From Fan To Fiction

Google “Ram Zer­i­mar” and you’ll find an assort­ment of fan art, pic­tures of his own home-made suit of Man­dalo­rian Armor, and sev­eral book cov­ers fea­tur­ing our very own Boba Fett. What do we know about Ram Zer­i­mar? The story goes that he is actu­ally sniper in the U.S. Mil­i­tary named Ray Ramirez, and that through some turn of events ended up work­ing with Karen Traviss. But who is he really? Through a chance of fate I dis­cov­ered that he was still active on the Man­dalo­rian Mercs forums while he is sta­tioned in Afghanistan!

Ray, I must admit I’m a huge fan, thank you so much for tak­ing the time to talk with me!

You’re wel­come! Thank you for hav­ing me.

How and when did you ini­tially become a fan of Boba Fett and are you a mem­ber of the BFFC site?

I’ve been a mem­ber of the BFFC for a few years now! I became a Boba Fett fan from the moment I saw him on screen. My uncles were all sol­diers in the U.S. Army so it was a big influ­ence. Boba Fett just jumped out at me because he wore OD green armor that looked like it had seen a lot of rough days. It had his­tory but mainly, he just looked bad and was the part. He was like the G.I. Joe of Star Wars. It was an argue­ment on a play­ground in the third grade about who was going to pre­tend to be Boba Fett and who was going to be Chewie that made me real­ize I was already a die-hard Fett fan. It esca­lated into a fist fight and when it was said and done, I got to be Boba for the rest of recess. I know it sounds extreme now, all these years later, but I was a Mando at heart even then, and there was no way I was going to be a stink­ing Wook­iee. I was swal­lowed by the deten­tion sar­lacc, but I made it out just fine. I also remem­ber trad­ing a Luke, Han, and Yoda for a Boba Fett fig­ure that year. I still have it to this day.

That’s awe­some! So then the next ques­tion would be how you came about cre­at­ing your alter ego: Ram Zer­i­mar. Who is he and what made you want to cre­ate a suit of cus­tom Man­dalo­rian armor for him?

When I was sta­tioned at Fort Drum in 1998, I was a mem­ber of the 4/31 Infantry scout sniper sec­tion. Our net code names were just our last names back­wards and our last 4. That’s where the Zer­i­mar can from. When you serve in the mil­i­tary, your last name becomes your first name and every­one called me Ram. No one out­side the Army ever called me Ram. Some­time around then the X-Wing Alliance game was out for PC and I signed in as Ram Zer­i­mar. I’ve used the name for every­thing Star Wars. When I was younger I always said if I had a char­ac­ter in Star Wars it would be a super com­mando. Even though not much was known about them then they always fas­ci­nated me because I was into every­thing sol­dier. The few chances I had to role play, Ram Zer­i­mar was my Man­dalo­rian name. There is some­thing about an excep­tion­ally skilled sol­dier that every­one loves. I’m not immune to it either. I decided to build a set of armor after com­ing home from Iraq. I had missed every Star wars cel­e­bra­tion to date and I swore that if I sur­vived Iraq, Id go to the very next one. I never expected it to be so well received let alone become a canon character.

That is really the cool part. That’s every fan’s dream isn’t it? How is it to become a canon part of the Star Wars universe?

I’m STILL not over it. I don’t think I will ever be over it. It never gets old. It really hit me when I actu­ally heard Boba Fett inter­act with Ram in Zaria’s Bar in the audio book ver­sion of Blood­lines. It still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Here is my child­hood Star Wars hero talk­ing to my per­sonal Star Wars alter ego as one of his 100 super­com­man­dos. their best shooter at that. As a fan I couldn’t imag­ine it be any bet­ter. See­ing other peo­ple enjoy what I did with the armor is also very very awe­some. See­ing fan art is always such a com­pli­ment. Its really hard not to smile ear to ear when it hap­pens. Not so long ago on the Man­dalo­rian Mercs forums I saw a cus­tom Ram Zer­i­mar action fig­ure. it made my whole month. Here in Afghanistan there isn’t much to be happy about with guys dying all over the coun­try. It was really awe­some to see that, mainly because I never thought I would. I never had plans to make some­thing like that.

Tell us what you can about your rela­tion­ship and his­tory with Karen Traviss. How did you orig­i­nally meet her and become involved with her work on Man­dalo­rian lan­guage, cul­ture, and tech­nol­ogy? To what degree are you still involved?

