The Diva Republic - Light of the Jedi Part 1

And listeners, fair warning, I woke up with a migraine. So I took my migraine pill, and my migraine pill is essentially a quarter-ton of acetaminophen strapped to a caffeine rocket. I'm operating at speeds that no human should be operating at. If you would like to watch Stephanie explode, you can go to our podcast at patreon.com/divispodcast for I'm going to look at someone. Just saying that the thing that chameleons do where their eyes can look in all the different directions that's me today, yeah, so I'm getting out of bed this morning and I'm just like, okay, I'm sore, I need to get up, brush my teeth, look pretty, find my t-shirt. I just need calm and serenity so I can ramp up up to get ready to hang out with my bestie and talk about what we're going to talk about today. And I checked my Facebook messenger and Steph has left me a link for a lovely TikTok. And it's this woman who is screaming at me. She has some opinions about Mitch McConnell, what can I say? I appreciate that. That's really awesome. I appreciate her. I appreciate her bringing the word "scroto" into my lexicon, in referring to his evil transphobic, homophobic, fascist, neck pouch, which is different from the George Lucas neck pouch. So we're clear. George Lucas's neck pouch is a sentient creature that writes screenplays. Mitch McConnell's neck pouch is a sentient scrotum that oppresses anybody who's not a cishead white man. I love that for him. All right. So are you ready to do this? I don't know. What are we doing today, Steph? Should we intro the show first? Let's intro a show. Let me minimize you because you're very distracting. Because your mustache is so glorious, I can't look away. And I need to be able to look at my notes. Okay, that bitch is distracting. All right, I'm going to intro the show now. We're going to do this for real and for true. Okay. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Dark Side Divas, the podcast where a woman and a gay man express their opinions about Star Wars. My name is Stephanie. I'm the woman half of the show and I'm not at all concerned about the new format of our podcast. It's fine. I'm fine. I love change. It everybody. I'm Chris. I'm that gay man. And I'm also heading to the rim to make my dreams come true. Wait, why does the rim sound dirty when you say it? I'm sorry. When I hear Mark Thompson say that word, I have to pause. Yeah, no, there's, yeah, we'll get into it. Okay. Oh, Stephanie, we are all the Republic. We are, in fact, all the Republic. Okay. So we got it. We got to talk about why things are different. What's going to be different and all of that stuff? Do you have anything else you want to talk about before we get into the business of he oldie podcast today? I did want to read two reviews. If you don't mind, I don't mind. I'm comfortable with this. What is your problem? What is your damage, Heather? I'm, you already said. I'm super caffeinated right now. I don't know what you want from me. Okay. Let's do these two things real quick. Okay. Okay. I don't think I've read these before. So correct me if I have Heather. I slept since the last time you read anything. So PT long one wrote fun times with the divas. I know, right? For so mature. This show is great. The perfect amount of witty organized chaos, as well as addressing important political points and Twitter spoilers. This show was recommended by Gold Squadron Gase and Steph may remember the review. She was a guest. Started with your Rebels coverage, but now I got to start from the beginning because I'm all caught up. Can't wait to hear more from you and keep up the fun content. Thank you so much for your review. Thank you for your exquisite taste in other podcasts. Yeah, anyway, so the second, second review real quick, book nerd 55 wrote great show. I love this show. You're so funny and positive, even when you're critical about things and it's cool when your perspectives on a lot of the characters seem to match mine. I'm enjoying your Rebels, watch through and I'm excited for you to get to the finale of season one. Those are some of my favorite episodes. So yeah, about that. Was that the end of the review? That's it. Okay, so y'all, a lot has happened in the, God, has it only been like two weeks? Like maybe, yeah. God, everything moves so fast and then, and yet at a glacial pace that thrills me. So a lot's happened since the last time we put a podcast out. The WGA SAG After Strike has kicked into high fucking gear. And so there was a lot of confusion there for a while. We did pause podcast production while we tried to figure out exactly how we can continue with our podcast while still supporting the strike because of the content that we cover belongs to companies that are being struck against right now. So, so this has been an evaluation of what we're going to do. And so Chris, what are we doing? Well, so you know, we obsessed over the guidelines even as, even as certain organizations contradicted themselves over and over again. That's fine. If you can't, if y'all can't tell just to just to emotionally prepare you all, please have no doubt in your mind I support these strikes 100%. I firmly believe actors, writers. In fact, anybody that works anywhere for any kind of job should be paid a fair living wage. And if there's a situation where people are concerned that their likeness is going to be used without getting paid, their voice being used without getting paid, all that kind of stuff, I feel like that should be addressed as well. However, that doesn't mean I like the organization behind it. So, and so if I sound a little skeptical about some things on either side of this situation, please understand it's because it's healthy to be skeptical and be critical of things that have a major impact on your life. Doesn't mean you don't support it. That's all right. Right. So basically quick primer, because I know we've talked about, we've talked about the strike and everything on this podcast before, but to be clear, the WGA is the writer's Guild of America. I think that's the full name. My language is acronyms right now. So, okay. There's a lot of alphabet soup. Yeah. It's so much. Yeah. The WGA represents writers. It's a union. And if you like me grew up in a right to work state that frowns on unions, then you're learning union shit as we go here, just kind of where I'm at. But the writer's Guild, the WGA representing writers and SAG after representing actors have joined forces to go on strike. So, no production is happening right now. No TVs, no movies, no nothing, unless they actually meet the requirements of SAG actor and WGA, which is to be able to pay people, etc., etc. There's a lot at stake with this strike. There has to be a lot at stake to justify grinding the enormous money machine that is Hollywood to a halt, which is what they've done. And the power of strikes comes from the ability to grind production to a halt. This has been since unions have been for a couple hundred years now. And unions are there to protect workers from being exploited by their employers. And that's what's been going on here. Actors and writers have been exploited and taken advantage of by studios for since forever. And it's been a constant renegotiation process. And here's where we're at in that whole process is the strike is active right now. And we want to be able to support the strike. So, we're not going to be promoting any TV film, anything like that. So, what the fuck are we here to talk about today is the looming question. