Sarah Kuhn On the Chaotic Good of Doctor Aphra

[Music] what's up everyone and welcome back to star wars explained today i'm joined by the author of the dr aphra audio drama sarah kuhn how are you doing i'm good thank you very much thanks for having me of course uh i always like to kick off my interviews with a couple simple icebreaker questions so for a little context my favorite star wars character is big stark lighter kind of an odd choice so i love asking people who are your favorite like c or d list characters not a main character but who's someone that you think you might be the biggest fan of in the world you know i have to tell you that um with with something like star wars especially i pretty much never assume i'm i'm the biggest fan or the the only fan um i feel like even the the most obscure characters have um legions legions of amazing fans um you know i don't know if i could think of like a like necessarily a favorite um you know third or fourth tier character um i can tell you one that perhaps stuck in my mind a lot and um i'm i'm sure i i cannot say i'm the biggest fan of this character because i'm sure that someone has written a very extensive history or maybe there's an oral history that exists somewhere i don't know i would love to read it but um when i was a kid and i was a very you know sensitive child and um we watched return of the jedi over and over and over again and at the battle at the end there is an ewok that dies right like there's that ewok who doesn't get up and then his friend is like kind of cooing over him and they kind of hold on that moment for a while and um i was very traumatized by that if you want me to be honest i still kind of but um i remember the reason this this sticks in my memory also besides the the traumatized part is that um i was so upset by it that my mother said he didn't die you see him again later and so every time i watched it and this was you know we were still in the era of like vhs so it was harder to sort of go back the way it is now so every time i would be like where is he like tell me tell me where he shows up later and she she would always be like oh you just missed him he was just on he's fine he's he's a you know he's celebrating at the end with all his friends and um that was probably one of my my formative star wars experiences just because you know my mom really didn't want me to be so traumatized by ewok death i think that is a perfect answer i've i've never heard that one before i don't know you might you might be the top fan who knows that to be clear are you are you more connected to the one that died or the one that was like they linger on and i feel really bad for both of them but you know i think um i was more affected by the fact that the one just did not get up because it was such a a moment of triumph for you know so many of the equals that it just seems hopelessly sad to me and yeah maybe um you know someday like in a one-shot comic or something i could tell the the hidden story of the ewok who who died and maybe i could show how he actually got up later um making my mother's lie to me canon from a certain point of view return of the jedi probably coming in like two years so there's your chance you're definitely not alone i i remember turning to my dad and being like why would they do that just being a young kid like i could not fathom that yeah what was your introduction to star wars and what was it about the universe that really spoke to you oh i mean it was definitely a new hope and i do not remember exactly when i saw it i do remember i was very young um my aunts were very into sci-fi and fantasy so i feel like they probably had something to do with me seeing it for the first time um but yeah i i was just obsessed i was very young and um i just loved the idea that there was sort of a bigger universe out there you know i grew up in a really small town i grew up in a really white town i felt very um like i really stood out like there were there were not many people like me around and so i think the idea that there was a bigger universe out there um even one that was fictional was very exciting and you know of course i just really was obsessed with princess leia um i think that especially for the time that was the kind of woman character that i felt like i wasn't maybe seeing a lot of in the media that i enjoyed and um i really just thought she was so powerful and her story was so interesting and um yeah i just i think it was just something like for a lot of us that it just took hold of my imagination and that was it what what's your favorite star wars story maybe a movie maybe a book it could be literally anything oh my goodness you're asking a very hard question no that's okay um it's just you know whatever someone asked me like um what are you reading right now or what's your favorite book i'm always like i have read no books and i don't remember any of that right but um star wars wise i don't know i feel like there are so many amazing stories in in so many mediums and i think one of the things that really captured me as a kid especially since i was so um just kind of insatiable for for these kinds of stories these kinds of um escapes it was just that like even then there was there was so much of it like which now that seems you know like there maybe wasn't quite as much because now there you know there's like so many different things that you can purchase and consume and so many great creators working on them but i do remember my mind being blown by the fact that there were books and that there were books that were you know not things that were the stories that we saw on screen or maybe went a little bit beyond them um i do remember reading the the novelization of the empire strikes back quite a bit because i was really into the romance you know the romance was like such a key central thing for me and the fact that like in the book it sort of got into more of um you know the internal monologue of princess leia and han solo and what they're feeling like when they're kissing and stuff um i guess i was sort of you know destined to be like a romance novelist um which is you know what i am now because i was so obsessed with that and i just wanted more of it and so you know i think for all the star wars stories i was just so excited that there was more and there was always kind of um you know an endless stream of things for for me to consume