Category: Opinion

Top Shelf: The Thrawn Trilogy Sourcebook

Posted on March 4, 2014by
The Thrawn Trilogy Sourcebook collects the material from the Heir to the Empire Sourcebook, Dark Force Rising Sourcebook, and The Last Command Sourcebook

Top Shelf has already celebrated the Dark Empire Sourcebook as one of West End Games’ best sourcebooks and an excellent entry point for the fan interested in gaining familiarity with the roleplaying game sourcebooks. The sourcebooks WEG released for Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy, however, may be an even better introduction to the sourcebooks for the beginner. Rich in Expanded Universe lore, they flesh out Zahn’s trilogy with backstory and background information vetted by Zahn himself, providing an excellent avenue for those familiar with the Thrawn trilogy — and who isn’t? — to dip their toes in the sourcebook pool, while offering much to the experienced fan as well.

The West End Games sourcebooks are worth exploring for anyone interested in the Expanded Universe — ultimately, they’re the foundation of it. Though the books, comics, and Ewok paraphernalia produced around the movies are the earliest Expanded Universe material, they were largely ignored during the Expanded Universe boom of the nineties. It was WEG’s Star Wars roleplaying game, produced after the films concluded in the eighties, that began the task of building a systematic Expanded Universe, a dense web of background information, in the pages of its RPG sourcebooks. When Timothy Zahn kicked off the EU renaissance, he used the sourcebooks as reference material, building on an existing base. West End Games returned the favor by releasing sourcebooks expanding on each novel of the trilogy; the three were later collected in The Thrawn Trilogy Sourcebook, with relatively minimal cuts to the collected material.

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Antagonism: Heroes on Both Sides

Posted on February 27, 2014by Pen and Paper

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As one might surmise from the name, Star Wars is fundamentally a story of conflict. As is the case with most such tales, the plot is driven primarily by two major opposing forces: the Galactic Empire and a certain ragtag band of rebel heroes (and, in the prequels, the Separatists and the Republic). Each side is represented onscreen by a cast of unique and memorable characters, but it is also worth noting that being unique and memorable does not necessarily equal being interesting, especially when we’re talking about the antagonists.

People will long remember Darth Maul, not for any clever characterization or witty dialogue (of all the main antagonists of the saga, he might have the least dialogue of any), but because he wielded a double-bladed lightsaber and had horns growing out of the top of his head. In fact, for all that the saga is trumpeted as the rise and fall and redemption of Anakin Skywalker, its approach to villains and their villainy is often ham-fisted at best and cringe-inducingly cartoonish at worst.
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Everything I Know About Life I Didn’t Learn From Star Wars!

Posted on February 25, 2014by Obiwomble's Outlook

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Are you not entertained? Let me think about that for a moment before giving a thumbs up or down. There are times, as I’m trawling the net, that I wonder when exactly entertainment, in itself, became less important. I also wonder where the idea came from that people are so easily influenced as to follow everything they see in a story. These two ideas are quite distinct but have surprising links between them. When Star Wars went off the rails with the Prequels, I find it hard not to see the clear desire for them to be more than merely entertainment playing a major role in the crash. Why would the Prequels need to be anything more in the first place? In part due to that narrow notion and delusions of influence as to how far people follow a story.

It might be said that there is a cultural plague of seriousness, it may be said to have started after 11 September 2001, but it was around before then too, the events of that day just granted it sharper focus and latitude. The problem is Star Wars, to the core of its being, is entertainment. It is not constructed to withstand the kind of scrutiny that comes with making serious claims – that’s where the now infamous Clerks Death Star contractors riff gets started, but without the customer put-down that those contractors knew what they getting into. Equally it isn’t really concerned with the horrific realities of life in a totalitarian society. Contrary to what its critics may claim, neither of these is a bad thing!

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Rebels, Greg Weisman, and the Disney Factor

Posted on February 21, 2014by Feature Articles, Sidelong Glance

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As more and more information has been revealed about the upcoming TV show Star Wars: Rebels, including a couple of recent teaser trailers, a fissure has opened in the fandom. Just like The Clone Wars before it, the prospect of an animated series oriented toward a younger audience has a polarizing effect on most fans. A sampling of YouTube comments on the recently released teasers (not usually a healthy practice) shows a clear divide, with some voices praising the return of beloved elements like TIE fighters and stormtroopers, while others complain about the prospect of a teenaged character in one of the lead roles, already decrying the show as looking worse than TCW.

Of course, all of this is speculative and uninformed, since as of the writing of this article, the show is still several months away from airing. We know almost nothing about what the plot or arc of the show will be, and nothing about any of the cast aside from three character profiles and leaked pictures of toys. All we know for sure is who will be working on the show behind the scenes: Dave Filoni, who headed up The Clone Wars after Henry Gilroy departed in season 2, Simon Kinberg, writer of X-Men: First Class who is involved with the story of both Rebels and (according to rumors) the live-action movies looming on the horizon, and Greg Weisman, writer and producer of numerous lauded and praised cartoons over the years.
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Senseless Sexism in the Galactic Empire

Posted on February 20, 2014by Imperial Court Circular

daala-ercRecently on the Imperial Court Circular, we’ve discussed the gendered aspects of fan service as well as the elements of what makes the Galactic Empire the primary Star Wars antagonist. Today we’ll blend issues of the sexes and the Galactic Empire by discussing one of the Galactic Empire’s most enduring and iconic traits: institutionalized misogyny.

As we’ve discussed on this site in the past, the Galactic Empire has particular political and historical antecedents: among them, Nazi Germany, Imperial Rome, the British colonial empire, and even certain American presidential administrations. The Empire has taken many traits and trappings from these inspirations, from Nazi-styled military uniforms to a political organization that reflects the rise to power of figures such as Julius and Augustus Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Adolf Hitler. The tone of the Empire reflects both the successes – particularly of the more positive British and Roman examples – and darkest traits of these inspirations: military dictatorship, pervasive propaganda, and racial bigotry (in the case of the Galactic Empire, anti-alien bigotry).

Sexism never made much sense as being one of those defining traits of the Galactic Empire. Sexism in fiction generally has two authorial justifications: first, as a reflection of actual historical sexism in the setting of the story and second, as an attempt to engage and criticize contemporary sexism through the lens of a fictional story. Since Star Wars is an invented universe, the first justification is a bit of a reach despite the historical inspirations for the Galactic Empire, and the second justification is unconvincing because of the EU’s failure to adequately address in-universe sexism in a constructive fashion.

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