Author: Jay Shah

To Ship, or Not to Ship—Is that the Question?

Posted on April 8, 2016by , , , and Not A Committee

hanleia-valentine

Last February, Claudia Gray, author of Lost Stars and the imminent (and hotly anticipated) Bloodline, dropped a bomb into the Star Wars shipping community when she declared her affection for Reylo—in other words, the notion of a romance between Rey and Kylo Ren. While Reylo is a divisive prospect for a number of reasons, in particular the characters’ potential family ties and the overtones of sexual assault in Kylo’s mental torture of Rey in The Force Awakens, the reactions of many of her fans on social media was, well, staggering to me.

While likely a small number in the grand scheme of things, numerous people were appalled, declaring they no longer planned to purchase Bloodline, and even attacking Gray’s character. She spent the next day or so tweeting at length on the subject, responding generally and to several specific individuals, and to my mind, made a lot of great points both on Reylo and on shipping in general.

To be clear, I can’t get my head around Reylo myself. Nor am I particularly into Kylux [1]Kylo and Hux or Stormpilot [2]Finn and Poe (though Poe is one hundred percent not straight). But I have latched onto certain Star Wars couples over the years, both actual (Tycho and Winter) and prospective (Jacen and Danni Quee), and one thing I do know from experience is that you can’t always explain what appeals to you and why. Like Grey said, it’s complex stuff full of emotional baggage from real life—that’s why people can feel so strongly about it. But you certainly can’t draw a straight line from somebody’s ship to their real character or values; what’s therapeutic for one person can be triggering for someone else. Two people with similar backgrounds can have completely opposite reactions to, well, any story beat or overtone, romantic or otherwise. What I love the most about Star Wars is how one thing can attract such a huge amount of fans for so many varied reasons, and a ship is a microcosm of that—saying “Reylo fans condone abuse” is like saying Han Solo fans condone drug running. Read More

 

References
↑1 Kylo and Hux
↑2 Finn and Poe

Rebels Revisited: For a Few Rebels More

Posted on April 4, 2016by and Feature Articles

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Mike: With everything that went down on Wednesday’s Star Wars Rebels season finale, I wanted us to have an opportunity to get a few more thoughts in without feeling rushed. So consider this part two of Friday’s piece—what did you think, Jay? Will Kanan remain blind, or get super-cool laser eyes? Is Ahsoka dead, alive and well, or a bird? As I’m writing this, Pablo Hidalgo is doing a poll on Twitter that puts an interesting spin on the question—does Vader think she’s dead? Personally, I have a hard time seeing him abandoning the fight unless he’s convinced it’s truly over. Like Filoni has said in interviews for a while now, she represents everything he gave up to become what he is now, and he won’t just let that be; especially after she stared him down like that.

Something else I’ve been thinking about is the notion that Ezra was too gullible for trusting Maul as long as he did. Aside from the fact that Ezra has never been the king of sensible ideas (and that he never completely trusts him), I think fandom tends to lean too hard on the idea that Darth Maul looks to people in the Galaxy Far, Far Away the way he does to us. Here on Earth, if you’re in a dark alley and you come upon a guy covered in red and black with horns on his head your mind is going to jump right to all sorts of evil religious imagery that just doesn’t exist in Star Wars—hell, Maul isn’t even the most devil-looking species out there.

Completely vital to the premise of GFFA culture is the idea that a human being could walk into the Mos Eisley cantina or Maz Kanata’s castle and not find anything particularly terrifying about it—rather, these are the kinds of beings you see around all the time. Maul’s tattoos may differentiate him from the average Zabrak, but are they so unusual as to scream “villain”? What about Savage Opress–he has basically the same look, but does replacing the red with yellow make him seem less evil? And if you’re automatically scared of Savage it doesn’t seem like much of a jump to saying that all Zabraks just look evil—which in a GFFA context would be racist for sure, but really, just seems implausible when there are so many nuttier-looking things walking around. Read More

Escape Pod: Imperial Defectors and the Rand Ecliptic

Posted on March 30, 2016by Imperial Court Circular

randMoral relativity is hard to do in Star Wars, because it’s a tale of good versus evil. However, sophisticated storytelling expects that things are rarely black and white. Add in the influence of fans, and it’s not surprising that villains end up being quite popular in Star Wars. The Galactic Empire is probably one of the most popular villains in fiction, and so it’s easy to see why there’s an interest in presenting the Empire as a little more nuanced than purely evil. This always runs the risk of whitewashing Imperial atrocities, or presenting the “good Imperial” – the person who is certainly not a Rebel, but also not a bad person. We’re personally always suspect of the idea of the “good Imperial,” because while we very much enjoy reading about Imperials we also don’t want to sacrifice the theming of the Star Wars saga.