well yeah let's get into dr aphra and some of your writing now which is uh when this comes out it'll be available on hardcover so check that out what is the best thing to you about writing a character that i that is as chaotic and messy as aphra oh i mean it it really is just that you know she is just having the best time you know i i've said uh that i feel like she may actually be having the the most fun of anyone in in star wars because she just lives so unapologetically she is not apologetic about who she is or what she's doing even if maybe she feels a little bit bad about some of the things she's doing later but um i just as a writer i love that you know you can't you can't really predict her you have to kind of just go with her and see what she does in in the moment and it's usually a terrible choice um and that's that's really fun to write someone who just grabs on to life like that with so much uh zest and enthusiasm and then you know the other thing that i think is fun as a writer is um she has such a fun voice you know that voice is so delightful to write in it's so irreverent i feel like it sounds like not a lot of other things in star wars like i feel like she sounds like a very unique character in that universe um you know if she if you were just reading dialogue that was then attributed i feel like you would know that it was her um and you know that's definite like all credit to kieran gillen for creating that voice because i feel like he just put her on the page and you sort of knew who that person was immediately and you you kind of can't take your eyes off of her um and so i think someone who has that level of chaos and charisma and just sheer enthusiasm and unpredictability is super super fun to write do you ever find it difficult to balance like you said where she she makes a lot of bad decisions that she regrets later how do you write someone who constantly makes bad decisions and hurts other people but you still make them someone that you root for well i think um again a lot of that is due to uh what what kiran had established just that she's so charming i mean i think that you know she charms the reader but certainly she she charms me as the writer when when i'm i'm working on her when i'm writing in her voice and so i think um because a lot of writers i think feel like they they get into the headspace of the character you know i certainly feel that way where um i am able to you know separate fiction from from reality for for the most part but um there is something really um just irresistible about the way that she describes things in the way that she moves through the world and you know i loved being in her headspace so i think that for me i just kind of felt like well i'm i'm sort of embodying aphra right now so her decisions perhaps unfortunately totally makes sense to me they seem they seem perfectly you know logical by going by kind of what her version of uh logic is so um yeah i don't i actually maybe that makes me like a like a bad person or you know like i have maybe when i'm in that head space maybe not the best you know moral compass but um i just i think when you are when you are writing her it just kind of makes sense and because she is so charming and she does have this swagger in this bravado um i feel like she really sells all of her bad decisions you know even even to to darth vader sometimes she spells those bad decisions so um yeah i think the the sheer amount of fun that it is to to write her um i guess like when those things come at me i don't really um for whatever reason i don't really question them as much did you ever go too deep into her headspace did you did it start to affect your own behavior as you were out and about i mean hopefully not mean i should ask uh you know some of my my friends and colleagues but i know i mean for the most part i i can have a pretty you know healthy separation between myself and when i'm i'm writing you know kind of until we get to maybe the last couple weeks or so of deadline then it's it's anyone's guess but then i'm also not not you know out in the world very much because i'm just at my at my desk riding so um no i i don't think she um i don't think she affected me you know in my real life in a bad way if anything i feel like um her sort of uh devil may care attitude towards things is is perhaps something that that i could adopt a little more you know i um am like like a lot of writers i am a control freak i do like to you know kind of have control of my environment and and what's happening and i think she just kind of gives in to like there's no control over anything you know she she thrives in that chaos so perhaps i felt like maybe she even affected me a little bit in a good way i think that's a really interesting point and something i had never considered i'm the same way very controlling but maybe that's why i love the character so much is exactly that just like i wish if only one of the things that i love about all of the afro stories is just how like you said fun and weird that they can get with star wars i feel like she gets almost free reign to do anything she wants and go anywhere in star wars so how do you keep all of that really out there weirdness imbalance with an actual very human story um well for this you know it was interesting because i was adapting one of the original stories from the comics the one of the first darth vader stories which was kieran and salvador larocca and um so i already had a framework which was great and it was sort of about finding you know what what is kind of underneath this you know if we're writing this in this format if we're writing this as a script but it is told you know from her pov which was the decision we made um really early on me and um my wonderful editor elizabeth schaefer and the audio producer nick martirelli um we had that discussion of like what you know okay the the comic at that point anyway was not dr aphra it was called darth vader so it is obviously very centered on darth vader but she is obviously such an electric uh dynamic presence you know what how do we kind of tell this this story but in a way that's different in a way that that really centers her and is about um you know her take on things and we really decided and i certainly felt very strongly about this from the start that it should be in her voice you know it should be her telling this story like you get the sense that