Chapter Text
Maxell Dyson nodded politely while scribbling at his holopad while his guests walked through the door. He was a man of courtesy, and normally he'd have put this on hold, but he had the tightest deadline of his life to wrap up these forms his lawyer had sent over. His hand became a blur, and he finished just as the last of his guests finished using Dyson's floormat to wipe off the mud left by the previous night's rain. Dyson vaulted out of his hoverchair to shake hands with his favorite directors. They stood lined up like stormtroopers awaiting a Grand Admiral's inspection.
"What have you got for me, people?" Asked the most renowned holovid producer in the Corporate Sector. Dyson’s production company was famous for always having ten projects going on at once. In the eighteen years since he’d gone from acting to producing, every one of those projects had enjoyed widespread success once it was released. Even after his company had graduated from making direct-to-homeholo flicks to theatrical releases (after just three of those eighteen years), this methodology remained unchanged. His policy was to have directors come to him with their ideas. He'd almost always hear them out, and even when he didn't want to do their project himself, he’d always arrange an introduction with another producer who would be interested.
Some directors had quickly started taking advantage of this by making pitches they knew Dyson wouldn't accept just to get that guarantee of another producer taking over, but he’d eventually got wise. Dyson had then announced that any director who proposed three projects that he wasn’t interested in without proposing at least one that he did like would join a few directors he had serious personal or ideological differences with on his appointment-booking staff's private blacklist.
Five of his projects were within days or weeks of wrapping up, and so he was ready to hear ideas for five more. Usually, he only met one or two directors at a time, but this time, he was meeting six, so that even if he rejected one of their projects, he’d still have a chance of completing his search for new stories. He really should have gotten that done months ago, but he'd been busier and moodier than usual since Alderaan.
All but one of these directors head made pitches to him before, three of them successfully. Of the two who had tried for his patronage before and hadn’t gotten it, one was down to her third and last chance to have this particular, dazzling and revered studio's name in her closing credits. None of them were there for disingenuous reasons: each of them desperately wanted their movie to be one of Dyson's next projects. If he said yes, then he would transfer the funds and the right subordinates to them on the spot, and the movie would be guaranteed to be made even if he dropped dead of a coronary right then and there.
"Let's get the most important question out of the way first," said Dyson. "Are any of your stories meant to cater to the Imperial crowd?"
"You mean, are there any where you couldn’t play the lead yourself without offending speciesist assholes like the late Grand Moff Tarkin?" Joked the heavily veiled human woman who had been born with the name Anora Fair and now called herself Laurelle Kirk. The former Rebel Alliance propogandist would have been executed at Tarkin's order if not for a man by the name of Lonni Jung and two other ISB employees he'd suborned to the Rebellion: an armorer who'd supplied a firing squad with phony power packs that made blaster rifles fire harmless but real-looking lasers, and a coroner in charge of affirming firing squad victims were dead and them cremating the corpses. Dozens of people who had been supposed to be executed and could be counted on to keep their heads down had really been spirited away to new lives even before Anora and her friends had been captured.
In her new life, Anora stayed as far away from overt Rebel activity as possible to avoid blowing the cover of the people who had saved her life. She made mainstream romantic comedies and detective tales. Movies with a bigger audience than her former journalistic efforts, and consistent yet expertly subtle, sometimes even subliminal, pieces of anti-Imperial sentiment like a likable minor character's arrest or a faintly audible offscreen conversation about taxes and blockades in a diner scene. Rarely anything that would catch the casual viewer’s eye, but enough to start echoing softly in someone's brain after multiple watches.
All of it was done in little ways that few people would think to credit the director for, but Anora never entered a building without three escape routes planned, just in case. Poor Lonni was dead now and it was doubtful she had any prospects for a second escape if she ever fell back into Imperial hands.
Dyson rolled his eyes, inadvertently forgetting his initial question and missing a few raised hands to it. He had insisted on playing the lead in three of the movies he had produced. Three! Two at the start of his production career (and one of those was a drama about one of the last, elderly, dying Theelins' bigotry toward her hybrid descendants, which was only filmable with a lead actor of about the same hybrid ancestry he had) and one seven years ago. He had acted in twenty others, but only in cameo roles (albeit always heroic ones, due to cultural beliefs of his people). Yet at least two out of every ten directors he was dealing with at a given time would either seriously or jokingly asking if he was going to be a new film’s lead. It did make some sense for the directors (most of them with their gross points to consider) to be the ones to ask that, even if that didn't always make it right if they were asking out of Imperial market considerations.
Anora/Laurelle he didn't mind, as they both knew she just liked any excuse she could find to badmouth Tarkin, the man who'd had her tortured and nearly executed. Outside the security of his office, she would sometimes put on a faint humanocentrist act (at Dyson's suggestion) for the benefit of a possible ISB spies like the cleaning lady in the dressing rooms, or a junior studio accountant, or a stuntman building a nest egg for early retirement.