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what can we talk about that is still within the galaxy far, far away that we love, but it is not a TV or film production. Chris. Oh, is that me? I wasn't looking at you on Zoom. So, I'm like, what is she? Okay. What is she going to say? I'm like sitting at the edge of my seat. Like, what am I going to talk about? I'm not even prepared. Yeah. No. So, we're going to talk about it still can in the Star Wars, the high republic books. What? Yes. It's true. We're going to talk about the books. You know, the books that Stephanie didn't like literally stopped reading because she saw trauma in a horror on the horizon. Uh-huh. We're going to do that. Yeah. We're going to go through that. I typically don't read the Star Wars books. Just because it's a personal choice, I prefer the visual media. I love to read just not the Star Wars books, but here we are. I have read the book that we're going to talk about today before on audio book, which is still reading, by the way, that's something that I see a lot is people saying that that listening to an audio book is not the same thing as reading. That's bullshit. There's actually been studies that show that the parts of your brain that activate while reading a paper book activate while listening to an audio book. So yeah, it and you could read while working out. I'm just saying and quite frankly, in some books like this one, when you have 100 million fucking characters, it helps to listen to the audio book. Yeah, and but we'll get to it because that's definitely going to be a part of the the conversation here. So yeah, we are going to be talking today. So okay, okay, let's get back into the official format like we know what we're doing here. Right. What we're doing on this podcast up to this point has been watching through the entire Star Wars visual story and chronological order. However, there's a strike on. So what we're doing now is reading through Star Wars the High Republic books. And so we're going to start with the very first book, which is light of the Jedi. What? I know. So Chris, do you have an intro? I do have an intro, but you know, well, I guess so y'all, we're figuring shit out. So we have never really done a book before. Obviously, like we have talked about Dark Disciple on our, our, our release show. And I've talked about High Republic before on Gold Squadron Gaze with Charles and my therapist hope. So like, like, I roughly kind of have an idea on how I want to talk about this, but like I haven't done this with you before stuff. And also, I'm just generally nervous because these are like my favorite books in general, not the Star Wars books. Yeah, it's so good. So I do have an intro and Chris is panicking because he is trying to I also have like a hundred million tabs open because I have like all like I don't know what shit I'm going to need to bust out with. So okay, here we go. Are you ready? I'm ready. I'm also panicking because this is the first time I have read a intro, not had to write an intro in a long time because there's like an opening crawl in the book. I love that. Okay, cool. Get it, baby. The galaxy is at peace ruled by the glorious Republic and protected by the noble and wise Jedi Knights as a symbol of all that is good. The Republic is about to launch Starlight beacon into the far reaches of the outer rim. This new space station will serve as a ray of hope for all to see, but just as a magnificent Renaissance spreads throughout the Republic, so does a frightened new adversary. Now the guardians of peace and justice must face a threat to themselves, the galaxy and the force itself. Yeah, so light of the Jedi, let's get the behind the scenes stuff out of the way and then we'll get into like the setting and all that shit, okay? I actually want to take one step back even further than that. Okay, Steph, do you have any experience reading any Star Wars books like from like the 90s 2000? Nope. Nope, miss that. That was my husband has read like, fuck it all. Oh yeah, I remember talking about it extensively about it. You know, when I was a kid, I remember it was my first trip to Walt Disney World. My grandparents were like, "We're taking a break from the theme parks today. You kids fucking destroy us and fucking hate you." Thanks, Grandma. I know, right? And my grandfather was like, "Chris, do you need to buy a book? You need to read more blah blah blah." I'm like, "Okay, fine." So there was a massive bookstore at the whatever was called back to the Disney Downtown area, the shopping area. And I walk in and there is this massive display. Star Wars, it's all in blue. There is this badass looking blue skin guy with red eyes and a cool imperial and a apparel suit and a crazy ass looking old man Jedi and Luke Skywalker and Han and Leia and I'm like, "What the fuck is this?" And that turns out to be heir to the Empire of the first Star Wars book I read, which was also the introduction of Grand ML Thrawn. So I did, back in the 90s, I did try to keep up with the Star Wars books, but they got a little ridiculous and really stupid. And George Lucas didn't give a fuck about any of them. No, no, not a one. No, not even one. So I took a big break. In fact, I stopped reading Star Wars books completely and entirely for a very long time until the High Republic books came out. And so that's my background story. I have tried reading other types of Star Wars books outside of it. You know, I read Dark Disciple, love it, love that book so much. But, you know, I try, I'm trying reading other Star Wars books. They're just not for me at the same level as the High Republic. And I don't know what it is about High Republic. I mean, because several Star Wars books are well written. They're interesting stories, but they just don't catch me like these books do. Right. And that's the thing is I've tried. I've tried to read Star Wars books before. There was one book that was about Obi-Wan Kenobi, my boo, my husband and the galaxy far far away. And I just couldn't. I'm a book snob the way that you're a music snob. Yeah, you are. If the syntax isn't exactly right, if, you know, if it seems a little like, if the depth isn't there, like I'm just, I'm really, really picky. And so it just didn't, it didn't grab me. I found myself judging the book. Like I, like I have any right to, like I've ever written a novel, I have not. But still, I admit that my, my judgeery