The Wonderful Stormtroopers of Star Wars

The stormtrooper of Star Wars is one of its most popular characters. This is amazing when you consider that he/she is a nameless and faceless nonentity antagonist readily and easily slaughtered in droves.

The Imperial/First Order stormtrooper is a collective. It is one character as many. As an individual it has a name, face and quirks.

The stormtrooper is dressed like a robot. Its individuals are named as if robots. The character would not enjoy its everlasting popularity if actually robots. His/her humanity makes all the difference. The dehumanizing of this humanity is a nuance that summarizes the villainy the stormtrooper serves.

The Imperial/First Order stormtrooper is skillful and efficient. He/she is well-trained, well-equipped and well-organized. He/she is selfless, loyal and obedient.

The stormtroopers are common folk made as formidable as common can be. They are the ordinary at its finest. Alas, the extraordinary puts the ordinary to shame regardless. This is why Imperial/First Order stormtroopers are hopelessly outmatched by heroes.

As a writer of adventure fiction I assure you: making heroes and bosses “interesting” is easy. A character is “amazing” simply by making it stronger, faster, tougher or stranger than what is common. Making a character ordinary yet interesting is the acme of skill.

The least is the greatest and the greatest least, indeed. The stormtrooper of Star Wars is one of the greatest figments ever imagined. It is beyond the Jedi and the Sith or even the Death Star itself.

A Secret Within Genesis

            In the beginning the heavens were four times brighter than they are now. Luna was not yet the moon of the planet Earth. The Earth was smaller though its land was no less than it is now. Mars was much like Earth in every way but as the moon of the planet Tiamat. Earth was the third planet from the sun and Tiamat the fourth. Mars was closer or further from the Earth according to its own rotation around Tiamat. Mars became a planet when its planet became the asteroids and comets but this was not until the end of the First Age. Alas, the First was to be last as the Beginning is the End but it was not to be. As things were in the beginning, the land of Tiamat was as much in area as that of Earth or Mars but as continents and islands upon a surface that was three quarters water.

            God fashioned the angels from the very stars. They are the immortal creatures made of ether and fire. God fashioned the creatures of dust and water within the water upon the Earth.

            The three worlds were linked under arches of light that spanned from one end of the horizon to another. The creatures of dust and water swam, crawled or flew from one world to another as easily as they moved upon any one world.

            God created humanity in his own image and in his own likeness as male and female. He gave humanity dominion over all life of dust and water. Unlike the angels, whom God fashioned by hand every one, the man and woman would multiply their own number. Unlike the angels who were excellent by design, the man and woman would be potential to do with as they will. Their numbers and their excellence would be of their own making.

            Angels used the flow made by the mass and motions of the celestial bodies to travel the heavens. They stepped into the balance that was the material plane easily and effortlessly—but all this became difficult as the flow and balance were disrupted. The harmony was the means and disharmony became the difficulty. The trouble began with the end of the First Age and worsened with each apocalypse.