she she wouldn't want anyone else to do it um so when we had that i sort of i went back and i i read all the comics and i i read beyond them you know i reread like i tried to reread kind of everything that was that was centered on her because it had been a little while since i had done that and um it was sort of about finding like what are the moments where we feel like she's thinking a certain thing what is kind of the emotional through line and um for me it was really about this great line that kieran wrote for her that i always like say wrong because i remember it so much for the comics but then like i don't know like i've done a lot of these interviews back to back and so things just fall at my head but um it's something like you know when she's talking to darth vader about like basically saying like i know you're going to kill me at some point so here's how i would like you to do it um she says something like the way i've lived i know i'm lucky to be alive and that really struck me that sort of became the the center of what i pitched which was that she is such you know as we said chaos personified and she is reckless it does seem sometimes like she has a death wish or she doesn't you know she doesn't care or she will always choose kind of the most dangerous thing and this just throw herself head first into it without thinking about the consequences but i also thought um that she clearly had this baked in survival you know the survival instinct and i thought that really came through in the moment from the comics where darth vader is about to kill her and she basically blackmails him um with you know this information that she has about luke that he he's been looking for and it's again like a very a very foolish decision but i thought in that moment it seemed like she was kind of realizing like i say all this stuff and i talk a big game and i act like i don't care but i actually really want to live um and so those two things seems um very much in conflict to me which again is really interesting as a writer and so i wanted to play with that i wanted to find you know what is that um what is that emotional through line what does that look like because i think those elements are probably something that that a lot of us can can relate to like you know sort of like these things that are in conflict within us or seem like they're in conflict um and these moments where we have these big realizations and so i really wanted to to bring that out that sort of um that sort of survival instinct that seems to be in conflict with her um very reckless behavior when did you come up with the idea for the format because i think it really helps with some of these uh disparaging not disparaging uh just different ideas that are a conflict within her where she's basically narrating this story and we get to see some things that she decides to delete from the story we get a little extra peek into her head that the final person that the story is for won't get to see how much fun was it to play with that kind of thing and when did that idea come up all right well first i'll ask you is it um is it okay if i do like spoilers in this discussion like do you feel like everyone would have read it or would you rather i speak more vaguely i was gonna leave that up to you uh i i've talked about the audio drama quite a bit on my channel uh but since the uh hardcover is just coming out i was gonna leave that up to you spoilers are fine if they're fine with you yeah let's okay so i'll say like a little bit of this well it is kind of a spoiler i guess in this answer and if you don't want to hear it just like skip over this answer this i'll try to just you know mention it here and nowhere else um but uh i think what you are referring to as far as the format is something that was also in my original pitch because um you know we had talked about on the first call we had um with me and elizabeth and nick like okay this isn't her voice like she is telling us this story and so of course like one of the first things i thought of was um who is she telling this story to and isn't it fun that she's perhaps the most unreliable narrator we can think of like we cannot believe anything she says and that's part of the fun of it um so i you know again had had reread the comics was was thinking about this kind of underneath emotional through line like what would bring that out what are some moments here that we can expand upon and um you know again like being so into romance i was always a big fan of the relationship between her and sana soros and i just thought it was so interesting that up until this point a lot of times when we've seen them together when we've seen them you know in the comics or or whatever they are so angry at each other like it is obviously the aftermath of a very bad breakup and they hate each other and they want to kill each other and um there's so much intense feeling and passion there that i was like well i wonder what they were like when they were kind of you know good together because clearly there are some very deep emotions that are powering this that must mean that their actual you know courtship was like on fire like that must have been amazing so um i really wanted to write about that relationship and to kind of foreground it a little bit and to maybe um elaborate it on it a little bit um you know this is like kind of a chance when when you're asked to write something like this like oh what do i is like a really big super fan what i want to see like what what have i been missing and i wanted to write about their relationship and so when i was thinking about you know she has these things that are in conflict she is you know chaos but she also has the survival instinct this is something she's kind of realizing during this adventure um i went to the moment later um when aphra is in sunspot prison and she sees sana again and it's very um very charged um very um again lots of angry emotions and i just thought you know again like obviously these are such powerful feelings there is something there there was something there that was very passionate that was very intense and so i thought you know i think one of the things that sometimes we think about when we realize like i would i actually want to live i want to survive like reckless behavior aside i actually do have this you know kind of baked in um survival instinct um is i think like one of the