Category: Opinion

Looking to the Past: Star Wars Rebels and West End Games

Posted on December 16, 2015by Six on the Wild Die
Yes, I first owned the sometimes hilarious Spanish translation. Leave me alone.
Yes, I first owned the sometimes hilarious Spanish translation. Leave me alone.

Since the first announcement of the Expanded Universe reboot, it was said that what now is known as Star Wars Legends was still going to be used, not as gospel but as an inspiration and source for the new canon. And there’s perhaps no better place to see that The Powers That Be were not kidding than in the romance that the Star Wars Rebels cartoon has with the old roleplaying game published by West End Games, a game that introduced such classic concepts as Imperial Inquisitors, the Imperial Security Bureau or Interdictor cruisers, concepts that have lately graced our TVs. But why the WEG game? What makes such a venerable source so suitable to become part of the backbone of the new continuity?

West End Games published the very first Star Wars roleplaying game. The first edition of their game was released in 1987, and soon became the most authoritative source of reference material on anything related to the Galaxy Far Far Away. Initially having nothing to base their sourcebooks on but the original trilogy, the novelizations and radio dramas, and Brian Daley’s Han Solo novels, the developers of the roleplaying game took on the task of expanding this universe and not only dissected and classified the existing sources, but also put together a pretty thorough description of almost every corner of the Star Wars universe. In the times before Essential Guides and Visual Dictionaries, WEG published dozens of roleplaying manuals covering topics as vast as the Galactic Empire itself or as narrow as the legal situation of scouts in the New Republic era, describing almost every single nook and cranny of the galaxy with a level of detail that probably has never been reached again. Read More

Not too short for a stormtrooper: Why eBook novelettes are a great idea

Posted on December 9, 2015by Imperial Court Circular

The_Perfect_Weapon_final_cover[1](This is my last piece going up before The Force Awakens, and it’s a little odd to be writing a piece about the future direction of Star Wars publishing with that on the immediate horizon but this piece was prompted by the Journey to the Force Awakens short stories that released last week and what they presage for SW literature. As much as TFA is dominating my thoughts, the franchise is going to continue going full steam ahead right after release with more novels and supplemental materials: the movie’s just the beginning. So with that, I’ll jump back into the pluralis majestatis and get this thing started.)

Star Wars has a long history with short stories. Some of the best EU works ever written were published as short stories in WEG’s Star Wars Adventure Journal, while the Tales From anthologies were commissioned to expand storytelling to the fringe scenes and characters of the original films. Video games such as X-Wing, TIE Fighter, and Galactic Battlegrounds came with their own short fiction and the Hyperspace feature of the Official Site allowed members of the Star Wars Fan Club to read exclusive fiction content. Magazines such as Star Wars Gamer and Star Wars Insider also ran fiction, and Insider in particular continues to run short stories in this new canon era.

These short stories really pushed the bounds of the Star Wars narrative by focusing on peripheral characters and storylines that might not have justified or sustained a mainstream novel. The short story format allowed the publishers to take risks, releasing tales that did not need to meet the same marketing calculus that a full novel or novel series might. Publishers were also able to use a larger stable of authors, given that a magazine or anthology could offer many more writing slots than a year-long novel-publishing calendar might. Star Wars short stories expanded the universe in every sense of the term: by focusing on everyday characters, the galaxy just seemed like larger and more vibrant place. There was only ever one problem: these stories were not “available wherever books are sold” as the novels were, and unless one obtained a particular issue of a journal or magazine, it was pretty difficult to get a hold of these stories once they were published. The Tales From anthologies were different, because they were released like novels.The-Crimson-Corsair[1]

We’ve long championed the potential of short stories to tell interesting stories and showcase different authorial talents. Last week’s release of five Journey to The Force Awakens eBook shorts by Delilah S. Dawson and Landry Q. Walker provides an excellent demonstration of how the combination of the short story structure and the eBook format allows Star Wars publishing to have the flexibility to tell great stories and also to have the wide accessibility to reach a larger audience.