is, is not based in experience. I've just, I've just read a fucking lot of books. And so I'm extremely picky. Um, so I've tried to read Star Wars books before nothing grabbed me until we did Dark Disciple. And holy shit. Holy shit. 10 out of 10 recommend Dark Disciple. Check it out. Um, but then, then, you know, the, the higher public got released. And I was just kind of meh about it because again, it's a Star Wars book. All of them. And even though it was like an entire huge, like new era launch, like there are so many books in the higher public, there's always shit. Uh, I was sort of meant about it until, uh, until like you really started talking it up, uh, our friend Charles from Gold Squadron Gays, who we love a lot, uh, and Chris never rags on on this show. I also started talking it up. And just in general, I started hearing more and more about the higher public about how it was, you know, there was actual representation in Star Wars. There's all these women, uh, all these, uh, the, the legibiticois spectrum, uh, the LGBTQ, sorry, that's a chronically online thing to say, legibiticois, the LGBTQ spectrum is well represented. Um, you know, that it's just, and, and then I started seeing how certain parts of the fandom fucking hate the higher public. And I was like, Oh, it must be good then. Yeah, exactly. So, so yeah, I gave a light of the Jedi chance. I listened to it as read by Mark Thompson. And, um, I cried. My pants flew off repeatedly. Uh, and then I cried again, some more. Um, it was amazing. So I'm glad that we're talking about this, this book today, because it's a good one, y'all. Yes, it is. I'm, so we're, we're not quite sure on the format. This episode is going to be more kind of an intro to the higher, to high republic for us. I think, uh, so we're only going to, you know, we're going to talk about the backstory of the higher republic, how it got made. And then we're going to go a little bit into the book, but next, you know, following episodes will go much faster through the book. Oh, yeah. And then, um, you know, just to keep, keep, uh, give people heads up, we're going to kind of stick to this format until, uh, the strike is done. Um, and I pray and I hope for all my friends right now who are waking up at five in the morning every day and wasting away in the sun, pick it in the line that they get what they want. Right. Exactly. We're hoping for, uh, a speedy resolution. Um, I'm hoping that it'll be done before I can finish the Lego Star Wars Advent calendar that I'm using to count down the days of the strike on our TikTok. Y'all go check that out. Uh, but it's probably not. This is going to go on for a while, because right now the studios are refusing to talk to anybody. So that's awesome. Anyway, so do you have some background on the whole, on the higher republic of it all? Yeah. So let's talk about like the nuts and bolts of, of this whole thing. Um, Lucasfilm invited a shit ton of writers and artists to come together and they wanted to basically launch a new book series, uh, it ain't untouched era of Star Wars. It was initially called Project Luminous. Uh, and it started officially in September 2018. Um, authors like Claudia Gray, Justina Ireland, Daniel Jose older, etc. Um, we're invited to Skywalker Ranch and they basically lived at Skywalker Ranch for, for a while. Um, there was a lot of different ideas and you know, what they worked on together, they came up with like the look, the feel. If you look, go back to the old videos where they announced the high republic, you see that like artists actually visually drew out all these different characters. They had mapped out like a meta story and, um, and essentially, uh, it's something that they've really never done before because back in the, back in the legends, book days, there was no met, there was no coordination. There was no plan. There was no plan. No. Some authors like, hey, I've this idea for character. What if it's Luke Skywalker's clone and we call him Luke with an extra you? Yeah, exactly. Like the authors did not coordinate at all. And that's really one of the things that I find very appealing about the high republic is that clearly. Because you've got characters that move between the books and are handled by different authors as they go and so there had to be There had to be consistency of these characters across all of these books and When I saw the lineup of authors that were going into this particularly justina Ireland Mm-hmm. I love justina Ireland. She's got a series of books that's About zombies in the Civil War era. Yep. Fucking great. So check that out But yeah, no, I was really excited about the author lineup and I love that they coordinated that really bolstered my confidence in me and even starting to read the series and it's not just books They do call this a multimedia project, right? Because there's comic books and audio dramas One of my favorite projects in the entire high-re-public series is a audio drama so I I I was skeptical at first and one of my key criticisms of the high-re-public is There's so many important events that happen throughout all these different books and different comic books that if you don't read all the shit You don't get the whole picture and what's annoying is that like especially if you just stick to the adult books for example You there's references to a different events that happen in the comic books and in the younger adult books and I'm like wait what the fuck So yeah, and I love it. I love I love that they give equal weight and respect to the younger The the content that's geared towards a younger audience because that's always been at the heart of Star Wars is that it's for kids Yeah, and you know, I feel I feel more so about that in the phase two era of the high-re-public There's some really faces. There's phases. Okay. Yeah, we'll talk about that too So anyway, so yeah, so it was announced officially in 2019 April 2019 that they are coming out with a new book series They teased it calling project women is but it didn't give more More information than that they did share some art of some of the Jedi and people were like what could this be? blah blah blah of course naturally I found post from a toxic The toxic fandom where it's like these are the books that are gonna undo the sequel trilogy Yeah, because that's always how the star war has operated whatever we put in the movies That's that's not gonna we're gonna undo that with the books the books supersede the movies every time obviously Yeah, it's not how it works. So I'm gonna quote a wiki pdf from this one So the series was gonna debut with light of the Jedi and it was due to come out august 2020 a few days before Star Wars celebration 2020 But was delayed due to the COVID pandemic and didn't come out till January 2021 So another another thing that has unfortunately plagued the high republic is that covid has had a major impact on the release schedule All the way up till actually today their books