The Princess Diarist Review

The time has come to review the last novel written by the late, great Carrie Fisher. After discovering how much I liked her writing with Wishful Drinking I thought I could just jump into Fisher’s memoirs of her experience with the first Star Wars film (now confusingly known as episode Four A New Hope). And It was still fairly funny, granted this time there was the main reason why fans wanted to buy the book (this reason taking up two thirds of the book), her affair with Harrison Ford.

No You can’t spoil real life, but I will talk about The Last Jedi a bit here with some minor spoilers, I promise this will be the last time I talk about Star Wars until the end of Star Wars Rebels.

This novel is more or less Carrie talking about her life behind the scenes of what was going on when filming the first Star Wars movie, her life prior to the movie, life as an actress during that time, her hesitation at going into showbiz, her experience with Harrison Ford (gosh he was/is hot. Remember when you didn’t need amazing muscles to be hot?), her life in the world of comicon, and a depressing realization I had that resulted in me taking a few months (and some audiobook sessions) to finish this novel.

The Princess Diarist is a pretty damn good book, Carrie Fisher had chosen to write it solely because one day she was cleaning house and found her old diaries from when she was filming Star Wars, which is pretty cool that she kept and found them and that the ink managed to last for so many years.

As mentioned above the main focus of the book (and one of the reasons why so many people were interested in the book in the first place prior to December 27th 2016) was the revelation that Carrie FIsher had an affair with Harrison Ford. Carrie FIsher didn’t go into too much detail about what went on in the bedroom (with the exception of maybe one detailed poem) as she felt that sex is a private matter.

She talks about the secret she and Harrison Ford shared and how she did have feelings for Harrison Ford that she didn’t want to have because she saw that her father ran off with Elizabeth Taylor and didn’t want to become ‘a homewrecker’ by having an affair with Harrison Ford. The poems she wrote can sometimes be particularly dark to the point that I resorted to listening to the audiobook (which somehow got Carrie FIsher nominated for a Grammy), to highschool crush and feelings, to being in love with someone and knowing that you yourself can be more interesting and better than what you see yourself as and wondering how that person views you. Despite how dark the diary entries go, I feel that people can relate to them even if the situation is just so unrealistic.

I will admit I did get annoyed how the book focused so much on this affair; I understand it’s a secret that Carrie Fisher almost took with her to the grave, but I was hoping for other stories and adventures she had on set of Star Wars. But then again the diary entries that were created partially because of the affair so I understand why so much of the book was devoted to it.

It was fun seeing how Carrie Fisher talked about her life after the original Star Wars trilogy, going through life living in Princess Leia’s shadow, hating princess Leia, liking Princess Leia, understanding that she is only famous because of Princess Leia, hating Star Wars for a little bit, then just growing to accept all of it.

She does also talk a bit about her life in conventions giving small parodies/generalizations of the fans she meets while at conventions. She mentions that despite meeting some fans multiple times, she didn’t remember them, but was polite about that situation, and situations where children thought that Princess Leia was a beautiful young woman still (don’t do drugs kids). Most of all she did like the Star Wars fan base and enjoyed joking around with her fans and just grew to enjoy everything. She accepted what life had given her and was happy to live it.

And now for the depressing realization of this novel and The Last Jedi. Throughout most of the book Carrie FIsher mentioned the topic of death a lot. Most people would say “she was old, of course she’s going to talk and joke around about death,” which is fair enough, I joke about dying a lot too. But then I saw The Last Jedi last week and noticed something about Carrie’s performance and began to tie something with what she had written in the book. Carrie knew she didn’t have much time left on this earth.

Granted she was having a blast on The Ellen Degeneres show a little over a week before she passed away, but who wouldn’t have a blast on Ellen? Even the kids from Thirteen Reasons Why had a blast on her show!

I could be wrong, I really hope I’m wrong about this observations I had while reading this book and seeing her act one last time, but this is a feeling I have, nothing more and nothing less. It was great seeing the crazy lady and her internal thoughts one last time, it’s making me consider going to go see The Last Jedi again on the 27th dressed as a giant prozzak pill.

