" . . . the style of this piece is as important (if not more so) than the substance."
--Me, posted on 1/19/07

On Thursday, StarWars.com finally revealed the final winners of the "What's the Story?" feature in the article "What's the Story: The Fans Set the Facts." Among the new winners was my submission for Slyther Bushforb, a Nuknog gumshoe seen eating in Dexter's Diner in Episode II: Attack of the Clones.

I was incredibly pleased to see that I'd won not only another WTS (my first being Cane Adiss), but that specific WTS. I put a lot of work into capturing a certain mood with the text of my Slyther Bushforb submission, and have always felt that it was the strongest thing I'd ever written for the contest. I'm glad Pablo and the rest of the web team felt the same way about it.

For those who wish to compare the final version with my original submission, those with Hyperspace can see the original here. Those without Hyperspace can look in this thread at TheForce.net for my 1/20/07 3:29am post.

Anyway, here's some thoughts on what went on behind the scenes of this Databank entry.

Origins

When I realized we'd been given a private investigator in a stereotypical diner setting for a WTS entry, I immediately thought of the hardboiled detective genre, and realized that I had an opportunity to try something different with my entry. Normally, the creativity for WTS entries comes in two sorts - creative storytelling, and creative incorporation of existing continuity. Here was a chance to do creative use of style.

Any good WTS submission begins with research. Usually, it's continuity research - looking through existing Star Wars sources for information relevant to the topic at hand. Slyther was no different in this respect, and I examined several books and websites, as well as watched and re-watched the diner sequence several times to see what clues were there. Of course, there was a wrench in the works - it seems there were some very different ideas about who exactly the two Dugs present in the scene were. I'll discuss this a bit more in the Continuity section below.

Unlike my other entries, Slyther also required research into the writing style I was trying to emulate, since my familiarity with hardboiled pulp writing was minimal. I began my research with what might seem an unusual starting point - a comic about a six-year old boy and his stuffed tiger. Calvin and Hobbes frequently featured Calvin's imaginative alter egos, one of which was the hardboiled private eye Tracer Bullet. The comics based around Tracer are beautifully hilarious rips on the genre, filled with its cliches.

The first hurdle made itself apparent in those strips - the stereotypical hardboiled tale is told in first person, which clearly wasn't going to work for the Databank. A direct parody of the style wasn't going to work; I was mostly going to have to rely on the language conventions to carry the mood across, as the self-aware, attitude-filled, first-person narration wasn't going to survive intact. I took a few cues from Calvin, and started searching the web for additional sources. Three pages I looked at heavily were brief excerpts and beginning paragraphs of Mickey Spillane's classic Mike Hammer novels, and the truly marvelous Twists, Slugs and Roscoes: A Glossary of Hardboiled Slang; I also looked at YouTube videos of old Dragnet episodes, which, while not hardboiled per se, borrowed from some of the same cultural lexicon. From these, I compiled a list of terms and phrases that I thought might be useful, and with the websites open in the background for reference, started writing.

With the need to include both continuity and stylistic elements in a 2000-character space, I decided to stick as close as possible to the plot of a stereotypical hardboiled tale. The presence of the famous actor Seboca in Dex's Diner with Slyther made the choice of client easy. I knew I needed a femme fatale, and thinking it would make the most sense if she was the same species as Slyther, created Seboca's Nuknog assistant, Vekka Lodik.

After writing the establishing "dame walks into the office" shot and the meeting at Dex's, the space to write up the legwork was limited. I glossed over the trail of clues to get to the noirish climax, where our hardboiled hero is faced with sudden but inevitable betrayal at the hands of the femme fatale. Fortunately for Slyther, he comes out on top.

Continuity

What would a WTS entry be without some ties to existing continuity?

Not many Nuknogs ever left the filthy swamps of Sump, which is why he knew the dame that walked into his office was trouble with a capital trill.

The fact that Nuknogs rarely leaving Sump comes from the Ultimate Alien Anthology.

"Trill" is the letter "T" of Aurebesh.

She was a sight to behold, all right, with flushed display bulbs . . .

"Display bulbs" is what Slyther's head bumps are called in the Ultimate Visual Dictionary.

. . . Seboca, the Dug actor enjoying some fame from his latest starring vehicle, Airtaxi Driver.

The name of the film is a retcon of the claim in the final chapter of The Making of Star Wars Revenge of the Sith that Matt Wood voiced the "Dug taxi driver Seboca" in Episode II. Now, instead of being an actual taxi driver, he's playing the equivalent of Travis Bickle. This is the first part of the double-retcon of Seboca; the rest will be explored down below.

Bushforb and his pal Rednax agreed to meet with her boss at Slyther's favorite ardees joint, Dex's Diner.

Seboca and Rednax are the Dugs we see in the Diner, as established in the Databank and Leland Chee's "Mistaken Identities" blog.