This is a long one. Well, I was deployed to Iraq in 2004 and the Repub­lic Com­mando game was still in devel­op­ment. I’d try to keep up with news about the game every so often because it sounded like some­thing really dif­fer­ent and I was look­ing for­ward to see­ing what kind of mil­i­tary detail was going to be in the game play. I found out that Lucas Books was hav­ing a tie in novel writ­ten for around the release time, and it was called “Hard Con­tact” and was going to be writ­ten by Karen Traviss, it would focus on the spe­cial oper­a­tions aspect of the con­flict between the Sep­a­ratists and the Repub­lic. I remem­ber think­ing to myself “How on earth is this woman going to know any­thing about Spe­cial Ops Troop­ers and make it sound con­vinc­ing”. I ordered the book any­way but didn’t get to read it until I got home in Jan­u­ary of 2005. WOW, was I wrong. It was not only the best sol­dier story I’d read in a long time, it was the best Star Wars story I’d read in a long time. I’d say I’ve read about 90+ % of the SW nov­els that have come out since Tim­o­thy Zhan started it all with the “Heir of The Empire” series, and this one really stuck with me long after I had read it mainly because I had just spent a year in com­bat on a 4-man sniper team, and the RC’s oper­ated in 4 man teams and I could directly relate to some of the events in the book through per­sonal com­bat expe­ri­ence. Then a few months later, I received an Insider Mag­a­zine and I saw on the cover that there was a short Repub­lic Com­mando Omega Squad story writ­ten by Karen Traviss. I got really happy and went straight to the story. Again I was thor­oughly impressed with the level of detail in tac­tics and real­ism she brought to the Star Wars uni­verse. She also intro­duced Kal Ski­rata, and you know as well as I do that any Mando fan loves Kal’buir. After read­ing those sto­ries, I was left feel­ing appre­ci­ated. I remem­ber think­ing, “This woman really took the time and invested the energy to find the lit­tle details about what sol­diers do, and she worked hard to get it right. It shone through in her writ­ing and I felt like I had to say thank you for that. She knew what it was REALLY like.
I decided to write a let­ter to the Star Wars Insider Mag­a­zine and I asked them to thank her for me for tak­ing the time to get things right, and for bring­ing the real­ism that the Star Wars uni­verse needed when it came to deal­ing with sol­diers. I was sur­prised to see they printed my let­ter in the next issue of the Insider. It was the first time I had ever writ­ten to any pub­li­ca­tion of any kind, and there was my let­ter. They had passed on my thanks. A week or so later I got an email from the Star Wars fan club say­ing that Karen was try­ing to con­tact me. For some rea­son I wasn’t get­ting her email traf­fic but she sent me a let­ter in the reg­u­lar mail, and then her email sit­u­a­tion got ironed out and we were able to cor­re­spond through email. We’ve been really good friends ever since, and she has really been a source of sup­port and guid­ance for me over the last few years.

After a month or so of talk­ing Star Wars and mil­i­tary life, and every­thing else, she told me she was work­ing on the sequel to Hard Con­tact, called Triple Zero, and she asked me to read through the book and to give my opin­ion on the sniper scenes. That’s when we talked about the bal­lis­tics and tac­tics and kit, and the Verp sniper rifle was born. I added my two cents and she went with it. She asked if I could be a beta tester for Mando’a when she was devel­op­ing it. When she sent me the list it was only a cou­ple hun­dred words long. You could have a con­ver­sa­tion with it to a degree but it lacked a lot of the mil­i­tary words. I just helped to fill in a few tiny gaps. I [have] helped a few times here and there since then. My exper­tise is at her disposal.

That is incred­i­ble! Since your name was fea­tured in her books, do you feel you have reached a cer­tain level of celebrity amongst the Star Wars fan com­mu­nity, specif­i­cally costumers?