The new Star Wars canon has done a good job addressing this issue so far, from realistically portraying how people end up buying into the Imperial system in Lost Stars, to exploring the loss of innocence and seduction of evil in the Servants of the Empire series, to examining the mindset of an Imperial Security Bureau agent in Rebels. At the end of the day though, the people who stick with the Empire are usually either delusional, corrupted, or participants in the Imperial system – at least those who are involved in furthering its goals. But not always. There are certainly the rare Imperials who serve with honor and distinction, and try to refuse the worst orders – even if they’re not “good” compared to the heroes of the saga, they might be good by Imperial standards. But there are also those who realize their decency isn’t compatible with Imperial service, it’s these people we want to talk about today: Imperial defectors.

In the Legends EU, many prominent Rebel characters – including film characters such as Jan Dodonna, Crix Madine, Biggs Darklighter, and Derek “Hobbie” Klivian – began their careers as dutiful Imperial officers. EU mainstays such as Kyle Katarn, Soontir Fel, and Tycho Celchu also started out as Imperial officers. These officers defected to the Rebellion when they realized that the Empire wasn’t living up to its own honorable ideals, often in response to atrocities they were ordered to commit. Biggs and Hobbie defected almost right out of the Academy, taking their ship – the Rand Ecliptic – with them. Imagine what other defectors flew with them – heroic, goodie-two-shoes aren’t the only kind of people who might’ve left the Empire’s service and we’re missing out on good characters if we think that. Lost Stars and Aftermath both gave us examples of flawed, human Imperial officers who defected to the Rebellion – but there’s such storytelling potential in exploring the different types of people who might come to a realization that Imperial service just isn’t for them.

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Rebels Revisited: Soul of Silicon, or Waste of Runtime?

Posted on March 18, 2016by , , and

rr-choppereyes

Ben: Something that I’ve praised Star Wars Rebels for for a long time now is its character development. Because it focuses on a central core of characters and tells its story in a chronological order, the show gives the characters the opportunity to learn and change as the story progresses and time passes within the narrative. We’ve seen Ezra, Kanan, Sabine and even Zeb evolve their personalities and beliefs (some more than others) as their horizons have changed, their viewpoints have been challenged and they’ve been through increasingly difficult trials.

But there are a couple of characters in the show who haven’t really evolved in that sense as we move toward the end of the show’s second season. Hera is a major one, as is our favorite ISB officer Agent Kallus. And, of course, Chopper. Character development in that sense hasn’t really happened, because none of them have really changed. The Hera we meet in this show, for instance, is basically the same Hera that we see in A New Dawn, give or take a few circumstances.

There’s another aspect to character development, though, and that’s how an audience’s perception of a character changes as we see more of them. We see Hera and Kallus differently now than we did at the beginning of the show because we’ve learned more about them. And the same can be said for everyone’s favorite grumpy astromech droid after this week’s episode. Chopper’s character after his adventure with AP-5 is the same as it is before, but we learn more about him and our own view of him evolves. Read More

Rebels Revisited: Gazing Inwards

Posted on March 4, 2016by and

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Jay: Force visions are interesting — like the characters, the audience wonders if they depict literal truth. This was a thought-provoking episode, not least because folks were immediately wondering what exactly happened in those visions. Rebels Recon basically told us that Yoda had sent those visions to the characters, but the discussion of what actually happened isn’t nearly as interesting as what the visions mean. And just as each character got a different vision, I suspect each of us have our own take on what those visions meant.

What actually, canonically happened is therefore a lot less interesting than what the visions mean for characters and for us. I find it most interesting to see these Force visions as externalizations of the character’s inward struggles. As metaphors.

Kanan gives name to his fears and he defeats them by realizing that he can’t control everything, he can only be responsible for himself and do the best that he can do. As a result, he passes the test and becomes a Jedi Knight. Is he an actual Jedi? I hope not for saga reasons, but let’s play with that idea a little bit. Read More