All three movies Dyson had both produced and played the lead in had their releases in Imperial space limited to some degree. There were unspoken policies that Core Worlds-marketed holovids could have non-human stars, but not too often, and only if those stars were working under the direction and sufferance of human producers and/or directors (preferably both, but there was some wiggle room there). Alien-produced vids with human heroes were also accepted, as long as the hero wasn't someone like Count Dooku, Mon Motha, Senator Amidala, Finis Valorum, or Obi-Wan Kenobi. Dyson's human pedigree consisted of one great-grandparent. His mother had been the product of a marriage between one of a Theelin and a human-Zeltron hybrid. His father had been the product of a rare a rare affair between a Quarren and a Mon Calamari.
Dyson wasn't joking whenever he commented that his older sisters had gotten all of the looks out of that mixing of genes. And even those sisters drew some awkward stares from certain people who could spend hours flirting with Ugnaughts and H'menthes. Still, he had managed to carry some very prestigious acting roles through charisma and versatility in his youth. The salaries he had earned had made his dream of producing acclaimed holovids a reality.
"No. I don’t think my acting days are behind me for good, but it's not a skill I expect to use for any more commercial projects. Not even in cameo roles. I take it your movie is intended for Core Worlds theaters? All the others were."
“This one even more so,” Anora/Laurelle agreed. “It's a remake on an obscure, low-budget indie film made by Waldonia Pallopides, a rather unorthodox Naboo artist with an interesting background. At the age of nineteen, she became pregnant with twins as the result of a short engagement with the eldest brother of the future Emperor Palpatine. Doctors think the babies were conceived less than a day before their father died in an accident aboard the family yacht. Waldonia became a filmmaker and had quite a good reputation before she turned to drugs in her middle age after one of her sons, a fighter pilot, died in battle against the Trade Federation invaders.
Since his death came as the result of a Jedi plan to liberate the planet, Waldonia developed a harsh anti-Jedi bias and made several films to that effect. I'll always wonder how the Jedi still kept seeing then-Senator Palpatine as their friend after how he was supposedly never able to convince her to stop making movies like that her despite his famous oratory skills and being a regular visitor to her home. Waldonia's last movie, before her suicide on the tenth anniversary of her son's death, was a rather jumbled mess called Korrie. It's about a girl with Jedi powers who got bored of being a youngling and went back to living a normal life with her mother within a few years, then ended up killing nearly everyone at her school dance with telekinesis due to being embarrassed by some trivial humiliation."
"You know my feelings about remakes, Laurelle," said Dyson. "Make a case for why this one deserves another chance."
"I don’t think it's a hard case to make, sir. For one, I intend to make the girl a more sympathetic figure in the present-day. Have her experience self-loathing and fear about how she secretly has the powers of the hated Jedi. My writers and I are planning on having her get abused nonstop by her widowed mother, a Church of the Dark Side deacon who was dishonorably discharged from Imperial service for being an adjutant to the Butcher of Montellian Serat and then dismissed by her church for embezzling funds.”
What Anora left unsaid was how this film would carefully elicit sympathy toward those with the Force and subtly evoke distaste for truly ruthless and/or fanatical Imperial criminals like the Butcher. Nor would the Church of the Dark Side be portrayed as something it was healthy for anyone to believe in, regardless of how they had thrown Korrie’s mother out on her backside.
"What kind of school will Korrie be at?" asked Dyson. "The Andara Leadership School? The Cadomai Art Institute?"
"I was thinking a fictional military academy on some potentially unidentified backwater world. I don't want any school suing us, because in my version, the other students bully and mistreat her horribly for a number of selfish and unsympathetic reasons with the tacit approval or indifference of several faculty members. Her bullies include a pair of twin girls, the local Grand Moff's daughter, and three girls who become remorseful about the whole affair and start trying to atone, along with a lot of the other outcasts or nicer people at the top of the school cliques. Their way or making mends by helping her have a happy time at the upcoming dance with a handsome and scholarly unarmed combat champion."
Then, as Korrie arrive outside the gymnasium, they are ambushed by the Moff's daughter, four of her regular posse, her boyfriend, and a dozen of his cronies who take a lot of lumps viciously beating Korrie's date into a near-coma after he moves to defend her and then forcibly submerge Korrie in a tub of livestock blood and urine. Then they leave, laughing, to change clothes and go to the dance themselves, not realizing they’ve pushed Korrie over the edge until she stomps in after them.
This makes Korrie snap and accidentally unleash her powers, hurling items through the wall and into the gym, manipulating electrical circuits and such, while using the Force to sense where everyone is, killing or wounded over three quarters of the people present. Then her date regains conscious and is horrified and runs away, snapping her out of it and getting her to work trying to help save the trapped or injured survivors before she is shot down herself when the local stormtroopers arrive." And oh, did Anora plan to milk the images of stormtroopers killing a confused, Force-Sensitive girl who was trying to help people and surrender and posed no present harm.
“Maybe have her last long enough to go home and take out her mother,” said Dyson.
Anora nodded thoughtfully. "I understand why you’d suggest that, but it would ruin the ending I have set up. My idea is that she arrives right as her daughter is dying from being shot, laughs and gloats about how Korrie deserved what she got, only to be gunned down herself by the stormtroopers for not informing the Empire her daughter could use the Force."
