she was paying me to do it. Everyone was so shocked by my attack that it wasn’t until I started bouncing Wendy’s head off of the glossy gym floor that someone pulled me off of her.
As my gym teacher and a couple of other girls restrained me, Wendy sat up, backed away from me like a scared animal, rose shakily to her feet, and ran out of the room crying hysterically.
I ended up in a little trouble, but in the end, Wendy never said jack shit to me or about me ever again.
I guess sometimes boy rules do work in Girl World, if you take it far enough.
That happened nearly two decades ago and I’m not particularly proud of myself for pummeling some girl in seventh grade gym class even if she richly deserved it. What I am most proud of was that I refrained from playing her game. Like I said before, I could have ended Wendy’s bullying by gathering the troops and rallying against her. Plenty of girl wars have been fought and won that way and until women refuse to be ruled by their insecurities, many more will be fought and won that way in the future.
This is not to say that I am taking the moral high ground or dismissing girl rules as inferior to my own violent tactics. In the end, bitchiness is bitchiness whether it comes in the form of whispers and giggles or a smack across the face. All I’m saying is that the whispers and giggles are not my style. I am not above being the puppetmaster, I’m just no good at it. If I would have fought fire with fire with Wendy, I would have failed and humiliated myself in the process. So I’m glad I did it my way.
Generally, if I have something to say to someone, I say it and I’ll keep saying it even if there isn’t a single person alive willing to ‘back me up.’ My intent has never been to systematically ruin someone’s self esteem and I am not vindictive enough to attempt to make someone into a social outcast. But kudos to you, if you are. It takes a certain talent and ambition which I most definitely do not have.
Me? It’s more likely that I’ll break your nose before I’ll crush your spirit.
Either that or I’ll steal your boyfriend.
When I was in elementary school, I was a bit of a tom boy. I spent every recess ignoring the gaggle of girls gathered by the monkey bars in favor of a sweaty game of soccer with the boys. To me, boys were superior because boys were simple and easy to understand. To win the respect of a boy, you simply had to run just as fast, throw just as far, and punch just as hard as they did.
With girls, it was a different story. Girl World is full of subtle manipulations, vague power struggles, and intense mental warfare. I was brought up to be a very straight forward and honest kid, but in Girl World, the ability to lie well was your greatest asset. If you couldn’t fake concern for a weaker kid one second and then rip her to shreds 10 seconds after she walked away, you couldn’t hang with the girls.
So I didn’t. I hung with the boys.
This worked out beautifully until Junior High rolled around. It was at this point that the boys started puberty and the practice of having a girl friend they weren’t fucking suddenly became taboo. So, I was pushed out of the group. For a couple of days, I was bitter about this, but after much wound licking, I decided to suck it up and make some girlfriends.
The only problem was that I was absolutely clueless on how to go about it.
Fast forward to seventh grade gym class where I witnessed for the first time a group of girls bullying another girl. The victim was a gawky kid named Kristy who apparently had a pretty ridiculous sounding last name. Another girl, Wendy, began taunting her because of it and had even managed to convince some of her vicious harpy friends to join in with the name calling.
That’s how girls bully. They never confront a victim alone. They never say a word unless they have a bunch of loud mouth friends behind them backing them up. They are the worst kind of coward.
To make a long story short, I got up in Wendy’s face and called her some choice names of my own. Gawky Kristy was eternally grateful and ended up becoming my first female friend. The day I told Wendy to shut her fucking pie hole was the last day they ever picked on Kristy.
Instead, they started picking on me.
I cannot stress this point enough, but girls don’t pick on other girls the same way that boys pick on other boys. If you want to pick on a boy, you snap him with a wet towel in the locker room. Or you play keep away with his basketball. Or you lick your finger and stick it in his ear. If Wendy had done something like that to me, I would have been better equipped to defend myself.
Instead, Wendy gathered her harpy friends around her in a circle so they could whisper and giggle and shoot nasty looks in my direction. If I approached them, all confidence, and challenged them to say what they had to say about me to my face, they’d roll their eyes and insist, “We weren’t even talking about you. Paranoid much?” But they were.
If I bent over to grab something out of my locker, they’d oh so accidentally bump into me and knock my head against the metal. When I turned around, furious, they’d say, “Oh SO SORRY! Didn’t see you standing there!” and then they’d scurry away vainly trying to suppress grins behind their hands.