things maybe we kind of think of is this idea of regret you know what would i what would i leave behind if i was not here anymore and for aphra i just thought you know she does even though she tries to hide it she does have a heart she does um have feelings she is uh you know she is a person and i thought like i think one of the things that she would regret is how she treated sana how she left things with sauna how she kind of made her feel like she didn't care or that she could very easily walk away from this relationship and that was a big regret i thought she would have and so then you know we have that we have the romance of the emotional through line i was like well if she is narrating this she's obviously narrating it to someone so wouldn't it be interesting if it was actually a recording for sana it was something that she was doing to tell her i do care about you and the feelings that we had in the past were were real and if i didn't let you know that that is something i would regret um and um so that i felt like gave us a lot of room to play with how she's telling the story with the kind of unreliable narrator thing with you know how she kind of starts it out and it's almost like she wants you to think that she's recording this for like her legion of fans or something like it's like oh you know dear audience like dear listener um and then she kind of breaks down over the course of it and has to reveal who it is actually for because she realizes like that's still kind of holding this person at a distance that's still not really letting them know how i feel um so i really liked that idea and luckily everyone else did too and then elizabeth my editor was really the person who um pushed me to take advantage of the audio format because with this narrator she was like you know if she's the one who's making the recording if she's the one who's in charge of the recording um she would probably try to manipulate it a lot right like she wants you to hear the most best like badass version of who she is she wants that persona out there it's not as much the real person um until she kind of breaks down towards the end so i thought that was just delightful that you know aphra would rewind things and record over them and you know make things up and try to make herself sound amazing you know the the part in the beginning where she's like oh actually at this point i gave this amazing speech um i thought it was really funny because i think you know sometimes we do that like we're we're in an argument or something and then the argument ends and then 10 minutes later we're like oh i just thought of the perfect comeback yeah if only i could rewind time and go back and say it to that person um so that i thought really fit with the character but that's kind of how we came up with you know what what is the actual format of this and um how can we utilize that to really show the character of aphra well like you said the audio drama is half adaptation and half new revelations we fill in gaps from the darth vader and star wars comic but we also have flashbacks you may have just answered this but what were you most excited to explore in aphra's life when uh you were asked to write this it may have been her history with sauna or was it something else um yeah i definitely was excited to explore that i mean i think that is probably um the the majority of the 100 new content i added were those scenes between them um but yeah i was really excited to explore that i was also excited to um in particular explore their days together at university because i felt like that was something that has been kind of talked about and hinted at and i just wanted to see more of it um i liked the idea of them you know being in class together or just having like cute dating adventures i wanted to know like how they had their first kiss and so yeah i i kind of um that was probably the main thing i was really excited to explore more um and that i just had so much fun writing and then um just hearing hearing the recording of it was so so much fun i i really loved what they did with it have you been able to keep up with the current run of afrocomics at all by elizabeth yes i love you know i love alyssa wong and um i think yeah i i'm so excited that there's so much afra content right now i think um you know we could be perhaps in a bit of an afro renaissance um and we have actually talked about you know um oh we should be able to have like uh like an aphro con like especially since so much of the new aphra stuff came out during the year when we could not have conventions um so yes i i am very excited about that and i was also excited that um she put a little a little nod to the audio drama in one of the recent issues yes the one that just came out that's exactly what i was going to ask if there was any it was a collaborative process there because alyssa actually um so they i think they had given her a draft of the the full audio drama for just background or like if she needed it or something and she read it and then um when i think when she was working on that issue she messaged me and she was like now this climbing wall like what does it what how did you imagine that it looks like like what you know what was kind of the the thing here and um i didn't like i didn't know exactly what she was writing so i i was i didn't know it was going there was something that was going to appear later but i was really excited that she she put kind of a little nod in there and i'm excited that she's also exploring some new you know afra santa content yeah i i definitely did like the point oh my god it's the thing from the thing since the darth vader comic and her introduction there have you noticed any ways that afres characters evolved over time through the the ongoing comics and your audio drama well i think like with any character especially one that is this you know wonderfully popular i i feel like with everything that's been written about her it's just added more layers um and it's it's always fun to see that i felt very fortunate that i had a lot of um material to kind of go to for for background and research and all of that um but yeah i think it's just i feel like she's just gotten more layers you know i think that when kieran and salvador introduced her like it was so visceral you really just could not take your eyes off of her or at least i couldn't like i just really wanted to know