No, not really. I don’t think celebrity is the right word. I cer­tainly don’t feel like one. I know quite a few peo­ple rec­og­nize the armor. They have an appre­ci­a­tion for the work I put into it and I’m glad for that. I’ve heard a lot of peo­ple find the Ram Zer­i­mar armor inspi­ra­tional and has made some peo­ple decide to build a set for them­selves as well. I think that’s great because I’m just return­ing the favor to the cos­tumers that inspired me to do the same.
I’m just glad to have been and con­tinue to be a pos­i­tive part of whats going on, on “Man­dalore”. I’ve met some really awe­some peo­ple because of whats hap­pened in the last few years. I feel priv­i­leged to have con­tributed, and to know that peo­ple are tak­ing pos­i­tive things from the Mando cul­ture even if it is rep­re­sent­ing a pop­u­la­tion of hard­ened killers. They can still be the nicest killers you’ll ever meet. I’m happy that Ram is a char­ac­ter that doesn’t get hated on. There are tons of haters out there, but my fel­low Mando’ade have been noth­ing but respect­ful and appre­cia­tive. I’m grate­ful for that.

Do you ever get rec­og­nized in pub­lic by fel­low fans or cos­tumers? Ever sign an auto­graph or photo?

No, not really. I look dif­fer­ent every few months. That’s just habit, besides, the only con I ever went to was Cel­e­bra­tion 4. I think I might have signed a lit­tle kid’s Jango bucket as Ram once or twice. It was a ton of fun.

Why do you think a char­ac­ter like Boba Fett has so many fans? If you think about it, this one man with less than 5 min­utes of screen time has now spawned an entire cul­ture. It’s absolutely astound­ing to think of just how huge this cul­ture has grown in a few short years.

Boba brought with him a ton of fla­vor to the screen. Mys­tery and mys­tique are pow­er­ful char­ac­ter mul­ti­pli­ers. Unlike a lot of other Star wars char­ac­ters, Boba Fett told count­less sto­ries by just stand­ing there look­ing hard­core. His armor tells sto­ries, as well as makes you ask ques­tions. The galaxy is a huge place, and his armor pretty much says “I’ve been around the block a few times, been there, done that, and I don’t care who you are I’ll take you out. Done it once, I’ll do it again!”. Not many can pull that off by just stand­ing there. He struck fear into every­one around him and he worked for the top dogs. The heroes were afraid. Han was crap­ping his Corel­lian pants right before he got lucky and sent Fett fly­ing. I think a lot has to do with the cool fac­tor of his hel­met and armor, but there is a heck of a lot more to Fett than that.

True that! So what is your favorite Fett moment from the movies, and favorite Fett moment from the EU?

I have a few favorite Fett moments from the films. The first being when he tailed Han after the Star Destroyer dumped its trash before jump­ing to light speed. I remem­ber think­ing “Wow, this guy is a pro!”, he wasn’t fooled, he was just as cun­ning as Han and he had expe­ri­ence. I really liked the scene in Return of the Jedi when Leia/Boush pulled the ther­mal and Fett whipped a light­ning fast draw (even if the RF stalk was on the wrong side) it showed how fast and lethal he could be from a dead calm. This guys was all busi­ness. It was really cool to see him use his jet-pack for the first time too. It was like he was the ulti­mate sol­dier, and that was back then before even the men­tion of Man­dalo­ri­ans. My all time favorite EU moment was in Dark Empire when they made it offi­cial that he was back in busi­ness. I remem­ber think­ing there must be a catch to this, or this guy must be an impos­tor. But it was legit, and the man was back. I was really happy about that because all those years I refused to believe he was killed off. The guy was just too hard core, too crafty, too expe­ri­enced to be done for. After that, i’ve been look­ing for­ward to all of Fett’s new adven­tures. I havent been let down yet.

I remem­ber when those comics came out too, HUGE relief! That was back around the time this site got started up. What is, in your opin­ion, some­thing that we can take away from Boba Fett and his Man­dalo­ri­ans that we can apply in our own, every­day lives?

If there is any­thing that any­one can take from Boba Fett’s char­ac­ter its this: NEVER, EVER QUIT. A quiter would have never made it out of a sar­lacc. A quiter would have never made it through his child­hood. The man is a machine and he makes the world around him bend to his will, not the other way around. No mat­ter how bad things might get, one thing is for cer­tain He wont quit. Man­dalo­ri­ans as a whole have a lot to offer in the way of pos­i­tive traits that we can bor­row from. Like equal­ity between race and gen­der, loy­alty, and strong fam­ily ties. But its also impor­tant to remem­ber that it is a par­tial rep­re­sen­ta­tion of a fic­tional war­rior cul­ture of a peo­ple pre­dis­posed to extreme vio­lence, made for enter­tain­ment. We can find pos­i­tives in there but we can’t fool our­selves into think­ing it’s all good and dandy.