Wendy didn’t want my lunch money and she couldn’t care less about publicly proving her strength to the rest of our peers. The only goal of Wendy’s was to totally isolate me from the rest of the girls in my grade. Wendy wanted to make me into an outcast.
The main goal of Girl Bullying is to completely destroy your self esteem. It is not enough for girl bullies to convince others that they have gained the upper hand with you. They want to convince you that you’re a loser. They want to use all the people they manipulated into disliking you as evidence that you’re a failure and a totally unlikable person. They want you to go home and cry into your pillow and think, “Wow. Wendy must be right about me. Just look at all the people that agree with her.”
Even then, I realized that most of the people who befriended Wendy only did so because they were afraid of her. Woman, as a whole, have a really hard time accepting criticism and often mistakenly believe that if the negative spotlight is shining on someone else, no one will notice all the places were they fall short. The weaker ones almost always attach themselves to someone like Wendy in the hopes that enough ass kissing will ensure that they will never get attacked.
I guess what I’m trying to communicate with all this long winded philosophizing is that Girl bullies are far more complicated and sophisticated than boy bullies. And I, having very little experience in that world, hadn’t the foggiest clue on how to deal with them.
One day in gym class we got all set to play hockey. Because of my general aggressiveness when it came to sports, I was chosen to play forward. Wendy just happened to be the goalie on the other team.
When I picked up my stick, I became determined to score a point against Wendy. I thought if I could just make her look foolish and weak athletically, then I would ‘win the war’ against her and her friends.
Obviously, I was still trying to play by boy rules in Girl World.
I gained control of the puck and headed down the court towards Wendy. A few feet from the net, I began swinging my stick fiercely. Wendy was trying her best to block my puck, but she never quite managed to knock it completely out of my control.
I gave up trying to finesse the puck into the net and started swinging my stick harder…trying to score using brute force. At one point, my stick connected with Wendy’s shins with a loud smack that echoed in my ears. Instead of stopping, I swung the stick again and was rewarded with the faint plinking sound of my puck hitting the back of the net.
I stepped back, triumphant, convinced that I had finally gained the upper hand.
Wendy rolled her eyes and smirked at one of her friends. Suddenly, I realized once and for all that boy rules would never work in Girl World. If I wanted to beat Wendy, I either had to crush her spirit or steal her boyfriend.
To crush her spirit, I had to play her game. I had to seek out her past victims and rally them around me. We would have to rise up, together, and bully her like she had bullied us. We would have to turn all of her friends against her and make her believe in her own inferiority. Something like this would be more than effective, but it would take months and I was an impatient young woman.
And Wendy didn’t have a boyfriend to steal.
These two truths hit me simultaneously as I looked into Wendy’s sneering eyes after I had scored that point in Gym class. I realized that my aggressive athleticism wouldn’t be admired and respected in Girl World, but used against me later. Vicious rumors where my sexuality would be questioned would be my only reward for scoring that point.
I thought to myself, “Fuck it. Might as well run with it.”
Then I threw down my stick and I clocked her. That morning, God, my gym teacher, and all of my classmates watched in horror as I beat the shit out of Wendy like she was paying me to do it. Everyone was so shocked by my attack that it wasn’t until I started bouncing Wendy’s head off of the glossy gym floor that someone pulled me off of her.
As my gym teacher and a couple of other girls restrained me, Wendy sat up, backed away from me like a scared animal, rose shakily to her feet, and ran out of the room crying hysterically.
I ended up in a little trouble, but in the end, Wendy never said jack shit to me or about me ever again.
I guess sometimes boy rules do work in Girl World, if you take it far enough.
That happened nearly two decades ago and I’m not particularly proud of myself for pummeling some girl in seventh grade gym class even if she richly deserved it. What I am most proud of was that I refrained from playing her game. Like I said before, I could have ended Wendy’s bullying by gathering the troops and rallying against her. Plenty of girl wars have been fought and won that way and until women refuse to be ruled by their insecurities, many more will be fought and won that way in the future.
This is not to say that I am taking the moral high ground or dismissing girl rules as inferior to my own violent tactics. In the end, bitchiness is bitchiness whether it comes in the form of whispers and giggles or a smack across the face. All I’m saying is that the whispers and giggles are not my style. I am not above being the puppetmaster, I’m just no good at it. If I would have fought fire with fire with Wendy, I would have failed and humiliated myself in the process. So I’m glad I did it my way.
