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s_d! I present to you parts of two short stories gleaned from Star Wars Tales# 15, both of them about Luke Skywalker as a child.

In one he's with his good friend Biggs Darklighter. In the second, he costars with an oddly similar kid in what might be a hallucination, might be some trick of the Force. Both have rather different art styles.

Here's the first, "Falling Star". Ten page story; three pages posted.

Luke doesn't know how Biggs did it, and Biggs explains that no one really cares if kids want to go to the moon. Luke exults in this chance to finally do what he's always dreamed of and leave the planet, even if it's only a few hours. He then geeks out about getting a seat near the viewport.

Sorry, I don't know why it's a bit fuzzy.

Something catastrophically fails, Luke fixes the engine despite the chaos and Biggs getting clubbed in the head by a panicking passenger, but then they just go back to Tatooine, to Luke's disappointment. Back on the farm, his uncle says that if he keeps dragging his feet all he'll do is kick up sand. When he's alone, Luke says, "Maybe drag my feet here is all I was ever meant to do, Uncle Owen."

So that's one.

Second is "Sandstorm". Twelve page story, four pages posted.

Little Luke got in trouble with his aunt and uncle; he was asking about his father and lost his temper when they wouldn't tell him anything, so they grounded him and he ran away, not knowing about the major sandstorm which was whipping up. Not yet aware that he's gone, his guardians talk, saying that Anakin was the same way, unfortunately.

Yes, that really is his nickname. Poor Luke.

They come across a dead Tusken Raider half buried in the sand. Annie thinks it's sad and speculates that Tuskens are so violent because they're misunderstood. Luke picks up the raider's gaffi stick. They try to wait out the storm in a cave.

The cave turns out to be filled with womp rats, too many to fend off with the stick, so they go back out; before then, the two boys realize that they both want to get off Tatooine and become pilots. As an intermediate stage, Luke wants to get one of the new T16 Skyhoppers; Annie hadn't heard of those, but he's building his own podracer. Annie's forewarned about the womp rats, and as they leave he confesses that "Sometimes I just sense things, and-"

The flare goes up, and attracts a krayt dragon. Nice going, Anakin. He disappears during the attack, and Luke, not having any idea what to do, has the words "Sometimes I just sense things" appearing in the same wavery bubble seen earlier. He throws the gaffi stick so it spears the dragon through the roof of its mouth. It collapses, he collapses, and it disappears as he's found, half buried in sand, by his uncle and some other farmers, who are incredulous that he's survived. Luke tries to tell them what happened, and the other farmers chalk it up to fever dreams - but Owen's twigged to his nephew being unusual.
Up next, on When I Have The Time And Inclination: Young Leia!

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That second story reminds me of the Lop Desert story by Gaiman. Love the art on the first one.

Awwww, isn't he cute? :)

I always felt there was so much more that could have been done with the Luke character like, since he's been stuck on Tattooine all his life, seeing him geek out a little on such completely new worlds, like Yavin IV or Hoth (We saw a little of that in the Abel introductory story where he sets off to explore during any planetside downtime) or what his reaction to actually seeing oceans made of WATER was.

Did Ben help with the rescue? You'd think he'd be useful in tracking Luke.

Owen's twigged to his nephew being unusual

Since Owen knows Luke's father was a Jedi Knight (though I don't think it's been made clear that it's known Darth Vader had been Anakin Skywalker outside of surviving Jedi) that shouldn't come as much surprise. (I always wondered what Owen thought about that, since Jedi being celibate was the norm)

I like the (not particularly subtle) bit on the differences in Anakin and Luke's philosophers: Making things how they should be versus letting them chose that for themselves.

An R5 droid just happens to be in the vicinity of Luke and a Force manifestation of Anakin? That's no coincidence, that's Skippy!

He's adorable. XD

It's mentioned in the book Allegiance that he has the look of a country kid seeing a really big city for the first time, and it's also in that book that he has an amusingly horrified "what is this it smells like engine oil I'm not drinking it" reaction to something served in a bar. Otherwise it doesn't really come up, unfortunately.

You'd think so. He's not mentioned and doesn't appear himself, though.

Still, he was hoping his nephew would stop yearning for other things and settle down into farm life.

Of course!

I love making comparisons between notyetevil!Anakin and Luke. In Outbound Flight and Dark Force Rising we get to see how they respond differently to the philosophies of a Jedi Master who believes the Jedi should absolutely rule those they're responsible for, since they're the powerful ones. Though admittedly Anakin is fourteen, Luke is in his twenties, and the C'baoth Luke knows is a little more obviously mad.

I've seen a couple of fanfics that play around with the comparisons. (I never read all that much of the EU. Partially because when I was most into Star Wars I was a kid who didn't have access to the books. And later because the direction they went didn't particularly interest me. And yet despite not having the books, the local library had a bunch of the comics.)

...Oh Luke. I think my teenage love for you has permanently shaped my taste in heroes.

*snort* There in time of need, I see.

I sort of like, sort of am frustrated by what Anakin is there. A fever dream with details provided by the Force? The memory of what he was, given presence there? Something Vader's projecting in his sleep?