have come out out of order. It's been kind of weird But you know they they've adapted and taken it in stride and you know whatever Now when the book came out Naturally toxic fanboys are like oh my god there are people of color and women and I know oh my god Shirley this book is gonna fail and this is the narrative I hear over and over again is it that nobody every time nobody reads the high republic High republic's a failure project Kathleen Kennedy's gonna be fired because of the project blah blah blah and in actuality that's not true Light of the Jedi made is a New York Times best-seller debut number two it hit number one shortly after it stayed on it List for a very long time The comic books that come out have broken records Several of the books have received many prestigious writing awards and being the first ever Star Wars books to ever receive awards like that Disney's quarterly call review when they're talking about their publication business have cited the high republic as the most successful book Seriously, they've ever done in the history of the whole company. Nice. Nice. So I'm gonna go ahead and say that is successful So successful now that I believe with There are television shows coming out based on a high republic. We're not gonna talk about that. I'm gonna talk about however Star Wars Jedi Survivor the video game The amount of fucking lore from the higher public they put in that game is a huge indicator to me that they really think that this is gonna be the future of Star Wars Nice and I'm excited The future of Star Wars is diverse and has women in it More than one and they talk to each other about not men and isn't that amazing. I just hmm Yeah, so so I mentioned that there are phases there's phase one which is where we start off today And in classic Star Wars fashion phase two starts off a couple hundred years before this so they're telling this story out of order Phase two just wrapped up so and I'm exciting. I'm waiting for phase three because one of my favorite characters in the whole Fucking thing even though he's a god-awful evil person Is on the cover of the next book for phase three. So anyway, it's a hot-ass cover. It's so hot We've talked about this before how Star Wars is at its best when it's an inviting lap that you want to crawl up onto and start woodling so Just saying pose your villains on a throne y'all every time. It's good. It's real good Yep, yep, but that's it. That's all the background for right now Yeah, so Steph did you do Information on the author. Yes, I did okay cool. This is this is me doing my job. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Okay, so light at the Jedi It is published by Del Rey and if you grew up like me a book nerd then you damn well know Del Rey You know the little blocky Del Rey logo It is on the spine of all of the fantasy and sci-fi books that you read instead of talking to people so Maybe that's just me. Why did you have to personally attack me just now? I'm just saying every single dragonriders of pern book right there Del Rey anyway Light of the Jedi is written by Charles soul. Is that how or is that how it's pronounced soul soul? I'm a sullay, but I'm sorry Charles speaking correct. Oh, you L.E. I really Charles the author not the not the gay person right Charles from Gold Squadron gaze I'm sure you have the the skinny on exactly how this author's name is supposed to be pronounced I should have looked this up before we hit record. I did not okay so the author of this book is Described in his Wikipedia article as American comic book writer novelist musician and attorney attorney attorney Which just goes to show that everybody's got to work that day job so they can do what they love okay? Wow, it's just the way it is okay. So he has written a couple of novels such as oracle year and anyone As far as comics there's a lot there's a lot of comics There's a series called letter 44 which appears to be sort of a passion project of his I's written a bunch of DC comics and a Fuckton that's the scientific word for it a fuck ton of Marvel comics Including little things like Star Wars series featuring Vader, Lando, Obi-Wan, and Anakin, et cetera, et cetera He wrote the death of Wolverine Yeah Just say him. So yeah, this particular author is has has a little bit of experience With writing in general and specifically writing for Star Wars. So we love to see it If you happen to be reading this book in audio format You lucky duck you It is being read by Mark Thompson my god Girl, okay, so Mark Thompson has done a lot of acting and voice acting I'm not gonna get into his specifics because his resume is full of struck companies and products and et cetera But suffice it to say that he has been acting since 1993 and I had no idea he's he's he's been doing it for that long Yeah, well, he's only a little bit older than us. He's 48 Did I make you feel good by the way like while we were kids and he was a kid. He was getting shit done He was he was acting. He was in like TV shows and shit Yeah, yeah, and I was begging my mom to let me buy that Kirka being sure I was getting I was getting like love letter mix tapes from boys, but it wasn't even a mix It was just like the same Nirvana song over and over for an entire cassette. Yeah That was lovingly crafted anyway So what we can talk about from Mark Thompson is his audio books. He all good audible.com look up Mark Thompson He's got eight pages of audio books that he's narrated on there. Okay, it's a lot And it's because he's really fucking good at it really good. Yeah, he has he's narrated so many Star Wars books Including but not limited to the higher public books the throwing books oh and dark disciple so He's prolific. He's also hot. I know feel free to Google mark Thompson M.A.R.C. Thompson. He's He's a very nice looking man One of my favorite things he does is when he's a count Duku in dark disciple. Oh, it's good That's good. It's real good. I'm like I know you're a space Nazi, but you know So I wanted to make going on a few dates with you. - Just saying. Just say it anyway, he's art Thompson does excellent work and so I have listened to the audio book of this book before for this podcast. I'm actually reading it reading it. Okay. So just so I can get like both experiences like you do. Okay. And also because it's easier to take notes because it's on my ebook, I can just highlight shit. But anyway, so that's the behind the scenes. Do we want to get into the book itself? Let's do it. I think so we're going to do the first two chapters of the book. Right. Right. And for those of you all that are using this on audio, that means chapter three and chapter four because annoyingly audible adds like one or two extra quote chapters for the prologue stuff. So it's really annoying, but it's really the first two full chapters that we're talking about. All right. So again, reminder, this book is set about 200 years prior to the events of the Skywalker saga films. Okay. So light of the Jedi, part