I give The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher five out of five strange Slave Leia autographs.

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Star Wars the Last Jedi Spoiler infested review.

As I mentioned in my other review of Star Wars The Last Jedi, there would be two seperate reviews, this one is the spoiler review. DO NOT READ IT UNLESS YOU WANT YOUR MOVIE EXPERIENCE TO BE SPOILED! I will not spoil everything though, so there you go 🙂

So first thing is first, all the fans making theories about Snoke being a force vampire, Rey’s parentage, wondering what will happen with Leia due to Carrie FIsher passing away, and Luke being on the dark side of the force all get a giant middle finger given to them. Fans of shipping from the previous film get a smaller middle finger given to them and a pat on the back (even my Poe/Finn ship got a small pat on the back). Essentially though it’s fair to say each and every fan who spent the past two years trying to solve the new mysteries in the Star Wars universe got bamboozled and I’m fine with being mostly bamboozled.

The film picks up immediately after The Force Awakens concluded with Poe doing some badass flying drawing time for the Resistance to pack up and flee to regroup. However Poe believes that the Resistance should focus primarily on defeating The First Order right then and there rather than using a strategy after regrouping to continue battling the First Order, it is this recklessness that leads to The Resistance losing many resources at the start of the film and more or less spending most of the film at the mercy of The First Order.

We also see Finn recover from his injuries from The Force Awakens and his primary goals are to find Rey, save her, and go into hiding away from both the First Order and the Resistance. He goes on a secret mission to infiltrate the First Order to stop them from tracking the Resistance through hyperspace.

During all of this Rey is spending her time with Luke Skywalker trying to convince him to aid the resistance against the First Order, however Luke has grown cynical and disillusioned with the Jedi and feels it is arrogant to call the Jedi order as the sole good side of the force arrogant. And as usual Luke is a whines and complains because that’s what he’s good at.

Your Fan Theories Have No Power Here!

I’ll start things off with one that many fans had been wondering about since Rey came into the mix; her parentage! Many thought Rey was the long lost twin of Ben Solo/Kylo Ren, the obvious age difference between the two actors makes this very unlikely plus even if Leia had some weird “force memory erase” her body would definitely remember being pregnant with twins. Essentially my theory of Rey’s parents being “no one” were right. She was just a girl abandoned by her family, there are hints to her being something more than what she believes herself to be. Also no she isn’t Luke’s daughter and she isn’t the Disney version of Luuke Skywalker.

Despite what many fans believed, Leia was not killed off in this film due to Carrie Fisher’s passing last year despite Lucasfilm and Disney stating many times that the character Princess Leia would not be killed off.

#BossBitch

Leia shows us why she is in charge of The Resistance (outside of the fact that she founded it), in the event that all of the Resistance leadership was ambushed and went flying into space, Leia showed us that despite not being trained in the force as a Jedi, she knows damn well how to use it. As with The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi shows us many female characters present in the film doing heroic deeds all without screaming “woo feminism,” and once again the film passes the Bechdel test.  

Another strong character is Amilyn Holdo who though gets little characterization in the film itself (for more info on her past go read Leia Princess of Alderaan). Despite serving as someone that Poe distrusts throughout the film in terms of leadership and decisions not to do any form of action choosing to flee, she shows that she can not only put an end to a small mutiny, but also delivers a strong blow to the First Order.

References to Knights of the Old Republic (the only GOOD Star Wars video games)

Oddly there are references to the Knights of the Old Republic video games with porgs infesting the millenium facon and Luke more or less becoming The Exile of Knights of the Old Republic 2.

Let the Hate FLOW Through You!

As I first mentioned many fan theories and plot lines started in The Force Awakens and heavily advertised in the marketing for The Last Jedi are thrown out the door with major villains in the previous film being defeated with ease. Rey’s parentage is treated as unimportant, the damage of the government system is not shown despite many implications that the government is in chaos due to most of the senators for many planets are dead.