Generally, if I have something to say to someone, I say it and I’ll keep saying it even if there isn’t a single person alive willing to ‘back me up.’ My intent has never been to systematically ruin someone’s self esteem and I am not vindictive enough to attempt to make someone into a social outcast. But kudos to you, if you are. It takes a certain talent and ambition which I most definitely do not have.
Me? It’s more likely that I’ll break your nose before I’ll crush your spirit.
Either that or I’ll steal your boyfriend.
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
A New Sith, or Revenge of the Hope
Reconsidering Star Wars IV in the light of I-III
If we accept all the Star Wars films as the same canon, then a lot that happens in the original films has to be reinterpreted in the light of the prequels. As we now know, the rebel Alliance was founded by Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Bail Organa. What can readily be deduced is that their first recruit, who soon became their top field agent, was R2-D2.
Consider: at the end of RotS, Bail Organan orders 3PO's memory wiped but not R2's. He wouldn't make the distinction casually. Both droids know that Yoda and Obi-Wan are alive and are plotting sedition with the Senator from Alderaan. They know that Amidala survived long enough to have twins and could easily deduce where they went. However, R2 must make an impassioned speech to the effect that he is far more use to them with his mind intact: he has observed Palpatine and Anakin at close quarters for many years, knows much that is useful and is one of the galaxy's top experts at hacking into other people's systems. Also he can lie through his teeth with a straight face. Organa, in immediate need of espionage resources, agrees.
For the next 20 years, as far as 3PO knows, he is the property of Captain Antilles, doing protocol duties on a diplomatic transport. He is vaguely aware of the existence of the princess but doesn't know much about her. Wherever 3PO goes, being as loud and obvious as he always is, his unobtrusive little counterpart goes with him. 3PO is R2's front man. Wherever they land, R2 is passing messages between rebel sympathisers and sizing up governments as potential rebel recruits - both by personal contact and by hacking into their networks. He passes his recommendations on to Organa.
Yoda is out of the picture by this stage, using the Force-infused swamps of Dagobah to hide himself from Vader and the Emperor. Or something. He is meditating on the future and keeping in touch with Obi-Wan via the ghost of Qui-Gon Jin, which as comm systems go has the virtue of being untappable. Obi-Wan, on Tattoine, keeps in touch with Bail Organa and the other Rebel leaders by courier, of which more later.
As Star Wars opens, R2 is rushing the Death Star plans to the Rebellion. R2, not Leia. The plans are always in R2. What Leia puts into him in the early scene is only her own holographic message to Kenobi. Leia's own mission, as she says in the holographic message, is to pick up Obi-Wan and take him to Alderaan - or so she thinks. Actually, her father just wants her to meet Kenobi, which up to this point she never has. There's a reason for that.
Obi-Wan has spent the last 20 years in the Tattoine desert, keeping watch over Luke Skywalker and trying to decide on one of the three available options:
A) If Luke shows no significant access to the Force, then leave him alone in obscurity
B) If Luke shows real Force ability, then consider recruiting him as a Jedi. The rebellion needs Jedi. Now.
But, if Luke shows any signs of turning out like his father, then C) sneak into his house one fine night and chop his head off. With great regret but it'll save a lot of trouble later on.
Knowing this to be the case, Bail Organa (perhaps at the insistence of his wife) has found excuses not to send Leia to Ben for assessment of Jedi potential, largely for fear of option C.
To be fair to all concerned, Leia has shown no overt signs of a link to the Force. Luke on the other hand has. In his home-built hotrod aircraft, with no formal fighter pilot training and no decent instrumentation, Luke can regularly score centre-hits on 2-metre targets in complicated zero-altitude maneouvres. Until he attends the briefing on Yavin, Luke has no way of knowing that hardened combat pilots would consider that nearly impossible. To him it's easy. Obi-Wan, who saw Anakin's performance in the Pod Race, is nervous.
Much of Obi-Wan's behaviour in this film, and Yoda's in the next, can best be understood if they are frankly scared to death of what Luke might become. (Ben is also scared that he himself will make all the same mistakes he made with Anakin.)
Now, with the existence of the rebellion at stake, Bail Organa has finally told Leia to go see Obi-Wan and has sent her along with R2. The original plan would then be for Obi-Wan (with optional Luke and/or Leia in tow) to leave his exile and take the Death Star plans to Yavin, where they can be put to use. R2 (with Leia if Ben doesn't want to take her) would then carry on to Alderaan to maintain the cover story. The original plan does not survive contact with a large Imperial Star Destroyer.