"Not bad. Who else dies in the dance scene? I know you hate doing it, but you can’t just kill off extras and the main hate sinks in that kind of story."
Anora nodded grimly. "The current plan is to kill off between twenty and fifty extras and a least thirty speaking characters. Two of the worst teachers. A local retired war hero not part of the faculty who is helping chaperone and dies helping several kids escape. The assistant headmaster, who is romantically involved with Korrie’s favorite teacher and dies in his lover’s arms. One of the twin bullies, saving her sister as an act of redemption. The mother of Korrie’s paternal half-sister, who is being brought to the dance to meet her as a kind surprise and gets a subplot. The best friend of Korrie’s date. One or two girls from a club of artists that Korrie hung out with, with Korrie killing them accidentally then freezing in horror to spare the survivors: Jeanei Gault, Manadd Dermitt, Cor Wilnos, and Ymar Crewes. A distant Tagge cousin who was nearly been expelled for bad grades but made an appeal to stay that ended up leading to his death as he shields a teacher who helped him. The kindly but initially ineffectual student body president. The Grand Moff's daughter and all but one or two others from the group that dunked Korrie, of course. Three other female bullies not part of the assault and dunking."
"Is the twin who gets away the only survivor of her clique?" asked Dyson. "If she isn't, it seems like there’d be a lot of story potential with the others in the last few scenes."
"I already had that thought, and the answer's no," said Anora. "I've got plans for quite a few members of that group, although I may have to cut a few of them out or split the film into a two-parter girl, seeing as how Korrie and her mother need the lion's share of attention. One survivor who still gets her hands badly burned starts out as the best friend and main sidekick of the Grand Moff’s daughter since pre-school but backs out of her plan to assault Korrie before the dance and tries to talk the others out of it to, only relenting when they pretend to change their minds. Two girls names Jes Upshaw and Victi Hanscom who never tried to make amends with Korrie before the dance but feel a bit happy for her seeing her shopping for her dress and also show horror when they learn about the assault just before bodies start dropping.
The three girls who try to make amends all make it out with nothing hurt but their nerves: Susn Pamlo -who I will have characters stress is no relation to the treasonous Senator Pamlo, despite their shared surname and phenotype-, Randa Stenfield-whose bullying was only ever done to please a rotten boyfriend she eventually stands up to-, and comic relief Ehlen Shyres. They all behave heroically during the incident, saving each other and some of their classmates multiple times and calling out the Grand Moff's daughter right before the rampage starts after they see a speck of blood on her shoe. They also try to stop the stormtroopers from killing Korrie unsuccessfully to further humanize them. Ehlen's counterpart does die in first movie, but the actress lobbying for me to give her the part is an absolute marvel at everything but death scenes, so I'll spare her."
"I'd like to be the judge of whether she's really bad enough at death scenes to justify that," said Dyson, cracking some nuts as he spoke. "What roles has she had?"
"The movies she died in may be too obscure for you to know, but you've probably heard of her. Oorkeb Theiss: she was the blonde sister in that family comedy series about a man who teaches at a parochial school where all of the students except his daughters are boys."
Dyson spent ten seconds uncontrollably chuckling at memories from that show. "I actually have seen those war movies she had death scenes in, and the dream demon horror flick too. A lesser actress might have lost her career over those blunders. I agree that we can't go killing off her, and that she'd add just the right note of levity to the movie without overshadowing the bigger players. Have you considered trying to hire that young woman who played her eldest sister for a cameo as a teacher? I hear that, thanks to typecasting, she hasn’t been getting the kind of jobs her talent deserves lately."
"She really hasn't," Anora agreed, thoughtfully. "I'll ask her agent. Any other questions?"
"Just two. Have you thought of how to handle the portrayal of the Grand Moff? Having his daughter as a major antagonist might make the censors fidgety."
"There'll be a scene showing how devoted he is to expanding the will of the Empire and how he wants his daughter to take part in that, while she acts out to defy him for daring to work so hard against the Empire, then finds that she enjoys hurting the weak for the heck of it while also having plenty of time to slack off and goof around rather than do official stuff." Left unsaid were Anora's plans to subtly imply that the love of that violence was a hereditary trait and that the bully's defiance of her father would be subtly treated in a way that some viewers would see as a humanizing aspect rather than a deep, dark flaw.
"That sounds a bit iffy, but you can see how the test audiences like it and make changes if needed. Second, how do you plan to end the movie?"
"With a young girl in another local family- a much more loving family that also showed up to help treat injured people at the dance- showing signs of telekinesis as the community recovers, and there being some ambiguity about how this will turn out as people take notice." Dyson scratched his chin and closed his eyes as he envisioned the scene. And within a minute, Anora Fair was walking away with her project greenlit.
Almost the same second she left, a small starship appeared out of hyperspace on the very edge of the Cantonica system. The vessel began its journey toward their planet, which rapidly grew larger and closer from the view out the cockpit window. The pilot switched to autopilot to eat the leftovers from the previous night’s chicken dinner. Then he began mentally going over his instructions on how to kill Maxell Dyson.