I've seen one that mentioned he was terrifically happy to experience snow for the first time, but within a week he was as sick of it as everyone else on Hoth.

Mm. I was a much heavier EU fan before reading the Dark Nest Trilogy and part of Legacy of the Force. Though it's always had its bad parts.

I really like Luke. I know people say he's not as interesting as Han - even Mark Hamil's said that - but I don't find him that way at all.

I'm leaning towards Luke's latent Force sensitivity myself, in a place which Anakin would have left quite a Force imprint himself.

Yeah, that makes sense to me.

Luke and Han both start out as pretty archetypical characters, but Han's shown development, "Rogue turns hero", isn't that original, it's just done with charm and the best romance in Star Wars. It's fun but predictable.

I find Luke's development more interesting, personally, though I am something of a sucker for the classic idealistic heroic types, especially when the hero has internal issues and flaws to overcome. It's still pretty archetypical, but there's more going on beneath the surface. Plus I love all the Luke and Vader stuff.

Maybe so. Does make me wonder why there's a silhouette of Darth Vader first; older!Anakin would make more sense. But it could be symbolism.

Always been a Luke fanboy rather than Han, since, to be honest, I've never been impressed by Ford as an actor, whereas Hamill is a lot better than he's usually given credit for (as noted by others, he's almost single handedly responsible for Yoda working as a character at all, as an example)

I found it slightly weird, if minor, that Luke goes through such obvious wardrobe shifts, from the white of Star Wars, the grey of Empire and the black of Jedi, wish they'd allowed him to keep a bit more of his farmboy outlook, if not completely. Being a Jedi appears to be no actual fun at all.

Anakin had one of his first real descent into the Dark Side with his mass murder of the Tusken camp, so there would be dark Force residue too, and that probably forms a symbolic link with Vader through the Force.

"Aunt Beru says I'm prone to dust fever"

Poor kid, I can really feel for him here.

(Also, that must *really* suck, to be, you know, prone to dust fever practically living in the sandy desert, otherwise utterly surrounded by it... gives another level to the "stuck on a farm" thing.)

After a day of catching up on Clone Wars this makes me sniffly. Ani, I love you so.

I really want to like that second story. It's an interesting concept and a good showcase for their respective personalities. And I'm never one to turn down a good fit of dramatic irony. But man, I just hate "Annie" so skragging much that I can't get past it to even begin to enjoy the story. Some people look at Jar Jar and say, "hey, that dude is emblematic of everything wrong with the prequel movies." Some people look at the sad, stilted romance through the Clones/Sith movies and say, "hey, this here is where they killed Vader's character." For me? Neither holds a candle to that kid.

Nauck!Luke, however, is adorable and makes everything better.

Earlier today I was trying to track down this hilarious fic I read once in which Rogue Squadron teaches Luke how to swim, but I can't find it.

Well, Luke has another advantage in that he's faced down one Force-wielding power-hungry despot already (at least; not sure just how much he'd gone through in the EU by that point).

I find Luke's development more interesting, personally, though I am something of a sucker for the classic idealistic heroic types, especially when the hero has internal issues and flaws to overcome. It's still pretty archetypical, but there's more going on beneath the surface. Plus I love all the Luke and Vader stuff.

Motto! I always love the characters people accuse of being boring and straight-laced. And the Luke+Vader relationship is maybe my favorite thing about Star Wars. Except, wait, Rogue Squadron ... can't decide ... noooooo...

(as noted by others, he's almost single handedly responsible for Yoda working as a character at all, as an example)

That had honestly never occurred to me before, which is a testament in its own right.

It's so nice to see other Luke fans around.

Awww. XD

That does sound like it'd be fun.

He seems to have improved later in life. But yeah, that would suck.

We can have our own little Luke fan party here. (I'd use a Luke icon if we were on LJ right now.)

Yay! (Hee, I had the exact same dilemma. I've been using Peter Parker as my young idealistic white straight cis guy protagonist stand-in.)

(If we were at LJ I could have used this icon or this one. Or maybe this.)

I would use this one or maybe this one.

Okay, that last one makes me LOL.

I found the fic I mentioned! First Command, by Jedi-2B.

There's also Educating Luke, by squelchything, in which Han, Leia, and Wedge take Luke to see his first large body of water.

*clicks*

How is Allegiance, anyway? It's the only Zahn novel I haven't at least skimmed through, and it's Rebellion-era, which is my favorite period.

Personally? I love it. It has all these things I enjoy from Zahn: competent good guy stormtroopers, plot threads that come apart and interweave, badass effectual Leia, Mara Jade in character, frantic Indy Ploys, that kind of thing. It doesn't have Thrawn, which is weird, but I understand that Choices of One will involve him somehow.

Someone who doesn't like Zahn won't have their minds changed here. He's not good with emotion - but I do think this is as good as he gets at portraying it.

I am super-fond of that one. It's so versatile!

Well, I like Zahn, so that sounds good to me. Thanks! :)

Now, the next trick is to find it in Switzerland...

Ridiculously late comment, but some of this was addressed in the Marvel series. At one point they go to a water world and Luke is amazed at how different it is from Tatooine.

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