R2 and 3PO bail out in an escape pod, landing in vaguely the right area of Tattoine, where R2's first priority is transport. He arranges to be captured by a group of Jawas and, once on board their transport, he makes a deal with them (possibly using emergency funds stored about his person) to take him where he wants to go. The Jawas refuse to go directly to Kenobi for fear of marauding Sandpeople but they agree to R2's second request : transport to the Skywalker farm. They even get to keep the purchase price if they can sell R2 and 3PO there. The Jawas shake on it and go through with the plan.
Seeing 3PO fail to recognise the farm where he worked for 10 years gives r2 a moment's amusement but, as soon as possible, he gets away and heads for Kenobi. Luke and 3PO follow, which may or may not have been part of the plan.
On first seeing R2, Obi-Wan has a twinkle in his eye and calls him "my little friend". Well, he is. However, when Luke wakes up and says that R2 claimed to be owned by an Obi-Wan Kenobi, he blandly says "I don't seem to remember ever owning a droid." Ben has in fact owned several but the remark is aimed at R2 and translates as "You keep quiet. I'm not about to tell him everything just yet." Obi-Wan thinks fast and tells Luke a version of his past that does not involve a father who became a dark lord of the Sith. He wants to examine Luke a lot more closely before he risks telling him the real truth.
Although the Death Star plans need to get to Yavin as soon as possible, Obi-Wan needs to make one more diversion first. If the Empire knows that Leia is a Rebel leader, then they also know about her father and the whole Organa family may need immediate evacuation. Fortunately, before coming to Tattoine, R2 had already arranged transport, which is waiting at Mos Eisley, under the command of the Rebellion's other chief field agent and espionage asset. Chewbacca.
20 years earlier, Chewbacca was second in command of the defence of his planet. He's there in the tactical conferences and there on the front lines and is a personal friend of Yoda's. When he needed reliable people to join the embryonic Alliance, who else would Yoda turn to but his old friend from Kashykk? Given his background, there is no way that Chewie would spend the crucial years of the rebellion as the second-in-command to (sorry Han) a low-level smuggler. Unless it's his cover. In fact, Chewie is a top-line spy and flies what is in many ways the Rebellion's best ship.
The Millenium Falcon may look like a beat-up old freighter but it can outrun any Imperial ship in normal space or hyperspace, hang in a firefight with a Star Destroyer or outmaneouvre a dozen top-of-the-line TIE fighters. It's a remarkable feat of engineering and must have cost a colossal fortune to build. How does Han come to own a ship like that? He only thinks he does, actually it's Chewie's. Half-way through RotS, we see the Falcon landing at the Senate building on Coruscant. If it's the same ship (which of course it is) then it was the personal transport of one of the senatorial delegations - a much more likely source to commission its design. That delegatino must have later joined the Rebellion and given it the use of the Falcon. In fact, if the delegation is the one from Kashykk, then the ship may have belonged to Chewbacca as early as RotS.
Han is Chewie's front man. It's much better, and safer for him, if he doesn't know what's really going on. Chewie used to work with Lando Calrissian in a similar way but Lando wanted to settle down, so Chewie arranged for him to lose the Falcon in a card game to Han Solo, an even better choice as partner. Han and Chewie's working method is pretty much what we see in the cantina scene: Chewie make the contacts and sets up the deals, then turns them over to Han who haggles over the price and gives the final yea or nay. This lets Chewie wander the seamy underside of the galaxy pretty much at will, making contacts, gathering and passing information with no-one was the wiser, especially not Han.
Chewie persuaded Han to do business with Jabba the Hutt so he could make regular runs to Tattoine, where Chewie could pass messages between Kenobi and Organa. When R2's urgent message came through only days before, the only way for Chewie to get back to Tattoine in time was to make the "mistake" that forced Han to dump his cargo to avoid capture. As a down side, this led to Solo's getting a death mark out on him from Jabba the Hutt. Chewie was a bit upset about the need for that but figured they weren't going to be dealing with Tattoine for much longer.
En route to Alderaan, R2 and Chewie play stop-motion chess. This is the latest in a series of games they've played over the year in the back rooms of space stations and cantinas across the galaxy, but this is the first time they've done it in front of their respective straight men, so they put on a big show.
