Category: Imperial Court Circular

Tsar Wars: Once Upon a Time in a Galaxy Far Far Away

Posted on August 10, 2015by Aggressive Negotiations, Imperial Court Circular

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In case you hadn’t noticed, I have a pretty strong interest in royalty and in politics. My passion is shared by my old friend, Bria LaVorgna. Bria and I have decided to co-write a piece on monarchy in Star Wars, presented alternatingly on the sites we write for: Eleven-ThirtyEight and Tosche Station. We think that the close connection Star Wars has to monarchy is pretty unusual and worth examining in detail. We’ll start out with a brief survey of monarchy in Star Wars, before moving on to an examination of how monarchy works on three prominent Star Wars planets.

(Programming note: I’ll update this intro post with links to each piece on Tosche Station and Eleven-ThirtyEight as they go up this week. Look for a new piece each day from now through Thursday!)

Part II: A New Naboo (Tosche Station)
Part III: The Hapans Strike Back (Eleven-ThirtyEight)

 

 

c6256992fe890afeb7825666927b7f0d[1]Unusually among science fiction franchises, Star Wars has a strong attachment to monarchy. This is partly due to the nature of Star Wars as space opera rather than pure science fiction, but it’s not really a genre issue. Monarchy is part of the DNA of Star Wars and always has been. Initially, Princess Leia served as the princess figure in the fairy tale conception of Star Wars (one of many inspirations for Star Wars, including myth, serial adventures, etc.) and Leia proves in the very first film that she’s not merely a damsel in distress. But fairy tale inspirations only get us part of the way — monarchy is a persistent and pervasive part of Star Wars, reflected in the Naboo of the prequel trilogy, Hapes of the Expanded Universe, and a myriad of monarchies in the Clone Wars. In fact, The Clone Wars made such a use of monarchies that worlds that the EU had established as democracies (Mon Calamari) ended up becoming monarchies. George Lucas had a pretty direct hand in The Clone Wars, and he obviously crafted the story of the saga, so monarchy is just a part of his political conception of Star Wars. But the question is — why? Why does a story about the struggle between light and dark, between democracy and tyranny, feature monarchies so centrally?

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Imperial Justice – Cold Truth of Fascism

Posted on July 15, 2015by Imperial Court Circular

Servants_of_the_Empire_Imperial_Justice[1]In what’s becoming a regular feature on this site, we’re publishing yet another rave review of a Jason Fry novel. It’s not our fault – Jason has a tendency to release high-quality novels at an impressive pace, so blame him for the lack of variety. Although that’s pretty unfair, because the best thing about Jason’s novels is that each of them are good for different reasons and allow us to focus on different aspects of the Star Wars universe. His original books have plenty to discuss, while his two Servants of the Empire books highlight the very compelling awakening of political consciousness and the dynamics of teamwork and personal perspective. Rebel in the Ranks developed the plot threads of Edge of the Galaxy, but Imperial Justice is where the early investments in character and setting really pay off. The events of the book are more meaningful because of what we know about Zare, Merei, and the other characters that populate Lothal.

This book was released at the perfect time, as we were looking to write a series of articles on the theme of morality among heroes and villains in the new canon (how the Imperials and Rebels have been portrayed in the new canon and how they should be portrayed, what worked and what hasn’t). In 2013, we wrote a series of pieces on Politics and the Expanded Universe showing where the now-Legends EU had succeeded and where it had failed in convincingly portraying the good guy and bad guy factions in Star Wars. A similar piece about how the sexism of the Galactic Empire never made in-universe sense also reflected on the nature of villainy in Star Wars, and how an effective villain was not merely a series of evil checkboxes but reflected something that the heroes would actively fight against and challenge.

Imperial Justice showcases villainy, but in a more compelling and active way. Instead of providing a menace or a threat that the heroes must react to, the influence of the Empire is pervasive throughout the course of the novel. To be certain, the Empire takes a hard tack from the benign neglect / colonialist exploitation of the first novel towards police state tactics in Imperial Justice. It’s not the suppression of liberty or the paranoid, informant-centric mindset that best highlights Imperial evil though: it’s what the influence of the Empire’s darkness does to the heroes that really shows the danger of fascism. Evil is not just tyrannical, and it is not merely seductive. Evil corrupts peoples and societies, including those who are out to fight evil. It’s not a coincidence that our long-standing favorite novel of the new canon, A New Dawn, both established the pre-ANH era and set the thematic tone for the rising corruption of evil and the heroism that is spawned in response to it. Jason Fry takes up that thread and runs with it. In showing this thoughtful and nuanced take on evil, his Imperial Justice justifiably claim to be the most thematically impressive – and best overall – novel of the new canon to date.

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Just how good a pilot is Vader? Our “Siege of Lothal” sim on X-Wing Alliance

Posted on July 8, 2015by Imperial Court Circular

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So, most folks who’ve seen the TV movie “Siege of Lothal” that opened the second season of Star Wars Rebels were astonished by Darth Vader’s piloting skills. What people disagreed on is whether Vader’s performance finally showed him as the greatest pilot in the galaxy, or if he was over-powered to the point of incredulity. Then some people took the middle line: Vader should’ve been shown as the best pilot in the galaxy, but the faceless “redshirt” opposition he faced robbed the moment of the impact it needed (unlike his saber skirmish with the Ghost crew). Those are legitimate differences of opinion, and we think that there are good criticisms raised despite our view that this was the best Rebels episode to date.

