Category: Opinion

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

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

rsz_menace_final_300dpi-970x545[1]

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?

Read More

Modern Mythmaking, Star Wars Style

Posted on August 7, 2015by

Ziost_citadel_Book_of_SithsThe very essence of a myth is how it is not set in stone. Stories change as they are told and retold, and multiple versions of one story is considered perfectly reasonable. In the present, there are plenty of franchises that are very well-known, stories that almost anyone can recognize a few references from even if they aren’t in the fandom. Star Wars is very much one of those- by now, pretty much everyone has heard a few of the iconic lines, and the main characters and imagery are known worldwide. We can even argue that by now, Star Wars has transcended the “film franchise” status and is now a modern-day myth. It’s not just the prominence of the Star Wars franchise, but the very narrative structure. Even recent developments, like the Legends announcement, actually fit well with the modern-myth status.

The hero’s journey, as described by scholar Joseph Campbell, was one of the most powerful influences on Star Wars, and we have every reason to think that the sequel trilogy will fall into that same pattern. Maybe our hero is going to be Rey this time, but the very pattern of the hero’s journey is probably going to stay intact. If we’re talking about myth-making, maintaining the narrative structure is going to ensure it. It’s simple- an ordinary person gets a call to adventure, and often reluctantly accepts. They go off on a long journey that often includes some very dark times, a somewhat ‘journey through the underworld,’ and eventually emerge triumphant. This is an excellent format for storytelling, and it gives Star Wars a framework that fits its setting perfectly.

Read More

The Force Does Not Throw Dice: Roleplaying and the New Continuity

Posted on August 5, 2015by Six on the Wild Die
The beginnings of our madness
The beginnings of our madness

Welcome to The Force Does Not Throw Dice, a new series of articles where we are going to be exploring the fun world of playing and directing tabletop roleplaying games in the Galaxy Far, Far Away, and where we are planning to impart some sage advice and encouragement to both Game Masters and players. If you’ve never played a Star Wars RPG, keep reading all the same, for our first article is going to have a small discussion on setting and canon. What should the continuity in our campaign be like? Should we discard all official materials or should we try to choose between one of the official portrayals? Hello, I’m Dave and I’ve been directing games for more than twenty years!

Playing in the Star Wars galaxy comes with a few constraints that playing in your own homebrew sci-fi setting doesn’t. First and foremost, there’s the metaplot: Luke Skywalker defeated Darth Vader and saved the galaxy, not your player characters. If you are playing tramp freighter spacers or bounty hunters, that’s probably okay with you, but many groups are used to a more heroic kind of roleplaying and find these restrictions completely unacceptable.

Many gaming groups sidestep this problem by setting their games in an alternate universe, one where their characters can fall in love with Leia and/or Han and be the ones to destroy the Death Star; some other gamers prefer to play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and have their player characters have their adventures in the cracks of the saga (like, I dunno, being the ones to steal the Death Stars plans; hey, there were official precedents!). Some of this last kind of gamers even insist on making their adventures perfectly fit with the “canon” of the saga, bending themselves over to make sure the official word is respected no matter what. Read More

The Parity Problem, or Why Padmé is the Best Character in the Prequels

Posted on August 3, 2015by Scotch Tape and Popsicle Sticks

padmekneel

With the dawn of the sequel trilogy less than a year away, 2015 has been a year of relitigation: new and old segments of Star Wars fandom, maybe even subconsciously, attempting to settle old scores and nail down our history one way or another so what we might all move forward together into whatever the hell The Force Awakens ends up being.

Most recently, this could be seen in last month’s brouhaha over two “Slave Leia” stories: first, a parent taking issue with the character’s presence in the toy aisle, where she was discovered by his young daughter. Then, just a couple days later, the new issue of GQ magazine featured a cover and photo spread with Amy Schumer involving the slave bikini, the droids, and pretty much exactly what you’d expect. Some people loved it, some were offended, and some (hi) just found it boring.

That was a couple weeks ago and people are still talking about Slave—excuse me, Huttslayer Leia and whether that scene was good, bad, or just plain unnecessary. For my money, Tricia Barr covered all the right bases and then some. But way before Leia ended up in the news again, 2015 began with the relitigation of, perhaps, an even more controversial element of Star Wars: the death of Padmé in Revenge of the Sith. Read More

The Expanded Universe Explains, Vol. XI – The Bounty Hunters of Ord Mantell

Posted on July 31, 2015by Scotch Tape and Popsicle Sticks

scoundrels-luck

After a nice long break to recover from the insanity of the Death Star plans (which I recently adapted into a short video for Star Wars Minute), we now return to our regularly-scheduled program, wherein I explicate the handful of offhand references in the original trilogy that the Expanded Universe couldn’t help but explain multiple times over. This time around:

22. What happened with the bounty hunter Han “ran into” on Ord Mantell?

By my count (and one thing I learned from the Death Star piece is that there’s a fair chance I’m missing someone), there are seven different encounters on Ord Mantell between Han and at least one bounty hunter between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. In researching this piece, one interesting thing I noticed is that, counterintuitively, about half of these weren’t even directly the result of Jabba’s bounty, but were instead brought on by Han’s position in the Rebellion. This is neat because it sort of contradicts the context of Han’s line in Empire but at the same time reinforces the idea that he’s ready to move on. Like lots of stuff in this period, some of the dating is fuzzy, but I’m going to attempt to run through them all chronologically, starting with… Read More