Then it all goes wrong again. Alderaan is gone and the Falcon is caught and brought aboard the Death Star. Only Han, Luke and 3PO don't know just how much trouble they're in but Obi-Wan has a plan and seems confident (but Jedi always do). Soon afterwards, R2 finds Leia in the detention cells and shouts that they have to rescue her, to which Chewie can only agree. If Vader learns he has a daughter, then they're all in deep trouble, so Chewie does his bit to persuade Han to go along with Luke's plan.
Then, on the verge of escape, Vader himself turns up only yards from both of his children, one of whom is leaking Force all over the place. Obi-Wan stages a distraction by letting himself die and go into the Force while the others escape. At this point, Chewie suddenly realises that he's been left in charge, not only of the Death Star Plans and the survival of the Rebellion but of the secret son and daughter of Darth Vader. With the Organas and Kenobi all dead, only Chewie, R2 and Yoda know who Luke and Leia are. And only Ob-Wan knew where Yoda has been hiding. Chewie is stressed out by the responsibility and R2 (who keeps making crude jokes about the whole affair) is being no help at all.
Chewie's first problem is what is happening between Luke and Leia. With a psychic link they can feel but don't understand, thrown together in a life-or-death escape, they are looking at each other with a sparky intensity that Chewie gradually recognises as Romantic Tension. He's no expert on human relationships but Chewie is fairly sure that that's Wrong, so he does the only thing he can under the circumstances - he throws Han at her. Han is at first not interested but after a while starts to warm to the idea with an intensity that gives Chewie new worries.
When they reach Yavin, Han decides to take the money and run and Chewie decides to go with him. Looked at in cold light, it's for the good of the Rebellion. Even if Yavin is destroyed, there'll be one agent who knows what's going on who can try and put something back together, but he doesn't feel good about it. When Han decides to turn around and join the attack, Chewie is all for it.
Han and Luke get medals but Chewie doesn't. Actually, Leia offers him one but Chewie turns it down. He got one of those things from Yoda about 20 years ago, but there's no way he can tell her that.
As the film ends, the three founders of the Rebellion are all gone. Bail Organa is dead, Yoda is out of contact and Obi-Wan's ghost can only talk to other Jedi. (So that would be Yoda then.) Thus, the field leadership of the rebellion has just been turned over to the daughter of Darth Vader. Chewie is really hoping that someone with an official rank greater than hers will get here real soon before he has to think really seriously about option C.
© Keith Martin 2005
If we accept all the Star Wars films as the same canon, then a lot that happens in the original films has to be reinterpreted in the light of the prequels. As we now know, the rebel Alliance was founded by Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Bail Organa. What can readily be deduced is that their first recruit, who soon became their top field agent, was R2-D2.
Consider: at the end of RotS, Bail Organan orders 3PO's memory wiped but not R2's. He wouldn't make the distinction casually. Both droids know that Yoda and Obi-Wan are alive and are plotting sedition with the Senator from Alderaan. They know that Amidala survived long enough to have twins and could easily deduce where they went. However, R2 must make an impassioned speech to the effect that he is far more use to them with his mind intact: he has observed Palpatine and Anakin at close quarters for many years, knows much that is useful and is one of the galaxy's top experts at hacking into other people's systems. Also he can lie through his teeth with a straight face. Organa, in immediate need of espionage resources, agrees.
For the next 20 years, as far as 3PO knows, he is the property of Captain Antilles, doing protocol duties on a diplomatic transport. He is vaguely aware of the existence of the princess but doesn't know much about her. Wherever 3PO goes, being as loud and obvious as he always is, his unobtrusive little counterpart goes with him. 3PO is R2's front man. Wherever they land, R2 is passing messages between rebel sympathisers and sizing up governments as potential rebel recruits - both by personal contact and by hacking into their networks. He passes his recommendations on to Organa.
Yoda is out of the picture by this stage, using the Force-infused swamps of Dagobah to hide himself from Vader and the Emperor. Or something. He is meditating on the future and keeping in touch with Obi-Wan via the ghost of Qui-Gon Jin, which as comm systems go has the virtue of being untappable. Obi-Wan, on Tattoine, keeps in touch with Bail Organa and the other Rebel leaders by courier, of which more later.