one, the great disaster off to a great start. Great start already, right? Super reassuring. Nothing. Nothing bad is going to happen. So we go into then chapter one, hyperspace, the legacy run, three hours to impact. Impact of what? Positive impact. Positive positive impact. That's what it means. Just like influence, just like a really great song, like a key change in a song, it gives you a positive impact, right? No, oh god, oh god, oh god. This author is leaning into the Star Wars of it all. So I remember the first time I was listening to this. I was, this is when I was living much further away from Disney at the time. And even though it was, I believe it was still locked down time. There was a event I got to go to downtown Disney. So I'm sitting on the train. I have my mask on. I'm hearing Mark Thompson say this opening phrase. And immediately I say, what the fuck except I said what the fuck really loud? Oh, no. And so I look over, I look across to me. My partner is looking at me like shaking his head with disapproval. I'm looking around and everybody on the train staring at me. I'm like, oh, sorry, but yeah, anyway. That's awesome. But also side note, you'll get you a partner who doesn't mind that you sit there and listen to audio books while you're writing a train together. For sure. That's awesome. Yeah. That's vital for the introvert. You need to have a partner who understands that you need to like turtle shell for a while. Yeah. Okay. So chapter one, three hours to impact. Here we go. We meet captain had a cassette of the legacy run. I love her immediately. We quickly find out because this author is nothing if not efficient and evocative. We quickly find out that Captain had a cassette is former military. She was a fighter pilot in the Malester cellist joint task force. Yay. So I tried to look up what is the Malester cellist joint task force. It is, it's also known as the Malist JTF because we have to abbreviate things because Malester cellist joint task force is a fucking mouthful. And the extent of the information that we have about this is what we learn about it in this chapter that it's been around long enough for captain had a cassette to have served in it for 30 years. She started as a fighter pilot flying a little star fighter called a buzz bug, which sounds adorable. By the time she retired, she was commanding a heavy cruiser. She's damn good at what she does. So immediate competency boner as this chapter unfold for captain, as for the actual task force itself its purpose is unclear. The name suggests that there was an alliance between the outer and planet of cellist. If you remember from the films, there was a particular side character who kind of looks like a catfish. That's a cellist. So the citizens of cellist have that particular look. Anyway, an alliance between cellist and the mid-room planet of Malester presumably to patrol and keep secure the space between their planets. I'm assuming pirates shit like that. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, especially in the outer rim and we immediately get this like we've talked before about how the outer rim is the Wild West of the galaxy far, far away. But it's the actual fucking Wild Wild West in this era. Like it's barely settled out there. Yeah, I mean communication. There's not a, if you're on Tatooine, if you recall, we can't deny is that Palpatine did love to play his soap operas and reality TV on Tatooine. But you can't do that now because there's no signal from the core worlds out the outer rim all over the place. And there's no hyperspace lanes that are reliable that you can take to the outer rim. There's like one or two and they're new. The hyperspace lanes to get out to the other room. So yeah, it's it's fucking wild out there. And one of these very few hyperspace lanes is where the ship that Captain Cassett is commanding now is flying. It's the legacy run. Do you have any information about the legacy run? Hey, guess what? I have information about the legacy run. Legacy run is a class A modular freight transport. I was just that, well, something happens to it. It is really old. It was these types of ships were only meant to be in service for a couple decades. This ship is over a hundred years old as it's pointed out in the chapter. It seemed better days, but right now it is owned by a organization known as the buying guild. There's a whole thing about the buying guild, but I think it's more appropriate to talk about them in a different book. Okay, because they don't really feature here. Yeah, they they're a bigger deal in the next book that we'll talk about, I think. Okay, so yeah, so legacy run can haul a shit ton of stuff in this case, people. And yeah, that's about it right now. So the thing is like the way it's described in the book, it's modular. Right. So it can be completely customized to whatever freight it needs to haul. But the central body of the ship is like a triangular prism. And it's basically got like cargo pods that you can they could even convert them to be like fish tanks and shit like whatever you need. These these pods could do and it's like hundreds of pots. It's a lot. It's a big ass ship. But I was like I was having trouble sort of mentally picturing it. So I googled legacy run to try and see like what artists had come up with for the picture. And do you ever do this thing? This is the problem with reading yell where you have your mental image, but you're having some trouble with it. So you look up the picture and whatever artist made the official art for the thing was not on your wavelength at all. Yeah, because the pictures that I googled the legacy run do not look like what's in my brain. And now I'm mad. So that the look of it was based on a ship that was going to be used in the forced weekends called the era of Anna. That ship was based on concept art for a doon pre-production film that are for doon pre-production for a film that never got made. Because that that particular book so many people have tried making stuff out of that for eons some have pulled it off unfortunately or fortunately. And yeah, again, that doon reference with Star Wars. There you go. So yeah, the legacy run is mostly hauling settlers, but we do get a little throwaway line in there. Just a little casual mention that it also has at least one entire ass pod full of super cold liquid fucking Tabana. We have talked about liquid Tabana before. It goes boom. But we just just one little line just like do also liquid Tabana. Anyway, look at this adorable Muppet settler child because because bless had a cassette she's making her rounds around the ship because she's a very good captain. And she's, you know, checking in on all of these settlers because these are people that are going from the core and mid-rune worlds out to the outer rim to start a new life. This is the new wagon train. Yeah, it ships like this, right? And there's a wonderful quote from head of cast its internal monologue, right? Where