Category: Feature Articles

One Sith Two Sith: Evil and Sustainability

Posted on May 9, 2014by Feature Articles, The Holocron

onesith

The Sith are the iconic antagonist of the Star Wars galaxy- black robes, red lightsabers, some cackling laughter and lightning- the very image of evil. We first meet them with the condition of one Master and one Apprentice, and later find out that they have a much richer history. This Rule of Two is perhaps the riskiest idea for long-term Sith survival, as their very nature would make it far too easy for just one overly ambitious and underpowered apprentice and one overconfident master to both end up dead, almost ensuring the extinction of the Sith. However, a large group of constantly infighting Sith could cause the death of many valuable Lords. Throughout Sith history, they tried several power structures, and their newest was perhaps the most sustainable and threatening. Who wouldn’t want a good villain that could sneak up on us at any time?

As we all know, the Sith began as Jedi who explored the Dark Side more deeply and were banished from Republic space for doing so. They found the Sith species in the Unknown Regions, and through a blend of alchemy and interbreeding plus years of isolation, became a powerful empire. We start to see the Sith again in the Great Hyperspace Wars, when the Sith accidentally find the Republic again and general chaos ensued. Every time we see the Sith of the Old Republic, the constant infighting and plotting amongst themselves is a common theme- sometimes to the point that we have to wonder how they get anything else done. We meet several versions of the Sith- the Hyperspace War, Revan and Malak creating a new Sith Empire, the triumvirate of Traya, Nihilus, and Sion descending into a civil war that nearly consumes the Sith as well as the Jedi, and the treaty of Coruscant that ends with a cold war between Jedi and Sith. Throughout this, the pattern is of a large group of Sith Lords, often plotting against each other to the detriment of their fellow Sith. However, the Sith still manage to survive and often win, constantly bouncing back and doing damage to the Republic and the Jedi. Read More

Go Figure: Casualties of the Canon

Posted on April 14, 2014by Feature Articles

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It has been announced that Episode VII will occur approximately 30 years following Return of the Jedi, or around the 34 ABY date. This has several possible consequences. The most blatant is a complete reboot of all Expanded Universe material. This seems extreme, especially as certain EU properties are ongoing (The Old Republic) or are tie-ins to material that will explicitly be preserved (The Clone Wars tie-in novels and comics mostly).

There are three other scenarios, of varying likelihood, all are based on the idea of ‘break points’ in the timeline, wherein everything after a certain date loses canonical validity. Such breaks could be hard, absolute directives based on date in-universe, or soft, with an assumption that material will stand until some explicit contradiction arises in the future EU. Regardless, it makes sense to look at these potential break points and what they would mean for the EU overall.

Lucasfilm has long organized the EU into discrete ‘publishing eras’ of which there are seven plus the non-canon Infinities “era”. These eras are: Before the Republic, Old Republic, Rise of the Empire, Rebellion, New Republic, New Jedi Order, and Legacy. The dividing lines of these eras are, not coincidentally, where we find our break points. Read More

Fixing Wookieepedia: A Helpful Guide

Posted on April 11, 2014by

Near the end of my piece on the Wookieepedia “breast” controversy earlier this week, I made the case that the best way to change the offending article is to change the culture of the site with an influx of exactly the kind of people who had been offended. Staying away from a community whose actions offend you is a reasonable response, and I would never tell someone to do something they weren’t comfortable with. But I’m kind of a confrontational person by nature, and I believe strongly in the “keep your enemies closer” philosophy. The last time I felt like a certain group of people was hostile to my concerns, I started my own discussion thread specifically for those concerns—and now, several years later, it’s made a huge difference in the tenor of that particular community. Read More

Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V: LucasArts, Inspiration and Appropriation

Posted on March 24, 2014by Feature Articles, Sidelong Glance

Being both a Star Wars fan and an avid video game player has been a rough road in the past few years. The fact that LucasArts, the videogame production arm of Lucasfilm, was closed by Disney shortly after their acquisition of the company, but even the past five or six years before that were disappointment after disappointment. In the last four years, we have Star Wars Angry Birds, The Force Unleashed II, Kinect Star Wars, Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures, Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars and The Old Republic. That’s it and all. Going back two or three years more gives us Battlefront: Elite Squadron, Battlefront: Renegade Squadron, The Force Unleashed in both initial release and the “Ultimate Sith” edition, three other Clone Wars tie-in games, and Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga.

Out of that list, only five games not tying in to the Clone Wars TV show made it to the mainstream console market: TFU, TFU II, Lego SW: Complete and Kinect Star Wars. The biggest release by far, however, is The Old Republic, a game developed over a five-year cycle that cost LucasArts, EA and Bioware $200 million to make, more than many blockbuster movies. While an argument can be made for all of these games relative to how fun they are to play or how entertaining they are, no one will argue that any of them are original, exciting and new concepts in the realm of video games. Read More

Go Figure: Force Sensitivity and Population Growth

Posted on March 21, 2014by Feature Articles

Editor’s note—several months ago, during the planning phase for my recent feature Checks and Balances, I asked Go Figure author Michael Lind to explore any existing data he could find on Force sensitivity throughout the ages in the Star Wars galaxy, and to what extent it appeared to be an inherited trait from one’s parents.

While his conclusions veered off somewhat from my original hypothesis—that Force-users were effectively a contagion and would’ve subsumed the regular population of the galaxy if not for the constant warring of Jedi and Sith—they presented a fascinating picture of how Force heritability might actually work; one that drastically changed how I thought about the Galaxy Far, Far Away. My own final piece on the subject can be found here, and below I am proud to present Michael’s original response in its entirety, with only minimal copy-editing, that our readers might be similarly enlightened. – Mike Cooper Read More