LNH/ACRA: Untold Tales of the Looniverse #4

[Martin Phipps]

On Mar 6, 10:29 am, "Tarq" <mitchell_cro... at caladrius.com.au> wrote:
> On Mar 5, 1:45 am, Martin Phipps <martinphip... at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >              Politically Correct Space Wars  
>
> >                  Episode 3: A New Dope
>
> I loved it. The only thing that could have made it any better was if
> you had all six episodes. I admit to have being a bit thrown when I
> saw the Episodes 2, 3 and 4 titles as being ripped off 3, 4 and 6,
> respectively.

Okay.  The basic premise here was PC Person as Obi Wan and Kid Anarky
as Anakin.  I wanted to focus on the political aspect.  I suppose I
could have did a whole other parody that focused on the religious
allegory in Star Wars with Self Righteous Preacher in the role of Obi
Wan.  "Anarchin, no!  You must allow yourself to be tempted by the
dark side!  The dark side is... EVIL!"  Of course, that doesn't work
because it is a bit too much like the original dialogue and, hence,
deosn't work as parody. :)

> >   "Happiness is not for Straidis."
> >   "It is for me!"  Anarchin sliced PC Wan in two.
> > "Damn that felt good!"
>
> I liked that. Y'know, they never actually mention it in the books or
> movies, that Anakin wants to be happy. It's all "Rargh, I want to save
> the galaxy by being fascist!"

I thought of the idea of PC Person as a Jedi because the Jedis in Star
Wars did represent a kind of extreme political correctness to me.  A
good example of this was when Yoda told Anakin that if he foresees
someone he loves dying then he should simply prepare himself for the
inevitable and not allow himself to get tempted by the dark side.
What the...?!  Yoda might as well have told him "Go speak to the Sith
Lord, not me, because I'm useless."  And Anakin was, apparently, told
that he couldn't love anyone.  Granted, Lucas was trying to make the
analogy between the Jedi order and the priesthood but, again, the
message seemed to be that any sort of happiness leads to the dark
side.  It was puritanical.

The irony, of course, is that all Anarchin (not Anakin) wanted to do
was be happy.  I didn't parody the part where Anakin killed the young
Jedis which, to be fair, was just Lucas saying "Ooooh.  Look how evil
Anakin is now!"  After all, killing the young Jedis wasn't going to do
anything to keep Padme safe and then when Anakin said later "From my
point of view, it is the Jedis who are evil" it fell a bit flat
because the Jedis weren't the one killing little kids: that was him.

> >   "This!" Seriously Pissed Off Guy said and, true to
> > his name, he stood up and ran up to the Emperor and
> > hit him in the head so hard that his head came right
> > off.
>
> I really like what you did there. There's probably a literary term for
> it, but the use of the "he stood up AND ran up to the Emperor AND hit
> him in the head", all those 'ands' give it a distinctive comedic feel.

It's a run on sentence, not in the sense of being grammatically wrong
but in the sense of being a paragraph comprised of a single sentence.
You are supposed to break long sentences up to make them easier to
read but this can result in choppiness.  If I wanted to convey
something happening very suddenly then I shouldn't say "He got up.  He
ran up to the Emperor.  He hit him in the head."  The periods
themselves are long pauses that result in the three sentences taking
longer to be read.  Choppy sentences, I suppose, could be deliberately
used to convey slow motion.

Truth be told, there's always been a gap between what I see in my head
and what the reader sees when he reads something I've written.  I know
this because I could read something that I wrote years ago and see how
unclear it was.  In a case like this where I am parodying a well known
story, it is much easier for the reader to see what I see.  Luckily,
most of what I write doesn't rely on descriptions as I prefer to tell
stories through dialogue.  Was it really worth mentioning, for
example, that the opening scene in a New Dope took place on
Bodyartooine?

> Also, hitting him "in the head so hard that his head came right off"
> seems so ludicrously impossible and silly that it just builds on and
> emphasizes the humour from the "and and" bit, making this quite
> possibly my one of my favourite paragraphs I have ever read. It's just
> so... nonsensical.

If I were doing a straight Star Wars parody then I would have had
Anarchin throw the Emperor down a shaft and had Puke say something
like "Wow.  It was a really bad idea for him to be standing next to an
open shaft."  Of course, that kind of joke is just a matter of taking
a pot shot at the original version.  Besides, it made more sense for
Seriously Pissed Off Guy to hit the Emperor in the face.

> >   Puke though for a moment.  "This... this is _so_
> > wrong."
> >   Princess Layher smiled.  "But so _very_ right."
>
> Gargh! Martin, I didn't know that you... I didn't think that you...
> but that's so... it feels like Tasmania. Or whatever your American
> equivalent of Tasmania is. Philadelphia??

I'm Canadian.  But no, I'm not interested in my sister.  (You must be
new to te LNH.  You should know I'm not interested in my sister.  My
wife's sisters on the other hand...)

Star Movies (from Hong Kong but owned by Newscorp, the same people who
own 20th Century Fox) recently showed the entire Star Wars Saga a few
times over starting in December and over and over again until the end
of February.  So all six movies were fresh in my mind.  And, yes,
seeing Luke and Leah kiss in A New Hope has now become an all time
"Ewww!" moment for movies in general.

On Mar 6, 10:29 am, "EDMLite" <robroger... at gmail.com> wrote:

> So which part of these "Space Wars" is
> "Politically Correct?"  *8-)

Ironic, isn't it?  PC Wan chastised his father for being with his
mother (who was much older than him and hence a bit of an ewww moment
in itself) but we can only imagine what happened between Puke and
Layher between episodes.  Or rather, between Luke and Leah.  Here it's
all spelled out for you.

Martin