Category: Opinion

The Community of Fans: One Big, Happy, Dysfunctional Family

Posted on November 4, 2015by The Holocron

nycc drinksSo this year, I didn’t get a formal press badge for NYCC. However, I spent my Sunday hanging around at the Del Rey booth, surrounded by my Star Wars friends, and it certainly got me thinking about the community that fandom has really become. Star Wars fandom has been greatly fractured over the last few years, but it still plays such a vital role in so many of our lives. We’ve all met amazing friends through fandom, and some of us have even met romantic partners that way. It’s such an important part of our lives, even if our perspectives and place in fandom change over the years. It’s more important than I expected, for one.

One of the biggest changes in my relationship to fandom has been becoming a blogger. When your hobby also becomes something of a part-time job, it really changes how you think about it, and that’s likely true for anyone who ends up prominent in any fandom. A lot of us are probably old enough to remember the days of LiveJournal fandom, in which famous fanfic writers did end up with quite a following and substantial name recognition. We all probably remember a time when someone prominent in a fandom notices us; I definitely spent a few minutes slightly incredulous when I was first asked to write for this site. And here I still am, spending my spare time writing analysis about a fictional universe.

Fandom brings people together. We all have friends we’ve met because of fandom, and for those of us who are frequent con-goers, we have our groups of con friends who we always plan to see at the annual conventions. We all have stories of people meeting their best friends and significant others through fandom, and that’s no longer considered unusual. That kind of bringing people together is one of the many reasons I’ve stayed in fandom for as long as I have. Read More

Twilight Company: The Return of the Rebel Alliance

Posted on November 2, 2015by Six on the Wild Die

THIS REVIEW WILL HAVE SOME MINOR SPOILERS. ABANDON YE WHO ENTER HERE ALL HOPE.

twilightpatchStar Wars Battlefront: Twilight Company is not your typical videogame tie-in. Even though it borrows part of its title from a soon to be released FPS game (that promises to be quite spectacular), Twilight Company works on its own without the need of the Battlefront crutch. The novel is pure military sci-fi. It’s less glamorous than the Rogue Squadron novels and more gritty than the Republic Commando series. Our main characters are not starfighter pilots or special forces commandos: they are the infantry, the people fighting the Galactic Civil War in the frontlines. Most importantly, Twilight Company gives us a hard look at what being a soldier in the Rebel Alliance during a period of open conflict is like and boy, is it engaging.

Let me preface this column by saying that I still find hard to believe that Twilight Company is Alexander Freed’s first novel. Freeds displays a firm grasp of what makes Star Wars loved by millions around the world and introduces us to a new cast of multi-layered characters in a gritty-yet-epic story about war, choices, and why it´s important to fight for a cause. Twilight Company is military sci-fi at its best, so good that even those that usually don’t enjoy the “military” part of it (like this author) will enjoy it. This column is going to focus on something particular: on how this book managed to give us an unprecedented look at how the Rebel Alliance works through the eyes of its foot soldiers, those who might not be galactic heroes but still fight and die for freedom. Read More

To Spoil or Not to Spoil? How Do You Define a Spoiler?

Posted on October 26, 2015by

bespinmattresses

The use of spoiler tags in internet discussion arose from the best of intentions – and therein lies the rub, for where does the road of good intent often lead? In this case to a hell of spoiler tags! Like so many other things, the problem is not tags but how they are used and understood. This in turn raises the question of what a spoiler is understood to be, past and present. It should be emphasized here that there are no The Force Awakens spoilers, of any kind, in this article.

The key point is it used to be that a “spoiler” piece of information was deemed to be that of a major story revelation. No one is ever going to have any mercy or understanding for the guy who tells someone who has just started The Empire Strikes Back, having never seen it before or heard of its plot bombshell – yes, it’s possible – that they will never believe Vader is Luke’s dad. It will always come under the category of a douche move. Over time, however, the understanding and definition has widened greatly, to the current point whereby any information about a story in advance of its release is deemed to be a spoiler. Can this really be correct and worthwhile for anyone? I am highly skeptical, especially as marketing relies upon giving the consumer information snippets to engage their interest.

