Category: Scotch Tape and Popsicle Sticks

So You Think You Can Internet: On Argumentation

Posted on May 26, 2014by Scotch Tape and Popsicle Sticks
Credit: xkcd, of course.

In my recent interview with author Jason Fry, I asked him about his personal reaction to the reboot announcement—and Jason took that ball and ran with it, commenting not just on his own reaction, but his perspective on others’ reactions, and what they said about internet culture overall. Some fans, Jason felt, were too quick to see ill intent in the news; a “plot against EU fans, or something Lucasfilm did casually or dismissively.” He went on:

“This is probably too kumbaya, but it’s just the latest thing that makes me wish we’d take it easier on each other, particularly online. It’s like we’ve been primed to assume that faceless person we disagree with is malevolent or incompetent. I don’t know why we do this (I’m certainly not innocent), but it doesn’t win arguments, it doesn’t elevate our discourse, and it sure doesn’t make us happier. I wish we would all try assuming the other person’s acting in good faith, attempting to understand their perspective, and if we’re still at odds, accepting that we just see things differently.”

For my part, I’ve long been a devotee of something called Hanlon’s razor—“never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” That works pretty well for politics, I’d say, but when dealing with the ins and outs of major franchise fiction, one might go a step further and say “never attribute to malice or stupidity that which is adequately explained by changes in circumstance”—Fry’s razor, if you will. Nine times out of ten (give or take a David Goyer), the people responsible for producing the media we fans consume are genuine fans themselves, or at the very least, doing the best job they can within a given set of constraints to produce something they honestly believe people will like. Read More

Escape Pod: Ailyn Vel

Posted on May 20, 2014by Scotch Tape and Popsicle Sticks

Okay, stick with me on this one.

Point one: several months back, there was a rumor going around that in order to step away from the baggage of the prequel era, Lucasfilm was going to begin their (not yet confirmed) Boba Fett spinoff movie by killing off the existing version of the character and having someone else don his Mandalorian armor.

Point two: last week, a “leaked” list of the Star Wars release slate through 2020 appeared online and “confirmed” that not only was a Fett movie in the works, it would be first out of the gate between Episodes VII and VIII.

Point three: even if one and two are complete bullshit, of course they’re going to make a Boba Fett movie.

While the first rumor was met with the gnashing of teeth from both hardcore Fettites and the diversity crowd (who at the very least would have appreciated a Maori in a leading role), it does open up a lot of interesting possibilities, one of which I’d like to explore in the following. Read More

No Gays in Space: Diversity and the Changing Faces of Star Wars Canon

Posted on May 13, 2014by Scotch Tape and Popsicle Sticks

briefing

If you’re an eagle-eyed follower of this site, you may have noticed that Michael Lind, author of our Go Figure series, explained in a comment in the wake of the reboot announcement that since so much of what we previously understood to be “real” in the Star Wars galaxy can no longer be considered canon, doing any kind of authoritative statistical analysis of the Galaxy Far, Far Away and its population is no longer possible—and thus, the Go Figure series has come to its end.

And, well, he’s mostly right, but not completely. Out of respect for Michael’s phenomenal work thus far, I will indeed be discontinuing Go Figure as a discrete series of pieces. Likewise, the sample size of what can be definitively regarded as canon SW characters is now a fraction of what it was a month ago, and thus, there’s no way now to talk about the GFFA at large without resorting to a bunch of guesses and assumptions.

What we can talk about, however, is the franchise. Read More

The Expanded Universe Explains, Vol. VII

Posted on April 24, 2014by Scotch Tape and Popsicle Sticks

16. What was R2-D2’s backstory pre-Episode I?

Technically, I can’t answer this one, but I’m including it here largely as a curiosity: unless both my memory and Wookieepedia fail me, there is essentially zero information about Artoo prior to The Phantom Menace. He seems to be in pretty good shape when he first appears in the film, so it’s reasonable to conclude that he was a relatively new arrival—but then, the Naboo are notable for keeping pretty much everything nice and polished, so even that’s far from certain.

Interestingly, despite the fact that TPM ostensibly shows him first being put together, there is a bit more information out there regarding Threepio’s pre-saga existence. Before the prequels, in fact, older Expanded Universe sources had established him as being more than 100 years old. This was reconciled with TPM thanks to the fact that he’s already more or less operational—Anakin says he built him, but there’s no indication that he started from scratch. Read More

What Star Wars Can Learn From Disney

Posted on April 15, 2014by

In case you weren’t quite sure, my piece a couple weeks ago on What Star Wars Can Learn From Glee was an April Fools gag. But buried within it were a couple nuggets of truth; it’s hard to craft a satirical argument like that unless at least a tiny part of you can see its way to believing it.

To wit: the Disney purchase really does mean a new era for Star Wars, in which the old rules don’t apply—or at least don’t need to. Just ask Marvel. The film slate exemplified by 2012’s The Avengers and continuing into the foreseeable future was hard for an independent studio to even imagine, but much like the Avengers themselves, Marvel’s vision combined with Disney’s financial backing brought about something that just couldn’t have worked otherwise.

I truly believe that this desire to take a successful property to the next level also motivated Disney’s purchase of Star Wars. There’s certainly an argument to be made that Star Wars can’t sustain a new movie every year, or every other year, or whatever the reality ends up being, in perpetuity, but if you’re willing to entertain the alternative (by which I mean a success rate at least on the level of the Expanded Universe’s storytelling), then at least in theory, the possibilities are greater than many realize. Read More