Let’s be honest with ourselves, some of what was being presented to the fans were a little ridiculous at times (no one is going to take you seriously when you look like look like an aged anorexic version of Sloth from Goonies who stole Goldmember’s wardrobe).

In place of all these theories and teasing we get an actual story that I previously mentioned, the film felt more like watching a few episodes of Star Wars Clone Wars or Star Wars Rebels where in some situations flying around and blowing shit up was not the best solution to a problem and that there were alternative solutions that would have helped alot more. While I understand that fans were displeased with this, this was a better approach to telling the story rather than relying on the predictability of something along the lines of “Rey’s parents were noble people hiding her away from the First Order” or “Snoke is an evil Force vampire that awoke because Palpatine killed all the Jedi at once”.

I also felt the story was more along the lines of the 2004 scifi series Battlestar Galactica where the main goal was for the humans to find the planet Earth and start a new home and evade the cylons, which is nearly exactly what happens here actually.

I really liked this movie even if it wasn’t at all what I expected; I give Star Wars the Last Jedi four porgs out of five.

Star Wars The Last Jedi Spoiler Free Review

I just got home from the movie theatre from Star Wars The Last Jedi and it was a blast; I will be doing two seperate reviews of the film, one a general review of the film, and the other filled with spoilers and observations that will make fanboys go insane and what not.

Just to clear things out of the way I will say that no The Last Jedi does not follow in the same footsteps that The Force Awakens did and do a general repeat of The Empire Strikes back, no  Mark Hamill isn’t a bad actor contrary to what his lack of lines in The Force Awakens lead you to believe, and no there isn’t anything post credits (go use the restroom!)

I promised a spoiler free review and dammit you’re getting one!

The film is very properly paced, but rather than having three acts, four (possibly five) are in the film. There is a strong presence of leadership and decision making present in the film with two of our protagonists learning a good lesson of “knowing when to fold ‘em” rather than a continue on fighting against your enemy because ‘that’s what you do in war.’ Poe’s character arc revolves around this conflict due to reckless behavior on his part that would have spared The Resistance a lot of loss had he just listened to Leia.

Finn’s character arc is essentially a continuation of “stop being a damn coward,” that was present in The Force Awakens. Along with the continuation of Finn’s character we also see the continuation of Rey and Kylo Ren’s character growth as they both begin to question what they are doing on their chosen sides of the Force with Kylo Ren wondering if he has chosen the wrong side of the force and Rey realizing that not everything about the Jedi and Luke Skywalker is as good just as she was lead to believe.

We also see what has become of Luke Skyywalker in his old age and semi isolation from the rest of the known universe, and he’s as grumpy as you’d expect him to be in old age. I will speak more of him and Leia in the spoiler review.

While the film is good, there are flaws present in the film in terms of jumping between the three protagonists of the film with Poe wanting to gain leadership in the Resistance, Finn on a secret mission, and Rey learning more about the force and training with Luke to better use the force. There are some issues with the characterization of Amilyn Holdo and Captain Phasma where the former doesn’t have much characterization at all and the most anyone knows of her is her introduction in Leia Princess of Alderaan (I’m guessing she will receive character development in future expanded universe media), as i am writing this Phasma’s presence in the film is forgettable. SHe doesn’t really do much (again) so fans who read the Phasma novel and read her midquel comic will be disappointed.

Despite the film being advertised as a darker film compared to The Force Awakens, there is a significant amount of laughs in the film where all the characters get in on comedic scenes and even some slapstick among the younger cast.

The film looks great, I will admit I was at a disadvantage due to my seating while watching the film due to lack of seating. Hopefully seeing it a second time with a better angle (or lack of angle since I had to look up from the second row) will allow me to better appreciate the film.

I give Star Wars The Last Jedi four adorable porgs out of five.

What I Learned from National Novel Writing Month

This past month for the first time I participated in Write a Novel in November and I am proud to say that not only did I finish said novel, I went above the 50,000 word count required to ‘win’. It was an interesting experience for me along the lines of ‘something I’ve always wanted to do, but never have.’ I’m going to be honest and say that I thought I was just going to go strong and write the target amount of 1,666 words per day the first few days and then forget about it and just fall behind and fail miserably.

