Category: Simple Tricks

First, a disclaimer: while this piece won’t be getting into major plot details from Bloodline (since we haven’t read it yet), we will be dealing directly with information from the three-chapter excerpt that was released late last week by instaFreebie ^[1]Editor’s note–this piece mistakenly credited the release to the Playcrafting newsletter in its original form regarding the political context and background of the sequel era. If you deem that to be spoilery, proceed at your own discretion.

Mike: So Jay, you and I have spoken on and off about Leia’s founding of the Resistance as a difficult move to judge from our perspective here in the real world—on the one hand, we know the First Order is a serious threat, but in-universe, it’s very easy to see how she’d come across to the post-Endor generation as an old soldier refusing to accept peace, or worse, as a warmonger. At the beginning of Bloodline we learn that after a couple decades the New Republic senate has polarized into two factions: the Centrists, who favor a stronger leadership role for the Republic and a more aggressive military, and the Populists, who prefer more power and autonomy for individual planets. While at first glance it seems sensible that Leia would be part of the Populist faction, it’s especially interesting considering that she’s on the verge of starting her own army.

What first struck me about this backdrop, though, is how believable it felt—at least to someone used to American politics, which are nominally divided into “federal” people and “state” people. Something you’ve brought up here multiple times is the danger of haphazardly translating contemporary political issues into Star Wars’ fantastical setting, when they don’t really apply. Not only does Centrists/Populists feel to me like an artful distillation of real political divisions, it feels like a very appropriate division for the GFFA to have at this point, when so many of its members would be ex-Imperials and ex-Separatists alike. It takes the sort of generic sense of “corruption” we already knew was coming (and which appeared to varying degrees of success in the Expanded Universe) and grounds it in the known history of the galaxy—just like I’ve been hoping for all along. Did you get a similar real-world feeling from it? Read More

As a certain muppet once put it: everything!

So, last week following the entirely unneeded teaser-for-a-teaser 10-second trailer, which still set the internet alight, out came a full teaser trailer for Rogue One.  What did we make of it? Read on….

Ben: After doing a very sharp, pull-up-that-thing-is-still-shielded about face on The Force Awakens I was very skeptical about this. I wasn’t certain what it would deliver or even how it could. Then the teaser trailer came out and … well, blew me away. Blew quite a few other people away too. For me, a large part of that success is seeing the original trilogy aesthetic recaptured and back on the big screen. Oh but there were lots of OT era stories! Yes, there were, before the reboot…. But no films. The original trilogy, outside of that material, has never had this level of care and attention given to it.

Not only that but it all looks so right. The teaser is full of some truly killer imagery: new stormtroopers, AT-ATs crashing a beach party, Rebel command room – and finally, the king one for me, a Star Destroyer cruising past a vast Death Star, being fitted with the superlaser dish! The aesthetic is perfect and great and…. It’s flawless.

While I remain very wary of TFA, I’ve been enjoying Rebels a lot and part of the reason is the look of it. It has an OT feel, albeit years before. It’s rendered through an animation filter but it’s still so good to see. But this trailer? This trailer gives us the real thing and damn, it really has been missed.

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Last February, Claudia Gray, author of Lost Stars and the imminent (and hotly anticipated) Bloodline, dropped a bomb into the Star Wars shipping community when she declared her affection for Reylo—in other words, the notion of a romance between Rey and Kylo Ren. While Reylo is a divisive prospect for a number of reasons, in particular the characters’ potential family ties and the overtones of sexual assault in Kylo’s mental torture of Rey in The Force Awakens, the reactions of many of her fans on social media was, well, staggering to me.

While likely a small number in the grand scheme of things, numerous people were appalled, declaring they no longer planned to purchase Bloodline, and even attacking Gray’s character. She spent the next day or so tweeting at length on the subject, responding generally and to several specific individuals, and to my mind, made a lot of great points both on Reylo and on shipping in general.

To be clear, I can’t get my head around Reylo myself. Nor am I particularly into Kylux ^[1]Kylo and Hux or Stormpilot ^[2]Finn and Poe (though Poe is one hundred percent not straight). But I have latched onto certain Star Wars couples over the years, both actual (Tycho and Winter) and prospective (Jacen and Danni Quee), and one thing I do know from experience is that you can’t always explain what appeals to you and why. Like Grey said, it’s complex stuff full of emotional baggage from real life—that’s why people can feel so strongly about it. But you certainly can’t draw a straight line from somebody’s ship to their real character or values; what’s therapeutic for one person can be triggering for someone else. Two people with similar backgrounds can have completely opposite reactions to, well, any story beat or overtone, romantic or otherwise. What I love the most about Star Wars is how one thing can attract such a huge amount of fans for so many varied reasons, and a ship is a microcosm of that—saying “Reylo fans condone abuse” is like saying Han Solo fans condone drug running. Read More