Category: Interviews

Portrait of a Wookieepedian

Posted on July 13, 2015by

brandonrheaAs I explained in the intro to my last Better Know a Fan interview, sometimes I get to know people online who defy even my hardest-earned assumptions and expectations. While I’m an outspoken contrarian by nature, I’m occasionally even a contrarian against myself, and when I meet someone who brings a very different background and point of view to their Star Wars fandom, but who nonetheless earns my respect, I like to use ETE as a venue to show that I don’t think everyone I disagree with is a bad fan—often they’re just as deserving of a little attention as anyone else.

This time around, I spoke at considerable length with Brandon Rhea, outspoken fan of the open-source encyclopedia format both in an official capacity as an employee of Wikia and unofficially as a regular contributor to Wookieepedia. I’ve had my own mixed feelings about the wook over the years—and we get into that a good bit—but in his recent guest piece, Brandon made a fair case for its continued existence, and for himself as a friendly and level-headed guy who’s always willing to listen, even when the first thing he hears from you is “it’s time to start over“. Read More

Jason Fry in Three Dimensions, Part Two

Posted on May 4, 2015by Interviews

sote-ritrContinued from Part One, where we discussed the Rebels timeline and Zare Leonis’s speculated connections to The Force Awakens.

Speaking of The Force Awakens again, I was just at the panel for that yesterday morning, and Kathleen Kennedy made a comment about how the new Star Wars is gonna be more inclusive for the fandom…have more recognition for female fans, starting with the films. What do you think the chances of that being reflected in the new novels are? We have characters like Merei of course, and we have Sabine and Hera from Rebels. Is there gonna be time to have—and Merei had a joint point-of-view with Zare in your second novel—is there gonna be a chance to have a female-led Star Wars young adult novel, or adult novel in the future?

Um…there’s nothing in my work that addresses that, that I have in the works, but yeah. I think that’s definitely happening, and I think it’s gonna be wonderful when it happens, and I bet it would happen very soon. I don’t know any secrets, but like you, I can see that yes, as Kennedy said, Star Wars has made, I think, a huge jump in that realm. And it’s great, because one thing you see at a convention like this, you see talking to fans, is that Star Wars really does lead the way people think about things, and that’s wonderful. Read More

Jason Fry in Three Dimensions, Part One

Posted on May 1, 2015by Interviews

jasonjay

While the profilic author-of-all-trades (wait, does that make sense?) Jason Fry has been kind enough to grant Eleven-ThirtyEight extended interviews twice a year since the inception of the site, this, our fourth go-round with Fry, has the fun distinction of being our first in-person interview. And by “our”, I mean the perpetually-pluralized Jay Shah’s, who was able to grab some time with Fry at Star Wars Celebration Anaheim a couple weeks ago.

This is also the first time I’ve had to transcribe audio for something like this, which was an interesting new experience for me: trying to remain true to the essence of a statement without including all the “ums” and “y’knows” was a fun challenge, and hopefully I’ve managed to represent both parties well without putting words in their mouths. So with that (and a reminder that this is only part one—much more will be coming on Monday), I’ll turn it over to Jay. – Mike Read More

Portrait of a Disgruntled Fan

Posted on April 17, 2015by Interviews

roguelogoNow that Celebration Anaheim is underway and some portion of our audience will be reading this on their phones surrounded by other Star Wars fans, I thought it would be a good time to begin a new recurring interview feature whose title I’m shamelessly ripping off from Stephen Colbert, Better Know a Fan. While I pride myself on this site featuring a healthy range of opinions among its regular staff, I occasionally come across people whose perspectives are interesting to me but not necessarily in an editorial context—this will be my vehicle to offer those people a moment at the microphone. If you’re familiar with the Literature boards at the Jedi Council Forums, my first subject will be very familiar to you—in only a few years of posting, he’s become a fixture there, and while we may not always agree with him, we all know exactly where he stands.

Zachary Skaggs, known at the JCs as Zeta1127, could be listed in the dictionary under the word “consistent”. Despite being relatively new to the online community, he makes no bones about his view that Star Wars’ glory days are well behind it, thanks to the editorial direction of the last several years of “Big Three” novels and now the continuity shakeups of The Clone Wars and the sequel trilogy. While normally I’m content to keep incessant fan negativity at arm’s length, especially here, Zachary isn’t your typical complainer. As, frankly, unreasonable as his views of Lucasfilm can be, the man doesn’t have a trollish bone in his body—no matter how much some of us roll our eyes or even outright tease him for being such a downer, he takes it all in good humor and never gets petty or personal, which in my view warrants respect. I wanted to find out what makes him tick, and he was gracious enough to oblige me. Read More

Jason Fry Keeps Talking To Us: Wired For The Classics

Posted on November 17, 2014by Interviews

Last Friday, I spoke with Servants of the Empire author Jason Fry about what goes into good Star Wars technobabble, and he hinted at the larger plot of his own ongoing young-adult series The Jupiter Pirates. This time we’ll get a little more in-depth on Edge of the Galaxy; how it portrays the Empire, what elements it shares (and doesn’t) with the Rebels TV series, and what it’s been like developing the series with the Lucasfilm Story Group. Oh, and I asked him about “Sheev”, because of course I did.

 

 

There’s been, suffice it to say, a lot of interest in post-reboot depictions of the Empire and its treatment of aliens and women. While the latter situation is much improved to my mind, the continuation of Imperial xenophobia—a major theme in Edge of the Galaxy—was surprising to some people. When it’s speculated in the book that anti-alien prejudice is more an Outer Rim mindset in contrast with the more cosmopolitan Core, is that just the people of Lothal talking, or is that a reliable OOU perspective? And either way, do you see this matter as having evolved in the past year, or is it the same as it was in the EU? Read More