Our thought when we first saw that sequence? “…you know, I wonder if I [we] could pull off that stunt in TIE Fighter.” After all, we’re a veteran player of those flight sims and know all the tricks to the game. So – we decided to do it! We decided to use X-wing Alliance because of the ease of its in-game skirmish generator. Though it would have been a relatively simple matter to use tools like “TIE Fighter Workshop” to generate new missions in TIE Fighter, XWA has a better game engine with a more challenging AI. More helpfully, it also has Vader’s TIE Advanced x-1 available thanks to the “XWA Upgrade” craft patches.

So we set up a skirmish fitting the parameters of the show as best we could. We set a TIE Advanced x1 for ourself, no missiles or special bonuses. The enemy had eight A-wings, five Corellian Corvettes, and a bulk cruiser (to approximate the converted freighter/frigate used as the Rebel command ship). We didn’t have enough craft slots to add in a ship approximating the Ghost, or we would’ve chosen a YT-2000 like the Otana. We figured it if were too easy, we could add the ship in later using a more sophisticated mission editor like “AlliED” and have it launch on a timer (update: we did that very thing after drafting most of this article, see the end of this article for how the Ghost affects things).

Oh, and by the way: click the screenshots to view them at full-size, using AlliED let us add some details you might not want to miss. We had perhaps a little too much fun with the mission editor. 🙂

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Alexandra Bracken’s Young Reader Adaptation of A New Hope Looks Really Good And You Should Read It!

Posted on June 10, 2015by

SW_Jackets-ANHLast week, StarWars.com revealed the official covers of the OT adaptations written by Alexandra Bracken, Adam Gidwitz, and Tom Angleburger. The reveal was accompanied by a sampler excerpting the three books. There was some negative play on some sites and on the TFN Literature forum, partly because these are young reader adaptations instead of full novelizations and partly because of the stylistic choices the authors made in their adaptations. I made a thread at TFN Lit advising folks to actually read the sampler before rushing to judgment based on some out of context quotes and/or assumptions that young reader books wouldn’t be any good. The three OT adaptations are very different because the authors were presumably given the liberty to adapt the story for young readers in the way they saw fit. I may write about the ESB and ROTJ adaptations at a future date, but today I’m going to write about Bracken’s ANH adaptation because I think it’s the most promising in the set and its three chapters in the sampler illustrate why folks shouldn’t dismiss a book just because it’s for young readers.

I never read much YR Lit (Percy Jackson/Olympus books excepted, because hey, it’s me) but Star Wars YR is on fire right now. I’ve already delivered high praise for Jason Fry’s two Servants of the Empire books, need to track down Michael Kogge’s well-regarded books, and have high hopes for genre experimentation with the upcoming Lost Stars by Claudia Gray. Alexandra Bracken’s The Princess, the Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy is written for the same age range (8-12) as Fry and Kogge’s books and judging from the sampler, it looks like it’ll be just as good as those.

As indicated by its title, The Princess, the Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy is about the Big Three. Bracken chose to tell the story of the original Star Wars movie through the point of view of each character in turn, and Leia features in the opening section of the book (and consequently, the three sample chapters). At risk of gushing, I have to say that it’s probably already my favorite Leia portrayal in a Star Wars book. The fact that this book is for young readers is of no moment – the characterization is superb, the writing is impressive, and the storytelling is imaginative. Bracken isn’t merely retelling a story we already told, she is genuinely expanding it with material sourced from the radio drama or the old EU, but also with entirely new scenes. Readers who skip this book because it’s for young readers are going to miss a great opportunity to understand more about the film.

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The New Face(s) of Star Wars: Celebration Anaheim and Diversity

Posted on May 6, 2015by

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Star Wars Celebration Anaheim was a rousing success by most metrics: it set attendance records, the media coverage was 24/7, it had an unprecedented livestream, and fans emerged energized and excited for the new Star Wars films. We had a great time at Celebration, and we propose another metric for the great success of Star Wars Celebration Anaheim: the growth of Star Wars by leaps and bounds into a truly universal community.

To be sure, Star Wars always had near universal appeal (that’s how we all became fans, after all). But Tricia Barr – who hosted the “From a Certain Point of View” panel that we were honored to be part of – said it best: this Celebration was perhaps the most diverse yet, even considered in terms of the people who were on that very panel. Kathleen Kennedy made a great and very well-received statement about Star Wars finally recognizing its female fan base and striving hard to have that recognized on-screen (as it’s starting to be recognized on the page). Many attendees expressed surprise at how well-attended the convention was, both in absolute numbers (something like 60,000 people) and in the geographic representation of the audience. We saw many people who had flown in from Europe, Latin America, and Asia. We saw small children, teenagers, adults, and older folks.

Anyone who thinks that Star Wars is just for a certain demographic, whether a younger-skewed age group or exclusively males, should come to a Star Wars Celebration and realize that Star Wars is for everyone. It always has been, but Celebration Anaheim really drove the point home (and here we hear echoes of “Chewie, we’re home,” the Celebration mantra in more than one way). With the welcome diversity in the novels/comics, Rebels, and now the films it’s become absolutely clear that Star Wars has finally recognized that it is for everyone. Some might ask why this kind of representation matters, if Star Wars already had that universal appeal – well, read on and we’ll tell you why it’s so important.

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