Hi my name is Kylo Ren and I have long ebony
black hair and dark brown eyes like limpid tears and a lot
of people tell me I look like Darth Vader (AN: if u don’t know who he is
get da hell out of here!). I’m NOT related to Han Solo (I’M NOT) even though he’s a major fucking hottie. I’m a goth (in case you couldn’t tell) and I wear
mostly black. I love Hot Topic and I buy all my clothes from there. For
example today I was wearing a black mask with matching silver detailing around it
and a black robe with a black cloak. I also had my red lightsaber that goes in three directions instead of one because it’s special. I was walking outside Starkiller Base. It was snowing and raining so
there was no sun, which I was very happy about. A lot of stormtroopers stared at
me. I put up my middle finger at them.
I’ve heard the discussion about Han Solo’s famous “Kessel Run” time and time again – both inside the Star Wars community and outside it. Common consensus seems to be that Han Solo’s boast that the Falcon could do the run in 12 parsecs indicates that Solo has no idea what a parsec is, or else relies on the fact that his audience doesn’t know.
This discussion relies on two main facts:
A parsec is a unit of measurement equivalent to roughly 3.26 light-years. This means that a parsec is a unit of distance, not a unit of time.
The Kessel Run is a smuggling route in the Star Wars universe, running illicit spice from the spice mines of Kessel to its destination worlds. It is not a commonly-used trade route, partially because the route is fraught with danger – especially “The Maw” cluster of black holes.
The main mistake people seem to make when discussing this issue is believing that Han is boasting about the Falcon’s speed. This is understandable, because Han often boasts about the Falcon’s speed in other situations, and it is natural to assume that a vehicle owner boasts about the speed of their vehicle because that is what we Earthlings are used to when discussing cars and other machines. As such, they think that Han is purporting that “12 Parsecs” is a quantification of the Falcon’s immense velocity.
This is an incorrect assumption, however. What Han is actually boasting about is the Falcon’s ability to safely navigate the dangerous Kessel Run by the shortest possible route. Travelling at hyperspace is not a simple matter of moving the ship directly from A to B, since there are doubtless hundreds or thousands of intervening planets, stars, asteroids, and other dangers. A ship’s computer must be programmed with a route which avoids such obstacles – usually giving them a wide berth, just to be on the safe side. The computer can also adjust itself en route if an unforeseen hazard presents itself.
Han Solo programs the Falcon’s computer system to fly as close to these hazards – especially the forbidding Maw Cluster – as is possible without being destroyed. Most other pilots would see this behaviour as foolhardy, but Han apparently doesn’t care. Because the Falcon is programmed to fly closer to these obstacles than most other pilots would dare consider, it needs to “steer” far less, and so can traverse the route in a straighter line than any other starship. This means that the Falcon completes the Kessel Run in a shorter distance than other ships – a mere 12 parsecs.
This is backed up in The Force Awakens when Rey, impressed that the ‘hunk of junk’ she’s aboard is the Millennium Falcon, marvels that “This is the ship which ran the Kessel Run in 14 parsecs”. Han corrects her by saying “12″. This therefore implies that 12 parsecs is more impressive than 14 – something which is totally in keeping with the above.
Han isn’t talking out of his arse when he boasts about the Falcon’s record, nor is he demonstrating his lack of understanding of interstellar measurements. He’s just not talking about what many people think he’s talking about, which is their own lack of understanding, not Han’s.
man the dialogue in Return of the Jedi is sometimes so awful that you cannot help but laugh
Speaking of RotJ, how terrible was Palpatine’s master plan with Luke??? Like….it was first be evil with us so cool then it became be evil by killing me i win hahaha and then it was actually that was a stupid plan kill him so good and then it was like FUCK ALL OF THIS
And, like, I really see the family resemblance between Luke’s Super Awesome Plan Skills and dad’s. Sure, let’s just pick this lighting porcupine fartsack up and, yeah, throw out the garbage. This is directly related to Luke’s plan of ‘let’s just walk in on jabba and then get captured one at a time and then more captured and then demeaned and captured all for my CUNNING PLAN OF HITTING EVERYTHING NEARBY.’
also I got the impression that the ewoks were actually not included in the planning stage of “attack the force generator” because (a) they weren’t and (b) everyone was under the impression that han’s group would do the trick because of Evil Plan Reasons. And yet somehow the Ewoks had an incredibly Home Alone arsenal of trickery without the Setting Up The Trickery montage. What gives??
Did people really like ewoks when this film came out? Like, deep down? Or was it just Lucas and his militia teddy bear games?
You know what I love about the Jabba sequence in RotJ though? I love how many alien races are sticky or drippy or just downright disgusting to look at. The way planets get blown up in this series, whole species probably come and go and then have to find a way to breed or at least to live and it’s so cool how weird they can get.
all of han’s plans seem to be pretty legit, comparatively. I mean, he’s trying. He makes the effort to talk to the dude over the intercom or try to bargain out of things and then there’s Luke over there swooning around being like I AM A DANGER TO EVERYONE I LOVE, I SHOULD PROBABLY DIEand people have to keep being like FINE, LUKE, BUT ACTUALLY COULD YOU MAYBE MAKE ONE OF THE OFFICIAL MEETINGS, WE HAVE A REBELLION TO RUN HERE.
Also the way he swans in like I TOO SHALL JOIN HAN’S TEAM, YAY TEAM, EVERYONE HUG ME
Also I feel like maybe he and Ben still chat and Ben is the one who convinced him to grow his beard. Not, like, cool Alec Guiness beard, but full on Ewan I-make-my-own-lightsaber-noises MacGregor beard, the kind that looks like someone pulled the stuffing out of a teddy bear on glued it to their face because they wanted to look like a grown up.
Kimchi and Justice 