I love Star Wars. I grew up with Star Wars and it’s been an integral part of my life in all its stages. I was about four when the first Star Wars film came out (yes, I’m old! =P) and I’ve seen every single movie on its opening night. I’ve got my opinions on the originals, the prequels, the sequels, and the remakes and am sorely tempted to dump them all out here in this word salad but I don’t wanna drive people away by boring them to death. However! There is a reason for all this as it figures prominently in my story *squeee!* =P.
I was able to weave my love of Star Wars directly into my latest chapter of Wolfsitting which thrills me to the point of making little high-pitched fanboy squeaks just saying that. Here in the third chapter, the boys are all fighting over who gets to play with the red lightsaber even though there are two more perfectly good green and blue ones right there with it. And it’s totally obvious to any Star Wars fan why: Red lightsabers are way cooler.
Like a lot of fans of the franchise, Empire Strikes Back is my fav of the original trilogy (and is still my fav overall). Of the original trilogy, it focuses the most on Darth Vader and it’s the first time we meet Boba Fett. It also has that pivotal scene where Vader tells Luke who his father really is and invites him to join the Dark Side (I cannot express to you enough, when that movie first came out and no one had any idea about Darth Vader and Luke’s father, when that scene happened every jaw in the theater hit the floor with an audible gasp and it was the most discussed topic for nearly a year! It was that mind-blowing). And also, like a lot of fanboys, I love to fantasize about what I would do as Luke in that situation and the answer is unequivocally, “You bet. Let’s go. When do I get my kick-ass red lightsaber? Screw you, Obi Wan and Yoda, I’m sittin’ at the cool kids' table from now on with my big boy lightsaber and so help me if you throw in my own black leather armor and cape I might just come a little right here and now.” Not sayin’ it’s because of the red lightsaber, but that does make the decision a whole lot easier.
When I was about 8 or so, my mom bought me my first lightsaber toy. It was cool but not nearly as bad-ass as the ones they have today. The blade wasn’t telescopic nor retractable, it was basically a single hollow tube and there were no electronics in it at all. It didn’t light up and it didn’t have a soundboard in it. But it did make the ‘whrooom’ sound when you swung it thanks to the way the air rushed over the hollow tip It was basically a giant four foot long plastic flute that played one note. And we LOVED it. The red ones were always the first to sell out at the toy stores. Moms who were not on the ball and didn’t get there soon enough had to settle for the much weaker and 120% less cooler blue or green sabers. I had a red one. And in my neighborhood that was understood to mean I had preliminary dibs on playing Darth Vader. Quite possibly my greatest status achievement as a child.
But I actually didn’t start this journal to talk about lightsabers, I just got distracted. Which I do easily and frequently (for instance, I may or may not be writing all this at my desk at work right now while to everyone else it looks like I’m very diligently typing up my TPS reports). No, I actually started this to ponder about Star Wars as a movie in a furry universe. I spend a great deal of my existence thinking about how things in our own dull, boring, mundane, stupid, ‘real’ existence would be in the furry mirror’s reflection that we all enjoy in the fandom. Would Luke be played by a fox or a lynx? Maybe a raccoon or a ferret? Would Leia also be a fox or would she be something different than Luke? If Luke was a fox and Leia was an ocelot, that would certainly make for some interesting discussions later on them being siblings (depending on your take on furry interspecies mating). I see Han Solo as a raccoon every time in my head - and yeah, it’s mostly because of that cliched raccoon eye-mask bandit scoundrel thing more than anything else. What would Vader look like under that helmet? Would the helmet give away part of the secret of his species if his had a long muzzle or no muzzle at all? Same for Boba Fett. And on and on and on.
However, now I get to the real crux of the matter. Yep, all that was just stalling for time until I got to the real quandary that’s been gnawing away at my brain for weeks now. What would Chewbacca be? I see three possibilities here: First, there’s no change at all. He’s exactly how he is in the movie with identical looks and mannerisms (although in the furry universe if they also recorded his voice from the grunts and growls of two bears mating, that would definitely make the movies a bit more ‘interesting’. Han: “Hey, Chewie, did you fix that hyperdrive modulator?” Chewbacca: <in bear-speak> “God, fuck… YES! Cum in me!” Han: “… umm…” In the audience: A lot of wide-eyed, open-mouthed cubs and parents with awkward boners.)
The second possibility I see, and the one that’s probably the most likely, is that he’s played by a long-furred breed like a Persian feline or maybe a Highlands bovine or something similar and just give him a made up language to babble on about in the film. This is usually how I see him done in various furry comics and such that depict the Star Wars characters as furries.
The third and most surreal option is a complete mirror’s reversal of our two universes. If all the human characters become furries, then the furry characters become… well, human. Or human-like. Or maybe just shaved furries? I mean, that would look the most alien to furries, right? If you shaved one down? Seriously, have you ever seen a shaved grizzly bear or a shaved raccoon? Google it. If you don’t know what you’re looking at, it’ll freak you right the hell out. I can just see some grizzly reading over the script for the movie and seeing ‘… completely shaved, and naked except for a bandoleer…’ And where does that even leave us on the Ewoks? *shudder!* Eww.
Fortunately, none of these ridiculous ruminations make it into the story. The boys are only concerned with who gets the best lightsaber and pine over the fact that their parents only bought one red one. Clearly, whoever gets the red one gets first dibs on selecting to be either Darth Vader, Darth Maul, or Kylo Ren. Fair or not, those are the rules. Every Star Wars fan knows what I mean. Cheers!
-Dae