As Star Wars opens, R2 is rushing the Death Star plans to the Rebellion. R2, not Leia. The plans are always in R2. What Leia puts into him in the early scene is only her own holographic message to Kenobi. Leia's own mission, as she says in the holographic message, is to pick up Obi-Wan and take him to Alderaan - or so she thinks. Actually, her father just wants her to meet Kenobi, which up to this point she never has. There's a reason for that.
Obi-Wan has spent the last 20 years in the Tattoine desert, keeping watch over Luke Skywalker and trying to decide on one of the three available options:
A) If Luke shows no significant access to the Force, then leave him alone in obscurity
B) If Luke shows real Force ability, then consider recruiting him as a Jedi. The rebellion needs Jedi. Now.
But, if Luke shows any signs of turning out like his father, then C) sneak into his house one fine night and chop his head off. With great regret but it'll save a lot of trouble later on.
Knowing this to be the case, Bail Organa (perhaps at the insistence of his wife) has found excuses not to send Leia to Ben for assessment of Jedi potential, largely for fear of option C.
To be fair to all concerned, Leia has shown no overt signs of a link to the Force. Luke on the other hand has. In his home-built hotrod aircraft, with no formal fighter pilot training and no decent instrumentation, Luke can regularly score centre-hits on 2-metre targets in complicated zero-altitude maneouvres. Until he attends the briefing on Yavin, Luke has no way of knowing that hardened combat pilots would consider that nearly impossible. To him it's easy. Obi-Wan, who saw Anakin's performance in the Pod Race, is nervous.
Much of Obi-Wan's behaviour in this film, and Yoda's in the next, can best be understood if they are frankly scared to death of what Luke might become. (Ben is also scared that he himself will make all the same mistakes he made with Anakin.)
Now, with the existence of the rebellion at stake, Bail Organa has finally told Leia to go see Obi-Wan and has sent her along with R2. The original plan would then be for Obi-Wan (with optional Luke and/or Leia in tow) to leave his exile and take the Death Star plans to Yavin, where they can be put to use. R2 (with Leia if Ben doesn't want to take her) would then carry on to Alderaan to maintain the cover story. The original plan does not survive contact with a large Imperial Star Destroyer.
R2 and 3PO bail out in an escape pod, landing in vaguely the right area of Tattoine, where R2's first priority is transport. He arranges to be captured by a group of Jawas and, once on board their transport, he makes a deal with them (possibly using emergency funds stored about his person) to take him where he wants to go. The Jawas refuse to go directly to Kenobi for fear of marauding Sandpeople but they agree to R2's second request : transport to the Skywalker farm. They even get to keep the purchase price if they can sell R2 and 3PO there. The Jawas shake on it and go through with the plan.
Seeing 3PO fail to recognise the farm where he worked for 10 years gives r2 a moment's amusement but, as soon as possible, he gets away and heads for Kenobi. Luke and 3PO follow, which may or may not have been part of the plan.
On first seeing R2, Obi-Wan has a twinkle in his eye and calls him "my little friend". Well, he is. However, when Luke wakes up and says that R2 claimed to be owned by an Obi-Wan Kenobi, he blandly says "I don't seem to remember ever owning a droid." Ben has in fact owned several but the remark is aimed at R2 and translates as "You keep quiet. I'm not about to tell him everything just yet." Obi-Wan thinks fast and tells Luke a version of his past that does not involve a father who became a dark lord of the Sith. He wants to examine Luke a lot more closely before he risks telling him the real truth.
Although the Death Star plans need to get to Yavin as soon as possible, Obi-Wan needs to make one more diversion first. If the Empire knows that Leia is a Rebel leader, then they also know about her father and the whole Organa family may need immediate evacuation. Fortunately, before coming to Tattoine, R2 had already arranged transport, which is waiting at Mos Eisley, under the command of the Rebellion's other chief field agent and espionage asset. Chewbacca.
20 years earlier, Chewbacca was second in command of the defence of his planet. He's there in the tactical conferences and there on the front lines and is a personal friend of Yoda's. When he needed reliable people to join the embryonic Alliance, who else would Yoda turn to but his old friend from Kashykk? Given his background, there is no way that Chewie would spend the crucial years of the rebellion as the second-in-command to (sorry Han) a low-level smuggler. Unless it's his cover. In fact, Chewie is a top-line spy and flies what is in many ways the Rebellion's best ship.
