Someone please tell my id that it doesn’t need me to write a thousand-page parody of Victor Hugo’s Star Wars, no matter how “awesome” or “fun” it may sound at first
oh my god please, please do
La Guerre des étoiles
UN ESPOIR NOUVEL
Book the First: A Solitary Man
I. Ben Kenobi
In Year 20 of the Empire (Year 10,191 since the forming of the Coruscant Convention), Ben Kenobi was a hermit living beyond the Dune Sea. He was an old man of about fifty-nine years of age; he had occupied his tiny desert hovel since Year 0.
Although it has little direct impact on the story we are about to relate, it nevertheless behooves the author to reveal, if only for the sake of completeness and exactness, the various rumors that circulated the person of “Old Ben” Kenobi. True or false, that which is said of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above all in their destinies, as that which they do. Very little was known about Ben Kenobi, in honest truth; it was widely known that he was an offworlder, and a recent newcomer to the barrel soil of Tatooine; it was less-widely known, though no secret, for Kenobi himself would say as much to those who asked, that he was from the planet Stewjon, in the Daly System. How he had come to reside on Tatooine was the source of much speculation.
Once one entered the realm of rumor, however, the accounts varied widely: he was a wizard, some said, or a crazy old man parched by the lack of company. He was alternately a scholar, a monk, a widower, or a scarred veteran of the Clone Wars, come to find what peace was left to him; the fruit-seller at the edge of Mos Eisley, where he came once a month to replenish his stores, claimed he was the last Jedi Knight, fled to the Outer Rim to hide from the depredations of the Empire. In spite of this wide-ranging gossip, or perhaps because of it, Ben Kenobi cut a dashing, mysterious figure to the starved minds of the out-flung desert settlements in which his name was known. He was well-formed, and although shorter than human standard, was still taller than many of the specimens to be found in Tatooine’s slums. He was well-spoken, conscientious, graceful, and learned; he spoke of distant worlds with the familiarity of a spacer and the precision of a Hutt.
as soon as i saw “Although it has little direct impact on the story we are about to relate” i knew this was a solid parody
more of this sort of thing
And for those who say to themselves “this is amazing but you know what Victor Hugo isn’t quite dense enough", check out Star Wars written as an Icelandic Saga, in which the author goes meta with notes like:
“I am aware of a separate manuscript tradition wherein Hani throws his axe only after Gríðó throws his, but this appears to be a clumsy later emendation made by medieval editors who wished to present Hólmgǫngu-Hani in a more chivalric light.”
I’m laughing my ass off right now . You know how we like to joke about Jean Valjean’s name cause it’s repetitive? In his first drafts, Hugo had named him Jean Tréjean… LITERALLY JEAN VERYJEAN
You ever go, “gosh, I wish I had some of Victor Hugo’s unnecessary ramblings to carry along”? Well your prayers have been answered, I bring you all the sewers and Waterloo chapters from Les Miserables (in English) on a bag!!
Or, as I call it: “what is this, Victor Hugo for ants??”
When Victor Hugo learned that Heinrich Heine had called him a hunchback, he flew into a rage, climbed to a cliff top on Guernsey, removed all of his clothes and asked his publisher, “Am I a hunchback?”
His publisher generously concluded that ‘if Heaven had bestowed no other gift on him, he could have earned a living as an artist’s model’
reblogging this because people seem to think I made the stripping-in-front-of-the-publisher thing up which like I understand, it definitely Sounds Fake, but if it is made up I am not the one who made it up, it is in the biography
Victor Hugo’s general existence is none of my invention, friends, I am not responsible for this happening.
eirenical17 