she's talking about these settlers. And she says, quote, no matter what eventually happened in the lives of these folks, they were heading out to the rim to make their dreams come true. She was part of that and it made her feel good. She couldn't vouch for what was waiting for these settlers once they dispersed into the outer rim. But she can make sure that they got their safe and sound to find out. And I love her. So I would like to introduce a new counter to the show. Oh, our first hyper public counter. I would like to introduce the I really like this new character. I hope they make it out of this chapter alive counter. It's going to be a two-part ding where we ding it when we like them and then ding it if they make it out of the chapter alive or not. Well, that's like that's going to get more testing. get more points than the Anakin Skywalker red flag counter. Good job. Right, right. It sounds specific. It's in like maybe it wouldn't be used often. It's not just you a just buckle up y'all. So she's making her rounds. I already love her. She's older. She's retired. She's she's doing her thing and she's she's amazingly competent at it. We learn all of this very quickly. She does run into a particular adorable mop at settler child named Serge. And it's S-S-E-R-J is his name Serge. But I couldn't help. I'm I'm Gen X. So there's an 80s movie. I believe it's Beverly Hills Cop. Oh my god. Where there's a character working in a boutique who introduces himself. Hello. My name is Serge. Oh my god. Yeah. I'm fan. My name is Serge and how can I help you? See? Get the fuck out of here. No, I cannot. It's serious. And so in my head, that's how this kid talks. Which is maybe not fair to Serge. No, no, no. There it is. Anyway, the thing that she says to herself over and over is all as well. All as well. Doing rounds. All as well. Flying safely in hyperspace lane. All as well. And she thinks to herself after running into this kid and checking him for apparently trying to hack into the porn files on the ship. It's a whole thing. She's like all as well. And then whoop, whoop, whoop alarm. Oh right. There's an impact we're counting down. Right. Right. Sorry. I forgot in all of this feel good. Jesus Christ. So hey, Chris, why is there an alarm going off on the ship? Apparently there's an object directly in her path. Now they're in hyperspace. This is technically impossible. Right. Like they're in between realities. Right. There's a description of the slipstream, the bluish energy of passing stars in time outside the window, starting to change color. Yeah. And had a cast. It's like, oh, shit. So because she's a former starfighter pilot, she jumps in the fucking chair. It's like, I'll take control. And I'm like, I love her. I can't wait to read more adventures about her and books upon books upon books about her. She's so great. Fucking love her. She gets behind the wheel of this giant ship, which is described as being so massive that it maneuvers like a moon. Right. It's so fucking huge. And she flies the shit out of it. Because she has to, because there's something in front of them in the hyperspace lane, they're all they're going at an impossibly fast speed. The other thing is going at an impossibly fast speed. They're going to hit it in 10 fucking seconds. Yep. Yep. So she grabs the wheel and she, uh, wheel, whatever, the helm, et cetera. It's a ship. And she starts flying it. She flies this giant fucking ship like it's a starfighter. And she does so fucking good. And they do miss it. Like she, she avoids impact. She manages to steer her ship around it like a fucking boss. Amazing problem, though. Yeah. This is a century old ship. And though it has been lovingly well maintained by a very competent captain, it was never meant to be flown like that. Nope. So the ship starts to tear itself apart under the strain. And Captain Cassett has a second to realize what's happening and slap the emergency button that slams all the doors closed on all the modular pods. And she spares a thought for Little Serge and hoping that he made it back to his family's pod before she closed the doors. I'm sure he did. I'm sure he's fine. Sure he's fine. Why would anything be wrong? Anyway, boom. And the last line, the last line of this chapter is had a Cassett died, not knowing if she had saved anyone at all. So that's the second thing on the, I really like this new character. I make it out of a chapter alive. And that, and I have to say, stuff that sets the tone for the entire hyper public. So I'm thinking, I'm thinking going into this book series, oh, it's going to be light. It's going to be lovely. It's going to be like part of it. It's called light of the Jedi. Right. Now this is going to be the most traumatizing fucking Star Wars of all time. Right. So y'all, the first time I read this book, it was an audio book. And like, there's an old TikTok of my reaction to this because I had to share the trauma. I was gardening. I had my headphones in. I'm just bebopping around. I'm pulling weeds and stuff. I'm pruning fucking rose bushes. And I'm listening to this story. And I'm suddenly sobbing in my garden over this character that I literally met like 10 minutes ago. Right. So thank you, Charles. Soule, Soule, I don't, I'm sorry. I don't know how to pronounce your name. And I need to look that up. But thank you so much. Author of this book. Goddamn. And just imagine, imagine the task that was set before this author. Hi, you need to set the entire tone for this new Star Wars project. Yeah. Thank you. Can pull that off. Yeah, he did. He did. We're good. And you also need to write the event that is going to set off and create a ripple effect that will last for years. Right. Like this is the catalyst. And so I'm thinking, surely this is the impact that we're talking about, except that wait, the clock is three hours to impact. Right. This explosion, this crash took seconds. Oh, no. Oh, God. Oh, no. There's more. