How I came to love Star Wars, pt. 1

This is the story of how I came to love Star Wars as much as I do today. *cue Darth Vader's spooky music*

When I was about five years old, I sat down in the sitting room of the apartment my family lived in in London and saw my brother watching some weird movie of guys fighting with light swords. I asked, "What's that?" and he answered, "Star Wars." Now, I was five years old, completely deaf and it was a video with no subtitles, so I had completely no interest whatsoever. It was the time before DVDs came out.

Later I would find out that it was Episode I: The Phantom Menace that my brother and I watched that day, but I had no idea what it was and forgot about it for a few years. Then, I was eleven and in Year 6 and homework was to watch Episode IV: A New Hope because we were studying film techniques. By then we had DVDs and subtitles, so I was able to watch. George Lucas had me hook, line and sinker from the very start. From that moment forward, when I watched the opening crawl, I was a major, major fan.

I had watched the prequels in video when I was younger, so I went through the originals then went back to the prequels in DVD. Such was my obsession that I was writing fan-fiction before I even knew what fan-fiction was, and before I had discovered www.fanfiction.net. My first story was about Han and Leia, who are my OTP (One True Pairing) and I'll post that as soon as I can find it on my hard drive. It was written circa 2009, and is extremely bad in comparison to my improved fics today. I'll post an original version of it and a polished version of it on ff.net, so stay tuned for that!

Not long after my obsession began, I found out about the books and the Expanded Universe. My first book was The New Jedi Order: Destiny's Way, which I picked up for about three pounds in a British op shop. Upon reading the first lines, I nearly dropped it - Han and Leia were married?! Thankfully, I got through the book and started just buying them up whenever I saw them. My books now number more than 30, and I hope to reach 40 this year. X-Wing: Mercy Kill and Crucible are both on my list to buy when they come out.

There you go - that's my Star Wars story. One more thing - although it's better to watch the movies originals first and then prequels to make it more interesting, I actually ended up watching them in chronological order from The Phantom Menace to Return of the Jedi. It still worked its magic on me.

Until next time,