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I was talking with the guy who ultimately edited this book, and his son had just watched Star Wars, his 4-year-old-son, and was very affected by it. And I kind of had this theory that when you're a very young person, the character in Star Wars you care about the most or like the most is Luke Skywalker, who's this, you know, wholly good, heroic, almost naively pure kind of character.

And then you become, you know, 12 years old, a teenager, and you gravitate toward Han Solo, who seems like a bad person, but ultimately he is good. And when you're kind of going through adolescence, you sort of like the idea of being perceived as a dangerous individual, even though you still sort of identify as being good.

"But when you really become adult, you're no longer looking at characters — fictional or unfictional — as aspirational. You kind of are the person you are. And now when you look at characters, you kind of want to see things in them that help you understand yourself. So I feel, as an adult, the character you care about the most is Darth Vader. The maturation process seems to move a person toward relating to and understanding villainous personalities.

-Chuck Klosterman

https://www.npr.org/2013/07/09/200141185/chuck-klosterman-on...

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