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So speaking of more, chapter two, the outer rim, Hetzel system, two and a half hours to impact. Hetzel. Cool. Hetzel. Hey, you want to know about the Hetzel system? Yes. Yes. Right. So because that's the cool thing about these books is we finally get to go somewhere other than Tatooine in the outer rim. And that nice. Yeah. Yeah. So the Hetzel system is a trinary star system in the outer rim territories. The largest sun in the system is an R-class star, which means that it is very large, hot, nitrogen heavy, and potentially very volatile can relate. The Hetzel system has a handful of planets. They got some frozen rocky planets. They got some gas giants. And there is Hetzel prime, the one that's sort of in the Goldilocks zone in the solar system. And Hetzel prime, we come to find out very quickly in this chapter, is the bread basket of the outer rim? Right. Like between between the prime planet and its two moons, they produce like, it said that every crop in the galaxy can be grown somewhere between Hetzel prime and its moons. That's awesome. So that they provide all of the food basically for the outer rim. And so that's that's a lot. It's very important. And also Hetzel prime has a population of about 40 billion beings. That's fun. It is a big beautiful planet covered in crops. It is also to note homeworld of the famous Gilsinger, Eloria Days. Yeah. We have no information on what the foot Gilsinger is other than that she is able to use her vocal apparatus to sing a six-part harmony with herself. Cool. And now she's on Alderan, which I hear Alderan's just doing just fine. It's going to be fine, at least for her lifetime. Anyway. So Hetzel prime does have two moons with the dumbest names. I'm sorry. They are called fruited and rooted. Yeah. Okay. No comment. No comment. I wonder what they grow on their moons. They grow crops. It's more crops. It's Cropedy crop crops crops. There's a lot of agriculture. It's very bountiful. Yeah. Cool. So we learn all of that as we go through the intermonologue of Mervin Getter. God damn it. Mervin Getter is a mary Allen. So if you remember, oh god, her name just flew out of my head. We don't like her. She's a Jedi and she's a bitch, but she's like. That really doesn't narrow it down. I'm sorry, but she's a girl Jedi. That should really narrow it down for you. There's like two. Not god damn it. Not Lumenara. Yes. Lumenara. Lumenara is a mary Allen. So Mervin Getter is a mary Allen, much like master Lumenara. And Julie, there it is. There's her whole name there. Yeah. Bam. And he's at work. He is at an observation space station in the Hetzel system. He's a scan tech. His job is to watch screens. He's basically he and his coworker who will meet in a minute are basically air traffic control. Essentially for this system. They watch ships come and go. They monitor all of that. But he's not focusing on his work because he is daydreaming about asking the pretty twilight bartender that he knows out on a date. It's very sweet. But what I love about this is he's thinking that it's okay for him a mary Allen to ask her a twilight out because we are all the Republic. I love that. Which is Republic Chancellor Soes slogan. And it works like it. We are all the Republic should be fucking corny. It should be propaganda. But this is an era of the of the galaxy where that's actually really hopeful and inspiring and uniting. That's a really positive sentiment. Right. And I love that. But he's you know doing his job and he's like maybe I can get out here early so I can go ask her out. But his supervisor. with his supervisor, Val Carona. What's what's she doing? Uh, she's literally reading romance novels Jedi romance novels. Jedi romance novels. I love that. Oh my god. As soon as I heard that I was like higher public hook me up. Come on. Right. Surely somebody is going to publish the Harlequin romance style novels about these Jedi. Apparently nobody ever gets together in bones. It's just a lot of longing looks and lightsaber fights that are clearly substitutes for what they actually would like to be doing. Oh, I would read the shit out of that. Oh my gosh. Now the for Vaz in particular, that character personally attacks me. Well, that personally attacks me. It gives me it triggers my PTSD. So Steph, I don't know if you remember, but we worked with an individual who was dumb as shit. He was got brought a sword cane to work and thought that was totally okay. Yeah. And he mentioned he had a girlfriend, right? So much later in my career, I met said girlfriend. She existed at this point ex girlfriend. Okay. She had hair down to the back of her legs. No. She had a complete opposite of what I was expecting. Tie tie dye everywhere. All of the necklaces, all of the jewelry hanging off of her wrist like she was in Petrule. The scent of Petrule was intense. She were for a tech startup in the same office as me because I was in a startup incubator where there are several small tech startups working together. And I could hear her in the next cubicle over. She's a head of customer support for this company and the only member of customer support team at this company. There you go. So when she got her hair done, she refused to put her headphones on to take phone calls. She put it on speaker. Oh, for fuck's sake. Yes. And the way she talks is exactly the way that boss talks in in the audiobook. Who? I mispronounced her name didn't I? Vell? Vell. I'm sorry. Yeah. The way that Vell talks. Like, I don't know. Oh my god. Like, whatever. And I remember. I remember this one guy. He was super nice. He called in and he was like, I think your software accidentally charged me $5,000. And I really need that money. I actually have $5,000 in my bank account. And I'm trying to get this reversed as soon as possible. So the bank doesn't penalize me another $5,000. I'm trying to remain calm. I was hoping you could help me. And she says, wow. That sounds really bad. That was her identifying with the collar. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And she's like, you really should be more careful about like how you use your credit card. And the guy just flips out. It's like, fuck you, fuck you. And she says after the end of his rant, why are you so mad? So that's Vell. Yeah. And look, this scene called me out on a couple of levels. Yeah. Because on the one hand, I have been mervin. I've been the hyper competent underling. Who is just really good at his job and is super frustrated that he's got this ridiculous supervisor who doesn't bother to be good at their job because he's good at his job. Right. I've been mervin, but I have also been Vell. He's like, I don't need to learn it. You know it. I'm going to read my romance novels. And weirdly, I've been both of those people at the same job. So. So then these two, the introduction of these two, because of that call out, gives me two dings on the, I really like this character. I hope they make it out of this chapter alive. So mervin is counting down the seconds to really get to the end of his shift. And then he can get the fuck out of here. And you can stop hanging out with Vell and smelling her farts. I assume that's not in the book, but I've been in situations like this. Yeah. People look cubicle font when you share like a cubicle space. And somebody had taco cabana. Oh my god. I miss taco cabana so much. The phenomenon is real. Okay. He just wants to get out of here. But then he looks over at his screen and he's like, huh, what's that? And suddenly, there are multiple tiny, very, very, very fast moving objects exiting hyperspace and entering the Hetzel system. And he's like, are these fucking space rocks? Are they asteroids? What's going on? And here's a quote where he's he's thinking to himself, it couldn't be an attack that much. He knew the Republic was at peace and looked like it was going to stay that way. Everyone was happy living their lives. The Republic worked. Oh, bless your heart. And so he's contemplating why if