You star wars freaks are gonna love this!

[blackjohn]

My #1 son and I have been thoroughly enjoying Star Wars Legos II for the PS2 (or in my case PS3). This is his first real exposure to Star Wars, and I am happy to report he is completely hooked. Every day he does some sort of little Star Wars drawings, and for a 1st grader, I'm impressed. Two days ago it was Boba and Jango Fett. Yesterday it was 4-LOM and various other protocol-esque droids.

And if you've never played the game, give it a try. It's really good!

[Misson]

Back when I was a regular poster at TF.N 1999-2001ish) , I was writing an on-going parody story with my own characters. One of the ships in the story was a ship that had been taken over by protocol droids and was cruising around doing...something...I forget...that had little to do with the main story. I loved writing about it though. Imagine a ship full of protocol droids.

(Huh...it used to be there in the Classic Fan Fiction forum, but it has apparently been deleted. I still have the story (incomplete) in Word...it's over a 100 pages long. What a way to waste my time...something that is completely unpublishable. *Sigh*)

It's pretty awful. Add to that the fact that there are about a dozen forum and collector in-jokes and most of you will probably not even find what were meant to be funny bits all that funny. Here's the introduction of the ship in the story.

§§§

On the mysterious ‘unmanned’ ship that picked up Creaky Hole and Run-on R2, a reddish protocol droid minces purposefully along the main corridor towards the bridge of the ship. He pauses before the door leading to the bridge, enters a sequence into the touch pad and is rewarded as the door slides open.

The bridge is rather sedate, as compared to most ship’s bridges. (It’s sedate compared to most ships bridges in the normal state when the red lights aren’t flashing and the sirens aren’t whooping and other such subtle cues used to alert even the dullest member of the audience to the fact that the ship is under attack. But it’s not under attack now, it’s sedate.) Here and there a few multi-colored protocol droids sit at consoles plotting courses or looking at charts and calculating odds or whatever it is that extras do on the bridges of space ships. It’s all very official looking, whatever they’re at.

A lone shiny silver protocol droid stands apart from efficiently working crew of protocol droids. He is wearing a blue captain’s hat and holding a pipe. The red-tinted protocol droid enters through the recently opened door and approaches the Captain.

“Captain U-3PO, I have news about our recent acquisition.” says the red droid.

“Just a sec, R-3PO.” answers the captain.

The captain picks up an envelope and loads the bowl of the pipe with a slightly sticky brown tobacco mass. He carefully tamps it down, places the pipe in his mouth hole, lights a wooden match and draws on the pipe until the tobacco is going on its own. The droid emits a stream of satisfied smoke from his mouth hole and quickly waves out the kitchen match.

“Earl Port o’ Slimshaw. Probably the smoothest tobacco in the known universe. For my money, anyway.”

“Yes captain.”

“Now, what about our ‘acquisition’ as you put it, R-3PO?”

“Well, you will be happy to know that the pod contained a fine specimen of a protocol droid, going by the name of C-Creaky Hole.”

“That’s an odd name, now, isn’t it?”

“There’s no accounting for names, Captain.”

“Of course you’re right, R. I once knew a rather damaged fellow who went about under the cognomen ‘Way Sleepio’. Most odd, that. Fit him like an undersized rubber glove, though. He was a bit daft, don’t you know. I believe he was in that human battle at Fort MacHintire on the planet Massachusetts where he took a rather nasty blow to the head circuitry. They could never quite put him right after that...”

"I actually heard there was a lass who's name was 'TC-14'. It's all rumor, of course." interjects a white protocol droid sitting at one of the consoles on the bridge.

"You don't say? That's hardly fitting to a protocol droid, now, is it? It sounds too much like an astromech. One would hope the maker wouldn't be so disorganized and whimsical." replies the Captain.

"One would hope." Agrees R.

"But we digress. I thought we detected two droids aboard that pod, R."

R-3PO shifts a bit uncomfortably. "Well, speak of the devil, sir..."

"The devil!" replies U-3PO.

"Not literally, sir. I was noting that we were just talking about this very subject...seems there was also an astromech droid on board. Says his name's Run-on 'Danger' R2."

“An astromech, eh? Sounds from his surname like he fancies himself a bit of a rogue, eh?”

“Seems it, U.”

“Well, we’ve no need of him here. With the brain trust aboard our SS Lumbering Ore Hauler, I doubt we’ll want for any superfluous astromechs rolling about. Still, he is a cousin of the brotherhood... Give him a nice suit and we’ll drop him on the next planet or space station or something.”

“I don’t know that we’d have a suit in his size. Astromechs, sir. Rather rotund, if I may be blunt.”

“Hmm. Well ask N-3PO to make him up a nice brown vest, at any rate. They’re all the rage on Lukjedtooine, I hear. And N fancies himself something of a tailor I believe. Made curtains for the mechanics’ room, I dare say!”

The captain draws on his pipe as he pursues his thoughts.

“Bring the new recruit up when he’s more acclimated to the environs, eh, R? I’ll give him the run down and what not. Leave the astromech below deck.”

“Very good, U.”

The red protocol droid shuffles stiffly away and exits the bridge through the door he entered.

[Capt Grey]

My #1 son and I have been thoroughly enjoying Star Wars Legos II for the PS2 (or in my case PS3). This is his first real exposure to Star Wars, and I am happy to report he is completely hooked. Every day he does some sort of little Star Wars drawings, and for a 1st grader, I'm impressed. Two days ago it was Boba and Jango Fett. Yesterday it was 4-LOM and various other protocol-esque droids.

And if you've never played the game, give it a try. It's really good!

I love the Lego Star Wars games (I and II). My kids have spent hours just exploring all the different areas and creating new characters. They made a "Naked Lad" character with flesh-colored parts; I keep asking where he stores his blaster when he's not using it .

Mission, TFN has done two major server moves since 2001 and a lot of files got lost in the first move; so yours must have been one of the victims. I know a lot of the fanfic writers over there were very upset.

[Misson]

Upset? Not particularly. It's been six years. I learned that fan fics got deleted in 98 or 99 when we wrote this (really funny) story called Scooby Doo and the Phantom Menace. It got lost in some problem that occurred, so I saved all the stuff from another fan fic I was writing by myself because of that experience. I just thought it would have been neat to link to my old fan fic. Last time I looked, it was still there. But it's not the responsibility of TF.N to save files forever.

[blackjohn]

I love the Lego Star Wars games (I and II). My kids have spent hours just exploring all the different areas and creating new characters. They made a "Naked Lad" character with flesh-colored parts; I keep asking where he stores his blaster when he's not using it

Have they made the Dark Side Santa? It's quite funny.

Spurred on by the fun they've had with the game, we've finally let them watch Star Wars. Both sons was enthralled, as I knew they would be. Son#1 loves droids. Son#2 loves Darth Vader. And one of these days, I'll buy them some plastic lightsabers and sit back and enjoy the spectacle.