The Millenium Falcon may look like a beat-up old freighter but it can outrun any Imperial ship in normal space or hyperspace, hang in a firefight with a Star Destroyer or outmaneouvre a dozen top-of-the-line TIE fighters. It's a remarkable feat of engineering and must have cost a colossal fortune to build. How does Han come to own a ship like that? He only thinks he does, actually it's Chewie's. Half-way through RotS, we see the Falcon landing at the Senate building on Coruscant. If it's the same ship (which of course it is) then it was the personal transport of one of the senatorial delegations - a much more likely source to commission its design. That delegatino must have later joined the Rebellion and given it the use of the Falcon. In fact, if the delegation is the one from Kashykk, then the ship may have belonged to Chewbacca as early as RotS.
Han is Chewie's front man. It's much better, and safer for him, if he doesn't know what's really going on. Chewie used to work with Lando Calrissian in a similar way but Lando wanted to settle down, so Chewie arranged for him to lose the Falcon in a card game to Han Solo, an even better choice as partner. Han and Chewie's working method is pretty much what we see in the cantina scene: Chewie make the contacts and sets up the deals, then turns them over to Han who haggles over the price and gives the final yea or nay. This lets Chewie wander the seamy underside of the galaxy pretty much at will, making contacts, gathering and passing information with no-one was the wiser, especially not Han.
Chewie persuaded Han to do business with Jabba the Hutt so he could make regular runs to Tattoine, where Chewie could pass messages between Kenobi and Organa. When R2's urgent message came through only days before, the only way for Chewie to get back to Tattoine in time was to make the "mistake" that forced Han to dump his cargo to avoid capture. As a down side, this led to Solo's getting a death mark out on him from Jabba the Hutt. Chewie was a bit upset about the need for that but figured they weren't going to be dealing with Tattoine for much longer.
En route to Alderaan, R2 and Chewie play stop-motion chess. This is the latest in a series of games they've played over the year in the back rooms of space stations and cantinas across the galaxy, but this is the first time they've done it in front of their respective straight men, so they put on a big show.
Then it all goes wrong again. Alderaan is gone and the Falcon is caught and brought aboard the Death Star. Only Han, Luke and 3PO don't know just how much trouble they're in but Obi-Wan has a plan and seems confident (but Jedi always do). Soon afterwards, R2 finds Leia in the detention cells and shouts that they have to rescue her, to which Chewie can only agree. If Vader learns he has a daughter, then they're all in deep trouble, so Chewie does his bit to persuade Han to go along with Luke's plan.
Then, on the verge of escape, Vader himself turns up only yards from both of his children, one of whom is leaking Force all over the place. Obi-Wan stages a distraction by letting himself die and go into the Force while the others escape. At this point, Chewie suddenly realises that he's been left in charge, not only of the Death Star Plans and the survival of the Rebellion but of the secret son and daughter of Darth Vader. With the Organas and Kenobi all dead, only Chewie, R2 and Yoda know who Luke and Leia are. And only Ob-Wan knew where Yoda has been hiding. Chewie is stressed out by the responsibility and R2 (who keeps making crude jokes about the whole affair) is being no help at all.
Chewie's first problem is what is happening between Luke and Leia. With a psychic link they can feel but don't understand, thrown together in a life-or-death escape, they are looking at each other with a sparky intensity that Chewie gradually recognises as Romantic Tension. He's no expert on human relationships but Chewie is fairly sure that that's Wrong, so he does the only thing he can under the circumstances - he throws Han at her. Han is at first not interested but after a while starts to warm to the idea with an intensity that gives Chewie new worries.
When they reach Yavin, Han decides to take the money and run and Chewie decides to go with him. Looked at in cold light, it's for the good of the Rebellion. Even if Yavin is destroyed, there'll be one agent who knows what's going on who can try and put something back together, but he doesn't feel good about it. When Han decides to turn around and join the attack, Chewie is all for it.
Han and Luke get medals but Chewie doesn't. Actually, Leia offers him one but Chewie turns it down. He got one of those things from Yoda about 20 years ago, but there's no way he can tell her that.
As the film ends, the three founders of the Rebellion are all gone. Bail Organa is dead, Yoda is out of contact and Obi-Wan's ghost can only talk to other Jedi. (So that would be Yoda then.) Thus, the field leadership of the rebellion has just been turned over to the daughter of Darth Vader. Chewie is really hoping that someone with an official rank greater than hers will get here real soon before he has to think really seriously about option C.
© Keith Martin 2005
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)