On some Legends books there would be a Dramatis Personae list of the main characters in it. Often this would be one of the preview items ahead of the book’s release, as it teases plenty but gives little of the actual plot context. For TFA, I’ve used a very successful strategy of having no interest in the numerous clickbait rumours and miscellaneous crap that’s been spewed across the internet in the manner of a permanently incontinent pigeon. It’s worked. While I have watched long-time net friends work themselves into great distress over the latest stream of bullshit, I’ve been fine. Due to the lack of exposure, the little pieces of official info I’ve come across lack much in the way of plot context. I may have a couple of pieces of a, say, 500-piece puzzle, but I don’t have the overall picture, so I am well insulated against any spoilers. So, unless you have some actual knowledge of the plot of a story, a Dramatis Personae list, on its own, tells you bugger all about it, save that it has this or that character. Read More

The Secret Academy — the answer to why the Empire fell so quickly (Also: Why you should read Servants of the Empire)

Posted on October 19, 2015by Imperial Court Circular

(As ever, we will endeavor to avoid spoilers – but as usual, this piece is analysis as much as review so we’ll be discussing the plot in vague terms to make the points we’re making)

secretacademyAs the Journey to The Force Awakens campaign kicked off on September 4th, one of the many questions readers started asking was: why is the Empire falling apart so quickly? The obtuse answer is that this is what the story demands, and we’ll learn the full reasons on December 18th. But many of us thought the war would last far longer than in the Expanded Universe, where the Empire was driven out of the Core Worlds as early as five years after Return of the Jedi. Surely this time the war would truly rage on for many many years: but that’s not what happened. Suddenly, the Empire of the EU seemed a lot more solid and formidable. Folks speculated as to the reasons why, such as the collapse of central authority, the unwillingness of the Navy to waste time protecting a symbolic world like Coruscant, defections to the New Republic, etc.

The real question, though, was why nobody was bothering to fight for the Empire? Even discounting propaganda, surely folks might feel under threat by the rebels and would want to defend their way of life? The Alliance/New Republic approach to the war doubtless played no small part in the lack of widespread Imperial resistance on the part of the galactic citizenry (something that we may touch on in our next “Gray Matters” piece), but Imperial collapse signifies a widespread lack of support for the Empire. This is in marked contrast to both Revenge of the Sith – where the Empire was ushered in by thunderous applause – and the old EU, where the Empire had solid support for quite some time.

Jason Fry’s Servants of the Empire books in general and The Secret Academy in particular give us the answer. This series – among many things – explores the true lengths the Empire goes to in order to inculcate loyalty in its subjects, and it shows that the Empire’s attempts at gaining the populace’s loyalty are manipulative at best and outright programmed at worst. The Empire does not inspire devotion or loyalty, it instills it by force. But The Secret Academy shows us that indoctrination through propaganda and misinformation is the gentlest of the Empire’s methods, and it has more sinister ideas in mind for the future of the galactic populace. Edge of the Galaxy already explored the Empire’s exploitation of planets, Rebel in the Ranks illustrated the brutality inherent in Imperial training, and Imperial Justice showed us the dark side of Imperial oppression: but The Secret Academy shows the existential danger posed by the Imperial system and indirectly provides the elusive answer as to why the Empire fell so quickly. Essentially, the Empire doth protest too much: the sheer lengths the Empire goes to shows that even the servants of the Empire aren’t really willing adherents of the system. Read More

A Special Kind of Crazy, or Why You’re Probably Not a Rebel

Posted on October 9, 2015by Scotch Tape and Popsicle Sticks

RogueSquadronPilotsPicture two people, waking up on an average morning.

Person A eats breakfast, brushes his teeth, and goes to work. Person B starts to make a cup of coffee on her hot plate (can’t remember the last time she had regular electricity) but suddenly the room shakes—enemy air forces have arrived and they’re bombing. Person A clears some early work from his inbox and decides he’s got time to run out to Starbucks to grab a pumpkin spice latte. Person B shoves her few belongings aside in a rush to her computer, frantically entering in the commands to wipe it clean as a near miss blows out all the windows. A has an important question for a co-worker across the hall, but they’re on a conference call so he sends a terse e-mail instead and spends the rest of the morning waiting impatiently for them to notice it and get back to him. B didn’t have time to tell her superiors she was bugging out, so she sneaks around the CCTV cameras to an alley with a good view of the nearest drop point (luckily, there’s a restaurant dumpster nearby and she’s able to scoop up a few handfuls of leftover eggs) to wait for her contact to happen by. A comes back from lunch to find his computer frozen, so he spends most of the afternoon standing over the IT guy’s shoulder and falling behind on his work. B dozes off around hour five of watching the drop but it starts to snow and the cold wakes her up and shitshitshit, there are fresh footprints—she missed her contact.

I don’t have to ask which of these scenarios more resembles your life; unless you live in Syria or the Crimean Peninsula, it’s almost certainly A. My question is, what would your government have to do for you to willingly give up A in favor of B? Read More