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A Tale of Two Retcons

Posted on December 7, 2015by Scotch Tape and Popsicle Sticks

valleyofthejedi

A few weeks back, after the “Wings of the Master” episode of Star Wars Rebels aired, a little tizzy broke out on the Jedi Council Literature forum over a supposed contradiction in the new canon: according to an editor over at Wookieepedia, the reference book Ultimate Star Wars had canonized the Expanded Universe detail that B-wings were developed by Admiral Ackbar. In the most superficial, obtuse sense, this seemed to contradict the role of the Mon Cal engineer Quarrie in the episode, and for a little while there, the community was hard at work alternately brainstorming retcons and debating the degree to which the Lucasfilm Story Group had failed us.

Naturally, something as complex as a starfighter can easily have multiple significant developers, and one idea that I thought was particularly interesting was that Quarrie and Ackbar, upon the former’s arrival in the mainstream Rebellion, developed a relationship along the lines of Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison—where one was the real genius, and the other, Ackbar in this case, used his superior marketing and networking abilities to ultimately receive most of the credit and popular recognition.

Ackbar in canon is something of a gruff busybody (if not a true asshole like Edison), and that sort of professional rivalry between him and Quarrie made sense for both characters, I thought, and added an interesting level of complexity to Rebels‘ straightforward account of the B-wing’s origin. In the end, of course, it was a pointless conversation—the claims about an Ackbar credit in Ultimate Star Wars appeared to be flat-out wrong, and there was no contradiction, just an object lesson in fannish overreactions, and the perils of using a wiki as your primary source. Read More

“Who is Luke Skywalker?” or, How I Learned to Stop Caring Who’s Related to Whom in The Force Awakens

Posted on December 2, 2015by

jacket

It’s December, and we are officially less than twenty days from the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. If you’re like me, you’re juggling work, the holidays, the inescapable excitement of the upcoming film, and some kind of re-watch of the first two trilogies (with perhaps some Clone Wars sprinkled in). And you’re doing it with friends – friends with questions about why and how the Republic fell, where exactly Darth Vader falls in the Imperial hierarchy, the relative autonomy and purpose of a protocol droid, and, naturally, where the new characters of The Force Awakens fit into the sprawling scheme that is the galaxy far, far away – and who they’re related to.

It’s not the easiest question to answer. You could recite the talking points given to the actors, or quote director JJ Abrams’ cryptic but brief epilogues for Rey, Finn, Poe Dameron, and Kylo Ren. You could also launch into an explanation of the plot, uncovered and expounded upon over the course of the year by the spoiler community, or instead pivot to fan theory and speculation about who’s related to whom, some strong but some still very silly (Finn is NOT Lando’s son, folks).

Or you can share what I’ve been saying recently: it doesn’t matter, because they are all some version of Luke Skywalker. Read More

So, how much of The Force Awakens have we seen already?

Posted on November 25, 2015by Scotch Tape and Popsicle Sticks

alongtimeago

Remember when the theatrical trailer for The Force Awakens came out, and JJ said there wouldn’t be any more? That was a little over a month ago now, and it seems like every other day since there’s either an international trailer (semantics!), a new TV spot, or even an actual clip of the movie coming out. As the new bits and pieces continue piling up, lots of people who started out content to see whatever the marketing people chose to show us have begun wondering if enough is enough.

Going solely by videos on the official Star Wars YouTube account, there are four distinct TV spots so far, but that’s ignoring several others—some which are pretty new and perhaps just haven’t been added to the account yet, and others which are especially short and/or not very distinct from the others. All told, it’s hard to be sure exactly how many different spots are out there.

But what I’ve been wondering is, what does all this material add up to, in terms of actual content from the movie? It feels like we’ve seen a lot—and indeed, too much according to many—but how much distinct footage have we seen already, with a little more than three weeks until the film’s release? I decided to find out. Read More