That Slyther was a regular of Dex's Diner, and that he went there for a hot cup of ardees (not good ardees, mind you, but hot) is from Coruscant and the Core Worlds.

The meeting went smooth as Ottegan silk, save for Seboca's annoyance when the Dug noticed a "Jedi poodoo" seated in an adjacent booth.

Ottegan silk is from I, Jedi.

Seboca's reaction to Obi-Wan is, of course, because that same "Jedi poodoo" had nearly crashed into him the previous night during the Zam Wessell chase sequence.

Soon, he was sniffing out a solid lead from an old buddy in the Bounty Hunters Guild, which led to a run-down flat beneath Pom Plaza registered to a Dug named Manoca.

The Bounty Hunter's Guild is originally from the The Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy.

Pom Plaza is from an advertisement in the online version of Holonet News.

Now we get to Manoca . . .

"Manoca" was just an alias Seboca used to keep a low profile . . .

This is the second part of the double-retcon of Seboca. As was mentioned in the abovelinked blog by Leland Chee, there were originally three Dugs in Attack of the Clones - Rednax, Seboca, and Manoca. Early sources were quite muddy about which Dug was which, made even more confusing by the fact that two of the Dugs had very similar CGI models, differing only in hairstyle. Finally, the blog set the record straight; the two similar CGI models, having both been identified as Seboca in various sources, were indeed the same character, while the third Dug was Rednax. This left, as Chee put it, "no place for Manoca." The databank entry creates a place for that name as a low-profile pseudonym used by Seboca, much as movie and rock stars often sign into hotels under false names here on Earth.

Changes

More changes were made to this submission than to my Cane Adiss entry, which is unsurprising, since I was deliberately pushing the limits of the Databank format with my Bushforb, and since space limitations left my story a little choppy in places. I'm happy that the changes not only smoothed the story out and fit the Databank format better, but in places managed to capture even more of the hard-boiled feel I was going for. For a look at some specifics:

It would take a devout Givin theoretician a lifetime . . . one that started like so many, with a woman.

The biggest change is, of course, the entire first paragraph. My first paragraph was much shorter:

"The name was Slyther Bushforb. He was a Nuknog private eye, working in Coruscant's Coco Town. He'd seen his share of cases, but none like the one that started when she walked in the office."

This was clearly a case of setting up an introduction of my text that was more suitable for the Databank format. It's not quite as pulpy, but it gives the story a bit of a broader scope and informs the reader that what follows is more storylike than the average Databank entry. It's also not completely devoid of pulp; the last sentence certainly has the ring of the genre to it. I'm also pleased that it works in the term "private dack," a variation on "private dick"; that term is used all the time in hardboiled detective stories, and I was disheartened that I had to avoid it for obvious reasons in Slyther's tale.

It was a dark night, one that would have undoubtedly been stormy had Coruscant's Weather Control Network permitted it.

This is a huge improvement over my clumsy original, "It was a dark night, one that, on a world without weather control, would surely have been stormy." It's much less muddy, and it also brings in the specific name of Coruscant's weather control system, which at the time I didn't know.

Between puffs of a slender cigarra, she recounted to him how some palooka was gunning for the matinee idol.

Brilliant. While the original, "Seemed some palooka was gunning for him," captures a bit of the pulpiness, the choppiness hindered the readability to some degree. The new version eliminates the choppiness and associated readability problem while simultaneously bringing in a whole new element: the cigarette (often with cigarette holder) of the pulp femme fatale, Star Wars-ified here as a slender cigarra. Even though The Powers That Be needed to tone the story down a bit in places for the purposes of the Databank, it's clear they appreciated what I was trying to do and took it to the next level where possible.

Bushforb and his pal Rednax agreed to meet with her boss at Slyther's favorite ardees joint, Dex's Diner.

With the new first paragraph clearly mentioning Dex's Diner, the lack of familiarity included in my original text, ". . . a Med'soto-style dive owned by a Besalisk named Dexter Jettster," was no longer appropriate.

The meeting went smooth as Ottegan silk, save for Seboca's annoyance when the Dug noticed a "Jedi poodoo" seated in an adjacent booth. Still, Slyther's smooth-talking put the Dug at ease, and when Seboca left, Slyther had the job.

Slyther's smooth-talking is new, and a nice touch. It helps explain why the Nuknog got the job.

He began his legwork there, waiting for the Jedi to leave to ask Dex a few questions. The Besalisk was always good for a rumor or two.

More toning down from the original.

Dex had heard something: a hunt that led Bushforb to other clues.

A typo: The original was a hint, not a hunt. I suppose it works with the follow-up with the Bounty Hunter's Guild, though.

Anyway, that's about it. I hope you've enjoyed having a long look at the workings of my mind on this.