Get Orson Scott Card on the line

My weekly BASOTRUSSL posts (Blog About Something Only Tangentially Related to the Upcoming Sunday School Lesson) are a bit of a mixed bag. Some have really well-developed central ideas; some are nearly there, but could use some more tinkering to reach that fully-developed state; and the ideas behind some posts are half-baked at best.

For this week's blog, "half-baked" would be an aspirational level to reach. This is more like sticking a frozen lasagna in a non-preheated oven for three minutes. There's a little something there, but there's a LOT of work to do before dinner is ready.

So let's crowd-source this thing! This week's Sunday School lesson is about the Saints' time in Nauvoo, Illinois. Here's the central theme (aka, post-length joke) I set out to write about:

Nauvoo is a combination of Na'vi (the blue alien race from Avatar, the highest-grossing film of all-time) and Naboo (a prominent planet from the Star Wars saga, the highest-grossing film series of all-time, after adjusting for inflation).

I came up with a few directions the post could go, but only got a few steps forward with any of them. Here's the list, starting with the most promising:

--Girl power! All three "N words" feature women prominently. Naboo was ruled by a highly capable queen; the Na'vi had many female leaders (especially in spiritual matters), and they worshiped the goddess Eywa; and the LDS Relief Society was organized in Nauvoo.
--Sacred places. A temple was built in Nauvoo, the first in the latter-days in which ordinances such as sealings were performed. There were several sacred trees on Pandora, which were also often used as the site of marriage/mating rituals. On Naboo, there were monuments and ruins which the Gungans held to be sacred.
--Joseph Smith was betrayed by many of his former friends in Nauvoo, ultimately leading to his martyrdom. After viewing Episode I, especially any scene on Naboo with Jar Jar Binks, many Star Wars fans felt George Lucas was a "fallen prophet" of sci-fi filmmaking. Some similarly accused James Cameron of focusing on technology at the expense of storytelling, though critics were generally much more fond of Avatar than of Lucas's prequel trilogy.
--Mormon leaders pleaded for government assistance in their effort to defend themselves from unjust and unlawful persecution and attacks, but to no avail. Queen Amidala's pleas to the galactic senate went similarly unheeded, and Naboo was left to fend for itself against the Trade Federation.
--There's probably also material that could be mined from unobtanium (mined! ha!), the Na'vi language, Qui-Gon Jinn, Darth Maul being cut in half, Porter Rockwell, midi-chlorians...

So have at it, readers. If any of you actually goes to the trouble to write a full essay on any of these topics (or any others you can think of that I missed), I will gladly link to your site, or run your work on my blog, or whatever. Or if you just have a suggestion or two to help flesh out some of these ideas, I'd love to hear those too. Together, I know that by the next time this lesson rolls around in four years, we can have a t least one delicious, fully-baked BASOTRUSSL dish.