When you’re not fight­ing for our coun­try over­seas, do you have a favorite Star Wars video game you have played if so what is it and why do you enjoy it?

If I had to pick one favorite game it would have to be X-Wing Alliance. I really loved that game. I liked the story, and even though the ship mod­els were a lit­tle funky, I felt the game-play was pretty immer­sive. And you could fly a Fire­spray in it. Very cool. Repub­lic Com­mando is a close sec­ond. And I really thought Bounty Hunter had some poten­tial to be a shebs kicker. It was awe­some to play as Jango and the cut-scenes were pretty cool, but the play felt rushed. I really would like to see a sec­ond try at it with Boba as the main char­ac­ter in a huge, multi-world, open ended Star Wars scum and vil­lainy fest.

A sequel of Star Wars: Bounty Hunter fea­tur­ing Boba Fett? Sounds like gold to me! Maybe some­one read­ing will take note. Speak­ing of sequels, there is another post-“Legacy of the Force” series of books in the works also that could pos­si­bly fea­ture the Man­dalo­ri­ans and at least one stand-alone Mando book to be writ­ten by Karen Traviss. Where do you hope to see the books and cul­ture progress to in the near future?

I just hope that they don’t fade into the back­ground where they have been for years until recently. I’ll always look for­ward to read­ing Karen Traviss’ work. It’s sure to be stuffed with gritty sol­dier­ing. She will no doubt treat them with the respect and atten­tion to detail they deserve. I’ will always like to hear about what they Man­dos are up to but not at the expense of there integrity as com­pe­tent elite sol­diers. Not that some of the other writer are bad, their writ­ing style and sto­ries have broad­ened the Star Wars uni­verse, but its hard to write about what you don’t know about. In my opin­ion some writ­ers just don’t fully under­stand sol­dier­ing, or have a real­is­tic con­cept of com­bat or its flow, as well as com­bat tac­tics. Tac­tics are what really kill it for me when I read char­ac­ters that are sup­posed to be awe­some sol­diers mak­ing very fun­da­men­tal basic mis­takes. I just cant buy into that. As long as Man­dalo­ri­ans are por­trayed as highly pro­fes­sional expe­ri­enced guns for higher that are more than just guys and gals that wear cool armor, I’m cool with that.

I’ve had the plea­sure of meet­ing Jeremy Bul­loch and he is absolutely the nicest man in the world with his fans. Have you ever had the chance to meet him, Daniel Logan or Temuera Morrison?

While at C4, I got to meet both Tem Mor­ri­son and Jeremy Bul­loch. They both signed my hel­met and they both really liked the armor. Mr. Mor­ri­son actu­ally said it was the best Mando he’d seen to date and he also said he would have liked to have had a sim­i­lar paint job. It was really cool of him to say so. I didn’t get to meet Daniel Logan, though I did see him walk­ing through a crowd.

Do you plan on attend­ing events as Ram Zer­i­mar in the future or have you retired the cos­tume and character?

I’m cur­rently deployed in the Mid­dle East. It’s a good chance I’ll be work­ing out here in the outer rim for a while. I’m not sure if I’ll be mak­ing it to any [con­ven­tions] but I’d like to. It was a fun expe­ri­ence and I met some of the nicest peo­ple I [have] ever met in my life. (Much Love to the Dune Sea broth­ers and sis­ters!!!) The armor that made it out to C4 is pretty much retired, but I am work­ing on a new set that will have much of the same fla­vor as the first. I’ll show up as Ram again one day, but I’m try­ing to do my part in the war thats going on now as well as “make my way in the uni­verse” as Jango would say. Peo­ple seem to like the char­ac­ter even if he’s had just a small part so i’ll keep him around for a while.

Ray, on behalf of Aaron and the rest of The Boba Fett Fan Club staff, thank you so much for tak­ing the time to talk with me. I just wanted to tell you that you are liv­ing the dream every Fett-fan has had in get­ting to fight along­side our anti-hero. Your con­tri­bu­tions to not only the Man­dalo­rian cul­ture, but to this coun­try we call home can never be repayed. When I think of of my Man­dalo­rian Heros, the last name Zer­i­mar sits right up there with Fett sir. Oya!

It’s been a plea­sure and an honor. Thank you guys for putting together a great site for peo­ple to catch up on their favorite bounty hunter. Take it easy and stay safe. The uni­verse is a dan­ger­ous place no mat­ter where you are. — Ray