Author: M. Dean Cooper

Hey Star Wars – Hire These Women

Posted on October 31, 2014by , , and

While I’ve long taken up the banner of diversity in Star Wars as one of my pet causes, I have to confess that while I’ve gone to great lengths to quantify its in-universe demographics, I’ve never really spoken up about perhaps an even more important aspect—the demographics of the people making Star Wars.

Part of it is that my sci-fi/fantasy interests have never extended much beyond SW and I’m just not familiar with a lot of female creators, and I think the other part is that—like with the lack of gay characters—the white guys have such an enormous lead that it’s hard to even know where to start.

Luckily, Star Wars’ real-world component has made some decent strides on its own in the last several years; the departures of Karen Traviss and Sue Rostoni from the publishing program were followed by the arrivals of Karen Miller and Christie Golden and Jennifer Heddle, Lucasfilm’s public face is increasingly that of women like Kiri Hart, Amy Beth Christenson, Andi Gutierrez, and Vanessa Marshall, and of course, the whole damned thing was bequeathed by George Lucas in 2012 to Lucasfilm veteran Kathleen Kennedy.

There’s still lots of room for improvement, however—notably, not a single female writer or director has yet been linked to any future SW film—and this awesome piece on women in comics over at that other “ThirtyEight” website inspired me to ask the gang for their recommendations on new female faces to join the Star Wars ranks. Here are their thoughts. Read More

The Star Wars Expanded Universe: The Pithy Reader’s Companion Vol. IV

Posted on October 20, 2014by

Longtime readers may remember my three-part Pithy Reader’s Companion series from early in this site’s existence; for the unfamiliar, it worked like this: over on the Jedi Council Forums, I ran an ongoing thread called One Sentence or Less, wherein participants would summarize assorted works from the Expanded Universe in one sentence—the “or less” part was half joke, half gentle nudge toward brevity, but it didn’t always work out that way; ETE staffer Lucas Jackson’s synopsis of The Swarm War actually held the record (until now, that is) at 242 words, all still technically one sentence.

Anyway, readers would vote for their favorites via the forum’s “like” system, and after two days or so, whoever had the most likes won the round. After about a year, I compiled all the winners into the three-volume Pithy Companion, and there was much mirth to be had. The thread went on under the guidance of my fellow poster known as @instantdeath, and while activity has sadly waned in recent months, enough new winners emerged that I thought I’d use the occasion of the one-year anniversary of the original series of articles to catch back up with it, in Volume IV of the Pithy Companion. While each part of the original series focused on a third of the Star Wars timeline, this time I’ll cover basically the whole shebang, within the loose confines of “stuff I didn’t get around to in the first year”. Highlights include the the Knights of the Old Republic games, Fate of the Jedi, and the entire—yes, entire—Jedi Prince series, perhaps best known for its first book, The Glove of Darth Vader. Enjoy!

 

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The Anatomy of a Spoiler

Posted on October 13, 2014by

catwalk

Well, it took a good long time, but after more than a year of gleefully picking apart the rumors coming out around Episode VII, I finally had to make a judgment call. A couple weeks ago, Making Star Wars ran a spy report detailed what they claimed was the film’s “I am your father” moment. I’m not linking directly to it, but it should be easy enough to track down if you desire. As I’ve explained before, my standard operating procedure is to immediately assume all rumors are bullshit, simply because of the thousand mitigating factors between what someone says online and what’s actually going to appear in the finished film fourteen months from now. Even if you assume the rumor reports are coming from people who genuinely believe them, there are just too many variables in play to hang your hat on anything not released officially by Lucasfilm (or, in other words, pretty much anything at all).

But the whole “I am your father” thing gave me pause. Despite not seeing the Star Wars films as a child, one of the exceedingly few things I knew before I finally did see them—and to put this in perspective, I can distinctly remember a time when I thought Harrison Ford played Luke Skywalker—was that Darth Vader was Luke’s father. It’s almost impossible to exist in modern western society and not know that, even if you don’t have an iota of context for that information. Read More

For the Fan Who Wants Everything – A Collector’s Guide to the New Canon

Posted on October 8, 2014by Scotch Tape and Popsicle Sticks

rancho-obiwan

If there’s one thing Expanded Universe devotees can understand, it’s completionism. Even now, in the wake of the reboot, I’ve seen and heard from several people who are doggedly trying to scoop up the last of the Legends material they don’t own yet—or even, in at least one case, actually starting up their own Legends collections. In a way, the end of that continuity was the biggest gift Lucasfilm could’ve given the completionists, because you can’t complete something that’s forever ongoing. Now, though, they have a target.

But I’m not here to talk about those people. Another group of fans (but let’s be honest, I’m sure there’s plenty of spillover) is seizing on the reboot as a second chance to own Every Star Wars Book, without chaining themselves to forty years of old newspaper strips, Spanish-language cartoon spinoffs, adventure journals, and whatever the hell this is. The same way I’m using it as an opportunity to start a new diversity database from scratch, these people—many of whom likely dabbled in the EU but realized it was ultimately beyond their depth—are finally able to indulge their own completionist sides, and brag to their friends that they’ve read the entire Star Wars library—no, not that one, the current one. Read More

Story Group and the Perks of Planning Ahead

Posted on September 22, 2014by Scotch Tape and Popsicle Sticks

Lately, I’ve been using my series The Expanded Universe Explains to explore some of the more, well, overexplained corners of the Star Wars universe—namely, events referenced or implied by the original trilogy that have since been depicted multiple times (usually in a contradictory fashion) by further sources. While that process remains ongoing, my search for the best candidates has led me to the conclusion that perhaps the worst offender is not a single event, but basically the entire span of time between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. Further, it occurs to me that in a quandary of this type we find likely the strongest argument in favor of the Story Group, and therefore its greatest opportunity to strengthen this new canon we find ourselves in.

Ask any old-guard EU fan which era of SW is the most crammed full of stories and they won’t even blink before responding with the aforementioned time period—0-3 ABY, as it’s (ostensibly) known in-universe. We tend to think of that era as a nonstop relay race in which our heroes dash from one adventure to the next with scarcely a bathroom break in between; and while there are indeed hundreds, literally hundreds, of stories set there, the truth of this problem is much more complicated. Read More