everything about her and you know what kind of made her tick what was all this this chaos like who is this person she was really like no one i had ever seen in in star wars and so i feel like as as she's continued um hopefully all of us who have been lucky enough to work on her have added new layers and new dimensions and a lot of it i think is just picking up on things that were already there you know when she was first established taking those little threads and pulling on them um but yeah i hope that um there are many there's a lot more afra in our future i hope and i look forward to seeing um what what new things get added to her next well for her future do you think there is any hope for her to ever become less of a mess or are we going to get to from a certain point of view the force awakens and she's just still as chaotic and running around the galaxy and causing messes i mean you know i i kind of as a writer i feel like her mess is really her like a lot of her appeal like i think that's a feature not a bug um and i do like that um in some of the more recent comics we have seen that she is still chaotic she is still kind of a mess but she does at least know that perhaps sometimes she should let people in her life who are important know that she cares about them you know like that she should she let people know that like you know i i might have done x for a reason it might have seemed really crappy but i really do care about people and you know again i i don't want i don't want people to not know that like if i never see someone again i don't want them to not know that so um yeah i i think that like as far as her her bravado her kind of um daring her recklessness i do kind of hope she keeps that just because i think that is part of her having you know the best time of of anyone in the galaxy but i like the the layers that have come out with you know her actually being willing to be vulnerable with people once in a while even if she'll deny it later her actually admitting that she cares about some people sometimes even if she's better doing it like with a recording than to their actual face um so yeah i think she can evolve but i think she can also still keep that core of uh chaos well i have one more question for you it's kind of a goofy one just because as i was doing some research for this interview i discovered that you used to be a journalist and you said you didn't like writing headlines i'm going to kind of put you on the spot but if you got to interview aphra what do you think your headline would be for that story well it would depend on the the publication and you know how click baity we're getting or like this is youtube go go clickbaity i think it was like super clickbaity it would be you know it would be like 10 things you didn't know about dr aphra um 10 explosive secrets about dr aphra um if it was if it was like a supermarket type tabloid it would be like just one or two words like really big with an exclamation point like maybe it would just be disaster you know or chaos disaster like something that that indicates like oh this this person is in trouble like they're they're cruising for a scandal um so yeah like much much as is afra is has many chaotic dimensions i feel like there are many chaotic headlines that could also be applied to her great well thank you so much for taking some time to talk about aphra with us where can people find you online and maybe pitch some of your other stories your non-star wars stories star wars fans what what do you think uh would appeal to them about everything else you've written sure um so you can find me a lot of the times on uh twitter i'm there you know usually when i'm supposed to be doing something else i'm just there it's my just my name on instagram i'm sarah books because someone took syracuse i don't know why um and uh i also have a website that is just uh heroincomplex.com that's heroin like superheroine like the drug and i am sure that website needs to be updated multiple times uh but i will tell you where it is anyway um and as far as my other work um you know i i believe and i think elizabeth has said this that i was hired to do this that i was thought thought of for this project because of my series heroin complex which is a contemporary fantasy slash paranormal romance series about asian american superheroines in san francisco they are very ridiculous they're also very chaotic um i think they try to make some better decisions than afra sometimes um but yeah and that's uh the heroin complex series and they fight things like demonic cupcakes and you know supernatural karaoke and real-life bridezillas and it is uh four books and there's a fifth one coming out later this year um and then i also have a a y a rom-com coming out this year that has no space or superheroes or anything it's it's you know mostly people being really cute and that one is called from little tokyo with love and it's about a girl who is growing up in los angeles beautiful little tokyo neighborhood and um does not believe in fairy tales or happy endings and spoiler alert there are some things that happen that may convince her otherwise um but as far as a star wars connection you know that that i think is if you are a big shipper you know there's a lot of romance or if you just like the idea of escape into kind of magical worlds because the the la in this book is kind of like you know a magical fairy land i kind of wanted to pay tribute to uh my home because i i love la very much and things think i think it gets a bad rap a lot of the times so i and there's i guess some exploring like you know like effort does a lot of exploring um so yeah those are some things that i that i have that are not star wars but that may have some appeal for star wars folks if you like certain elements of the aphra audiobook well there you go the afro audio book and hardcover are out right now so you can check those out or if you've already done that check out heroin complex that sounds very much like after aphra but thank you again so much sarah for joining us thank you all for watching and may the force be with you thank you you

Channel: Star Wars Explained

Views: 4,574

Rating: 4.6658931 out of 5

Keywords: doctor aphra audio drama, sarah kuhn interview, doctor aphra, star wars explained, star wars

Id: Gj9In2BV2tQ

Length: 36min 32sec (2192 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 06 2021