But I didn’t; I kept going and going on typing the story. Some days were easy where I could just keep on typing and the words went onto my computer screen with grace, competence, probably some minor typos, and didn’t sound forced. And there were days where I was literally pulling anything out of my ass and hope that it made sense in the grand scheme of things. Some days were harder than others not because of writer’s block, but because I was busy with the Thanksgiving holiday, Black Friday, and I honestly didn’t want to write on my birthday (I still wrote something, just not the 1666 word count).

Today I am going to tell you how this strange approach to writing a novel has taught me about the novel writing process and what I learned about myself as a writer (I feel like I’m typing an essay I did last year to graduate again.)

Why Would You Do That to Yourself?

Why would I torture myself to write the first draft of a novel in a month? Well it isn’t the first time i’ve written a full novel, those novels were written side by side when I was eighteen when I had better time management and what not. This time period was around seven to nine months which isn’t too bad. However both novels are under 50,000 words and should not be read by anyone ever.

I chose to participate in National Novel Writing Month because I have been working on a novel on and off and created a little universe with outlines for heroes, villains, and all kinds of magic. But it’s been nearly half a decade since this started and it’s mostly been short stories that have been finished and one of the main stories has yet to be finished at all.

So I told myself “you gotta see if you can actually finish a story again before you want to continue on with your little multiverse,” and that’s what I did.

How did you Prepare? What Inspired your Story?

I became ‘pregnant’ with my story in the spring of 2016 while taking a hydrology class and reading Water the Fate of Our Most Precious Resource by Marq Devilliers. The book talked about water and different situations concerning irrigation, dams, the pollution of water in parts of the world, and some of the history of water.

One day I had the image of the world shortly after the end of humanity and a lonely mermaid traveling the wrecked seas looking at the remains of humanity and struggling to stay alive herself because of all the pollution. I may save this concept for a painting.

I prepared for this story by making an outline and setting goals for myself and creating structure by choosing how many chapters to write ahead of time. I settled for thirteen chapters because it seemed like something that was doable for me since this was my first time doing this.

I also set rules for myself; the primary ones being that I would not use any ‘chosen one’ themes (I will write an essay about that soon), no romantic interest and no love triangles (I made damn sure not to fall into that), and to stay as lightly above religion as possible (despite my best efforts religion (okay fine christianity) has made its way into my writing).

So what REALLY Happened? (and some areas where I know I made mistakes)

As I mentioned above I went pretty strong with the start of the month sticking to environmental themes at least for my story. THen came writers block. These were night where I pulled anything out of my ass just to get the plot rolling and ended up doing something that I like to call ‘Off Road Writing’ where I went off the main plot of the outline and created something new. It did benefit in some situations where characters grew more and became more fleshed out.

Speaking of fleshing out characters a mistake I did make was having two supporting characters hijack the story from my protagonist for possibly three chapters.

I also did make a mistake concerning a habit of my protagonist that developed on its own that i will have to go back and rewrite some parts of the story just to have things make more sense for my protagonist.

The drawback of Off Road Writing was that the environmental and climate change themes I had planned out and that had inspired the story took a backseat and despite my best efforts did not make it back into the main plot so well. However themes of life and death and what life is worth did take it’s place so for the second draft I may be able to save what was once lost.

Also despite me intention of this story being stand alone, it is still a stand alone story, but it has been incorporated to my little multiverse, which is kind of a good thing since i got to introduce a character sooner than I wanted to and give an aura of mystery to him.

What Will I Do Now?

I’m taking a break from this novel I’ve written just to forget everything that happened and catch up on my own reading and continue job hunting. I’m actually going to ask a handful of trusted friends to read it and give me feedback and condemn me for my crappier parts of the novel the nights I literally pulled crap out of nowhere.

I don’t know if I want this to be published, definitely not in its current form, but you never know. In its current form I’d give this little novel I’ve written one seashell out of five.