this isn't attack, why would anybody be attacking? Hetzel just makes food. But then he thinks there was that back to stuff that he'd been reading about too. Some kind of miracle replacement for Juven that they were trying to grow on the prime world, supposed to revolutionize medicine if they could ever figure out how to farm it in volume. Oh, this new stuff called Bacta. Okay. So, hey, did you know Bacta's a plant? No, I thought it was a chemical. Yeah. Turns out, this Bacta is like the miracle cure all. You know, just drop Luke Skywalker in a fucking back to tank and everything's fine, from the era that we're used to existing in, narratively. But here, Bacta's brand new. Like, it's not even, it's not even mass produced yet. Like, they're still trying to figure that out. So yeah, he's like, why would anybody be attacking Hetzel? It's just plants here. Crazy. Wow. But wait, there's more, like literally there's more objects suddenly leaving hyperspace and flying towards him. He's like, oh, shit, hey, Vell, can you do a scan or whatever? And Vell legit did not bother to learn this process because he knows it. She's just there to like make sure he does it. I guess. Same girl. Same. Right. So yeah, they're getting scans done and stuff is happening, yeah? Yeah, I mean, and yes, so they're tracking everything. There are more and more objects coming in. Finally, they're realizing that this is really, really bad because they describe how even though some of these objects are very, very small at the speed that they're going. If they hit any of the planets, that could be pretty bad. And they actually make the differentiation that like, yeah, sure the the body of the planet may survive, but the people on it could be vaporized and all that kind of stuff. And so, right, just because they're going so fast, like it doesn't matter what the object is at the speeds that they're traveling, which is like just under light speed. At the speeds that they're traveling, anything they hit is going to be fucking vaporized. It could be a gumball. Right. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It's going to vaporize stuff. That's crazy. So yeah, they finally they finally decide to send out alerts across the entire system, which is going to basically scare the shit out of 40 billion plus people. Yeah. And then they decide that they need to leave, but they don't have time to get the fuck out of the office. Right. So here's the quote from the book that that fucking hit me. Okay. It says one of the objects left out of hyperspace so near and moving so fast that in astronomical terms, it was on them the moment it appeared. A gout of flame and the anomaly vanished along with the monitoring station. It's two skintex and all of their goals, fears, skills, hopes and dreams. The kinetic energy of the object, atomizing everything it touched, in less than an instant. Yay. So that's part two, two dings. I really liked those new characters. They did not make it out of the chapter alive. We're two for two. Three for three. Three for three. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, damn it. And that is the end of chapter two. My god. What a fucking way to kick off not just this book, but the entire higher public era of storytelling is with this fucking disaster. And we don't even know the scope of it yet. No. Like this is just one entire cargo ship fucking destroyed and now a system in danger. And surely it can get better. It can't get worse. Yeah. It's not going to get worse. No, no, no, no. And, you know, it's just an accident, right? So things happen. Yeah. Certainly, certainly not, there couldn't be anything more that we could read into this. Like just a freak hyperspace moment where somehow, some way, other shit was in the hyperspace line, which isn't supposed to be able to happen. You don't know. Space is weird. Yeah. Don't don't read into it too much. It'll be fine. It'll be fine. Certainly not going to be the inciting incident of many, many novels and comic books. Yeah. So yeah, they all that's it for right now. Yeah. We're definitely going, I hope you all are enjoying this. I'm enjoying going through the book. But yeah, we're going to we're going to keep going. We will be reading. I don't know the next few chapters we should probably decide. We probably should have decided that before we got on the mic today. Yeah. It's okay. I'm already like several chapters. Because I mean, you've already read this. So yeah, I've read these books multiple times at this point. So. So it's gonna be at least the next like three chapters or something. I don't know. We'll figure it out Yeah, we'll figure it out and keep an eye on social media and I will let you guys know, I guess But that's that's everything I've got for the first couple of chapters a light of the Jedi today. Do you have anything else? No? Cool, all right, so that we're talking about this. I this is gonna be super fun. Yeah, so I guess we outro Yeah, you want to outro? I'm gonna outro fucking outro. Okay Hey everybody. Thank you so much for listening. We appreciate that. We appreciate you If you enjoyed the music at the top of the episode, you should it's That can cool. That was a gift to the show from one of our listeners by the name of choral Z You can find him on tiktok and instagram as at CHORLSY if you would like to hang out with us in between episodes you totally can we're on all the social media you can find us on Facebook Instagram tiktok and X X X X I have a whole thing about that, but we'll talk about that next time AKA Twitter, which I'm honestly not gonna be using much anymore because fuck that place But you can find us on all of those as at dark side devas also y'all we have a swag store if you go to redbubble.com/officialdivas you can buy awesome t-shirts and stickers and mugs with our logos and the funny shit we say check that out We have a YouTube channel under the dark side devas brand. Just do a search for dark side devas You'll find our YouTube channel there. We do visual stuff from time to time also and probably most importantly we have a patreon patreon.com cord slash divas podcast for five bucks a month You can see us on video and edited some time this rough like this episode because we have you know technology issues sometimes But that's okay and let and also access to the best discord community in all the galaxy and I did this out of order. I didn't do it on purpose, but here we go if you haven't done so already Y'all please subscribe to our podcast and leave review. We really appreciate that We're basically on every single podcast platform if you're checking this out for the first time Because you really love hyper public and you're like, hey, these two dumb bitches are talking about the thing I like Hey, hey, we're gonna be doing this for a while so welcome Please leave a review. We really appreciate that That's it. Yes. Do all of those things. Okay, so then I guess we're done. We're done. We use it. Okay, so bye Bye everybody